Who Is Jesus?

New Testament scholars have long debated the historical identity of Jesus and the development of Christology within the church's history. In Who Is Jesus? Carl Braaten reviews the various historical Jesus quests, arguing that it is time for the current ("third") quest to admit failure. Against the implication that "the real Jesus has been lost and needs to be found," Braaten maintains that the only real Jesus is the One presented in the canonical Gospels and that "any other Jesus is irrelevant to Christian faith." He draws on a wealth of historical resources to address such contentious questions as these:

Carl E. Braaten is professor emeritus of systematic theology at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and former executive director of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology.

By Way of Introduction	p. 1
What Can We Know about Jesus of Nazareth?	p. 5
The First Quest of the Historical Jesus	p. 7
Theological Criticism of the Quest	p. 11
The Second Quest of the Historical Jesus	p. 14
The Third Quest of the Historical Jesus	p. 18
Critics of the "Jesus Seminar"	p. 22
How Do Christians Come to Believe in Jesus?	p. 27
Faith and Historical Reason	p. 30
The Testimony of the Holy Spirit	p. 32
The Living Christ in the Preaching of the Church	p. 35
The Whole Christ of the Whole Bible	p. 39
The Problem of Historical Revelation	p. 44
Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?	p. 49
The Resurrection as History	p. 51
Resurrection as Eschatology	p. 52
Implications of Resurrection Hope	p. 55
Why Do Christians Believe That Jesus Is "Truly God"?	p. 59
The Logic of Salvation	p. 61
Low and High Christology	p. 64
Why Jesus Ls Truly God	p. 68
The Real Presence of Christ	p. 70
A Real Incarnation	p. 72
Is Jesus Unique - The One and Only Way of Salvation?	p. 75
The Pluralistic Theology of Religion	p. 76
The Exclusive Claim of the Gospel	p. 78
General and Special Revelation	p. 79
Interreligious Dialogue	p. 81
No Salvation Outside Christ	p. 83
Christians and Jews	p. 87
Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism	p. 88
Why Did Jesus Have to Die on the Cross?	p. 93
Luther's Theology of the Cross	p. 93
The Ransom Theory of the Atonement	p. 98
The Satisfaction Theory of the Atonement	p. 99
The Moral Exemplar Theory	p. 101
Christus Victor: The Classical View	p. 101
Who Crucified Jesus?	p. 102
Christ Our Representative	p. 106
Was Jesus the Founder of the Christian Church?	p. 109
Images of the Church	p. 111
The Four Pillars of the Emerging Church	p. 115
Back to the Religion of Jesus?	p. 119
The Marks of the Church	p. 120
What Does Jesus Have to Do with Politics?	p. 127
Jesus, Revolution, and Politics	p. 127
The Kingdom, the Church, and the World	p. 129
The Way of Critical Participation	p. 134
Conclusion	p. 141
Index of Names	p. 143
Index of Subjects	p. 146
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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