The New Testament gospels show Jesus selecting twelve apostles to lead his immediate followers, but he did not lay down a detailed blueprint for a complex institutional priesthood or administrative hierarchy.
The elaborate structures, clerical offices, and distinct liturgical traditions seen in modern churches developed gradually over centuries as the movement adapted to Roman institutional frameworks.
The concept of a dual human and divine nature in the person of Jesus is known as the Hypostatic Union, an essential component of modern Trinitarianism.
Yet it was not until the Council of Chalcedon that we see the emergence of an official doctrine of the Trinity in a form that is recognisable with what Christian Trinitarians believe in today. This took place in the fifth century, over 400 years after Jesus!
The evangelical theologian and Professor Wayne A. Grudem sums this up as follows:
'A precise understanding of how full deity and full humanity' argues Grudem, 'could be combined together in one person was formulated only gradually in the church and did not reach the final form until the Chalcedonian Definition in 451 AD.
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