Authors: John Hick
ISBN-13: 9780664230371, ISBN-10: 0664230377
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Date Published: February 2006
Edition: REV
In this groundbreaking work, John Hick refutes the traditional Christian understanding of Jesus of Nazareth. According to Hick, Jesus did not teach what was to become the orthodox understanding of him: that he was God incarnate who became human to die for the sins of the world. Further, the traditional dogma of Jesus' two natures - human and divine - cannot be explained satisfactorily, and worse, it has been used to justify great human evils. Thus, the divine incarnation, he explains, is best understood metaphorically. Nevertheless, he concludes that Christians can still understand Jesus as Lord and the one who has made God real for us.
1 | Today's starting point | 1 |
2 | Jesus' life, death and resurrection | 15 |
3 | From Jesus to Christ | 27 |
4 | The church's affirmation of Jesus' deity | 40 |
5 | Two natures - two minds? | 47 |
6 | Divine self-emptying? | 61 |
7 | Further problems of Kenosis | 72 |
8 | Historical side-effects of the church's dogma | 80 |
9 | Plural incarnations? | 89 |
10 | Divine incarnation as metaphor | 99 |
11 | Atonement by the blood of Jesus? | 112 |
12 | Salvation as human transformation | 127 |
13 | Salvation/liberation as a world-wide process | 134 |
14 | Christian truth and other truths | 140 |
15 | New Anglican thinking | 150 |
16 | New Catholic thinking | 161 |
17 | What does this mean for the churches? | 174 |