What Benedict Doesn't Get About Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth remains a disturbing presence, a question mark hanging over uneasy Western world-views. Some invoke him unquestioningly as the divine, redeeming Son of God. Others dismiss him as a minor figure whose followers invented stories about him and a religion around him. No serious historian doubts his existence, though some (noted and refuted by Maurice Casey in his trenchant introductory survey) still try. What we have, rather, in general and in the writings surveyed here, is a bewildering range of viewpoints, which with only a slight stretch could be described as pre-modern, modern and postmodern: in this case, a German, an Englishman and a North American. As Barack Obama said of a different trio (recent guest speakers in Westminster Hall), this is either a very high bar or the beginning of a very funny joke.