From its beginning, Christian theology has approached the person and work of Christ through the names and titles given him in Scripture. These visible yet mysterious signs in the sacred text indicated where true knowledge of God's revelation through his Son was to be found. But they were not self-explanatory. Some, like ‘shepherd’ and ‘way’, Christ applied to himself; others, especially those in the Hebrew Scriptures, required great exegetical skill to fathom.

This long tradition, which still survives in a few popular hymns, has been extremely influential in Christian writing. As early as the second century, one of the Greek Apologists, Justin Martyr, defended Christ's divinity with particular reference to the names ‘Christ’ and ‘Jesus’ in his Dialogus cum Tryphone Judaeo, and established names as significant in polemic with the Jews. A century later, Origen distinguished between those pertaining to Christ's divine and human natures, and expounded several – way, good shepherd, son of God, king, lamb, rod and flower. Among the early Latin writers, St Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258), also in controversy with the Jews, considered Christ as arm of the Lord, mountain, spouse, judge and king. St Augustine wrote: ‘By similitude Christ is many things he is not by property’, thus underlining the theological significance of Biblical metaphor: figuratively he is a rock, door, corner stone, lion and lamb; but in his true being he is the Word.