Download Free One Jesus Many Christs Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online One Jesus Many Christs and write the review.

In One Jesus, Many Christs Gregory Riley reveals that there was not just one true Christianity, but many different Christianities from the very beginning. United by passionate allegiance to Jesus as hero, these early, doctinally diverse Christianities have led to the development of many different kinds of Christian churches among us today. Riley shows that early Christianity harbored major doctrinal differences about all aspects of Jesus' life, death, resurrection and divinity. An expert on the historical context in which Christianity arose, Riley illuminates the Greco-Roman world of the early Christians, a world steeped in heroic ideals. Jesus was embraced as a new and compelling hero that one could follow into a whole new life of caring community and transcendant hope. Riley boldly asserts that it was only as Christianity became the religion of the empire that the myth of the Apostles' Creed was created, thereby promulgating the illusion that the Apostles had gathered together and agreed upon a core set of doctrines essential to the Christian faith. But the reality is that doctrinal orthodoxy was not an issue for the early Christians. Rather, they focused, in quite varied ways, on following Jesus as a model for living. This book not only provides a whole new understanding of the nature of earliest Christianity, but it also conveys a vital message for today about what Christian faith is really about. Riley reveals the authentic character of Christianity as inherently pluralistic and tolerant of diverse ideas while passionately centered in Jesus.
This book not only provides a whole new understanding of the nature of earliest Christianity, but it also conveys a vital message for today about what Christian faith is really about. Riley reveals the authentic character of Christianity as inherently pluralistic and tolerant of diverse ideas while passionately centered in Jesus.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From one of the world’s most influential spiritual thinkers, a long-awaited book exploring what it means that Jesus was called “Christ,” and how this forgotten truth can restore hope and meaning to our lives. “Anyone who strives to put their faith into action will find encouragement and inspiration in the pages of this book.”—Melinda Gates In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Is the word simply Jesus’s last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understandings have been limited by culture, religious debate, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the center. Drawing on scripture, history, and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. “God loves things by becoming them,” he writes, and Jesus’s life was meant to declare that humanity has never been separate from God—except by its own negative choice. When we recover this fundamental truth, faith becomes less about proving Jesus was God, and more about learning to recognize the Creator’s presence all around us, and in everyone we meet. Thought-provoking, practical, and full of deep hope and vision, The Universal Christ is a landmark book from one of our most beloved spiritual writers, and an invitation to contemplate how God liberates and loves all that is.
First published in 1994, and revised in 2005, this classic edition includes updated suggestions for further reading at the end of the book.
Here is a wise, radical, and illuminating book on the obstacles that a rigid interpretation of orthodox christological doctrines presents to dialogue with persons of other faiths. One Christ--Many Religions examines religious pluralism today and, in the light of its implications for the global community, suggests the contours of a revised christology more credible to Christians and their neighbors of other faiths. Samartha argues that the problem with the christological dogmas of the first Ecumenical Councils is not their truth so much as their interpretation, and the un-Christian zealotry they seem to engender in Christians. Sensitive to charges of sentiments of racial and cultural superiority that stem from Christians believing themselves uniquely authorized agents of God, Samartha challenges us to admit the truth of these accusations, and to revise our understanding of Jesus. Without such christological revisions, Samartha fears, Christianity may cease to be Christian, may become enfeebled in the pursuit of justice for the oppressed, alienated from the deeper challenge of Jesus, sealed off from the truths of other religions, and, ultimately, may be barred from experiencing the rich and mysterious encounter of God.
On July 1, 1959, at Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, the social psychologist Milton Rokeach brought together three paranoid schizophrenics: Clyde Benson, an elderly farmer and alcoholic; Joseph Cassel, a failed writer who was institutionalized after increasingly violent behavior toward his family; and Leon Gabor, a college dropout and veteran of World War II. The men had one thing in common: each believed himself to be Jesus Christ. Their extraordinary meeting and the two years they spent in one another’s company serves as the basis for an investigation into the nature of human identity, belief, and delusion that is poignant, amusing, and at times disturbing. Displaying the sympathy and subtlety of a gifted novelist, Rokeach draws us into the lives of three troubled and profoundly different men who find themselves “confronted with the ultimate contradiction conceivable for human beings: more than one person claiming the same identity.”
In our culture of personalization, where everything is customizable, Jesus is often reworked into what each individual wants Him to be. Jesus is aligned to a person's agendas and dreams, making it easier for him or her to agree with Him.
What should those attracted to the figure of Jesus Christ make of all the different Christs available to them? Amidst today's pluralism, we encounter Christ as liberator, the cosmic Christ, feminist Christs, Black Christs, Christ as the object of mystical longing, and various New Age versions of Christ, to name but a few. Imaginary Christs discusses the challenges arising from christological pluralism and suggests evaluative criteria for sorting through this abundance of competing Christs without falling into either a narrow dogmatism, on the one hand, or an uncritical relativism, on the other. With an eye to the pluralism that has always been part of the Christian tradition, the book investigates the benefits of confronting the Christs of White American churches with Black Christs. It poses important questions about the future of pluralistic christological consciousness, exploring the possibilities of devoting oneself to several genuinely different Christs and the possibilities of combining commitment to the Christ with commitment to another venerable religious figure, such as the Buddha.
The book consists primarily of interviews between Strobel (a former legal editor at the Chicago Tribune) and biblical scholars such as Bruce Metzger. Each interview is based on a simple question, concerning historical evidence (for example, "Can the Biographies of Jesus Be Trusted?"), scientific evidence, ("Does Archaeology Confirm or Contradict Jesus' Biographies?"), and "psychiatric evidence" ("Was Jesus Crazy When He Claimed to Be the Son of God?"). Together, these interviews compose a case brief defending Jesus' divinity, and urging readers to reach a verdict of their own.
Does the Apostle Paul have any use for the person of Jesus presented in the Gospels? Critical scholarship thinks not, but this book argues that Paul not only mentions more than seventy specific details of the historical Jesus, but he also commends the character of Jesus and echoes His teachings repeatedly in his letters and sermons-in full agreement with the Gospel accounts. Stout examines Paul's intriguing description of the "Man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim 2:5) and suggests that this title fulfills the OT expectation of God appearing in human history as a man. In his incarnated humanity, the Man Christ Jesus accomplished salvation in the historical events of his life and death, and in his resurrected humanity, he appeared to Paul on the Damascus Road-rooting Paul's Christology deeply in human experience. Furthermore, Stout shows how Paul rests his concept of salvation on a neglected aspect of his doctrine-that the entire church is associated with the historical events of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, an association which also unites his church with one another in fellowship and service. This book, then, demonstrates that Paul's gospel rests upon Jesus as a man of history who brings salvation into human history in his life, death, and exaltation as the "Man Christ Jesus."