Jesus, the Doctrine
One reason why the creed devotes so much space to Jesus Christ is because of the controversy which surrounded the person of Jesus in the early Church. In its first 500 years or so the Church wrestled with many deficient explanations of and beliefs about Christ.
Louis Berkhof, in his History of Christian Doctrines, says the Church had to do justice to the following points concerning the person of Jesus: 1) His true and proper deity; 2) His true and proper humanity; 3) the union of deity and humanity in one person; and 4) the proper distinction of deity from humanity in the one person (p.102). These were precisely the points around which controversy flared in the early years of the Church.
A Gnostic tendency in the Church called Docetism (from the Greek verb dokeo, which means "to seem or appear"), denied Jesus could have had a physical body, that He only seemed to be human but was actually wholly divine. Docetism failed by rejecting Christ's true humanity.
Others, like Arias and his followers insisted that since Christ was "begotten" there was "a time when He was not" and so could not possibly be divine but was created. He may be the highest created being, but He was not God and so Arianism did not do justice to His deity.
The followers of Nestorius granted both the human and divine natures of Christ but could not conceive of how they could unite without there also being two persons. Jesus became then, not God incarnate, but a very godly man. Nestorianism failed to unite the divine and human natures of Jesus into one person.
Eutychius, in reaction so emphasized the union of the human and divine natures that he blended the two into a third type of nature, neither truly human or divine.
Some Conclusions:
This ongoing theological ferment is part of the fabric of Christianity. It is a necessary evil, essential to clarifying and maintaining what the Church believes. However, as unpleasant as it is, theological controversy is not an impediment to evangelism. Throughout these long years of debate the gospel continued to spread through the known world effectively Christianizing the Roman empire and beyond.
