John's Gospel is best known for its presentation of Jesus as the Word of God made flesh. But as the narrative unfolds, readers discover that the identity of Jesus is surprisingly complex. He is depicted as a teacher, a healer, a prophet, and Messiah. He is Jewish and Galilean, a human being who is Son of Man and Son of God. Portraits of Jesus in the Gospel of John considers each of these roles in detail, showing how each makes a distinctive contribution to the Gospel's rich mosaic of images for Jesus. John's multifaceted portrait of Jesus draws on a broad spectrum of early Christian traditions, and the contributors to this collection of essays explore the ways in which these traditions are both preserved and transformed in the Fourth Gospel. The writers draw us more deeply into the questions of the way in which traditions about Jesus developed in the early church and how the Gospel of John might contribute to our understanding of that dynamic process.

Many people realize that the cultural landscape of North America has shifted significantly. With such changes, new challenges for how churches live as a proclamation of the gospel have and continue to emerge. These challenges are related to the church’s participation in the mission of God and particularly how local churches live faithfully to God while remaining relevant to such challenges. Because Scripture is revered as God’s word, this matter also pertains to the way churches read Scripture, since the Bible does shape how churches embody the gospel. Gospel Portraits addresses the intersection of mission and hermeneutics for churches within their local contexts. Believing the gospel calls the church to follow Jesus and bear witness to the kingdom of God, this book proposes that churches should read the Bible as a Christ-centered and kingdom-oriented narrative. This reading of Scripture allows churches to reimagine how they might embody the gospel within their local contexts. Discerning what a contextual embodiment of the gospel involves, churches portray God’s new creation in ways that are coherent with the biblical story and relevant to their local context. In doing so, churches live as Christ-formed and Spirit-led communities portraying the gospel.

This book provides a learning-by-doing approach to the study of the Gospels. It allows students to uncover literary patterns, theological issues, and interpretive problems through close readings of primary sources. Questions are asked along the way that help readers understand the shape of the narrative, and the themes important to each Gospel writer.

This is an introductory guide to the ways Jesus is depicted in the New Testament. Both college students and the general reader will find here a variety of New Testament understandings of Jesus that are rooted in critical reading of the four Gospels and Pauline letters. The authors of the four Gospels show considerable freedom in their handling of the words and deeds associated with Jesus. New Testament authors are not so much news reporters as promoters of Christian living. They shape their material to highlight who Jesus is and how to live according to his teaching and example. This work presumes neither religious faith nor lack of faith; its aim is to inform and to stimulate some fundamental questions as well as to give the readers portraits as synthetic balance to the vital work of analysis. At best this book should be read with a copy of the New Testament at hand to answer questions and to challenge the assertions of reader and author.

Drawing on a lifetime of wisdom, New York Times bestselling author and controversial religious leader John Shelby Spong continues to challenge traditional Christian theology in Eternal Life: A New Vision. In this remarkable spiritual autobiography about his lifelong struggle with the questions of God and death, he reveals how he ultimately came to believe in eternal life.

"The Pozzi Gospels, completed by Hakob Jughayets'i, includes an extraordinary series of portraits, narrative miniatures and marginal figures. Copied and illuminated under the protection of a church in the city of Keghi (modern Kigi, fifty miles south-west of Erzurum), Hakob's sparkling, vibrant palette, expressive wide-eyed figures, and iconographic inventiveness are at their most distinctive in this early work." "This is the first monograph to trace Hakob's development from his beginnings in Armenia in the 1580s to his later works in Safavid Persia, at Isfahan, in 1607 and 1610. The study constructs Hakob's biography, explores his artistic development, and evaluates his career within the context of late 16th-century Armenian politics, culture and devotion. Illustrated with reproductions of miniatures produced at every stage of his career, it reveals the singular artistic vision of Hakob himself and the dynamism of contemporary Armenian illumination."--BOOK JACKET.

Theological determinism and its relationship to creation, free will, evil, and other topics, are analyzed by fifteen philosophers and theologians.

A major account of Renaissance portraiture by one of the twentieth century’s most eminent art historians In this book, John Pope-Hennessy provides an unprecedented look at two centuries of experiment in portraiture during the Renaissance. Pope-Hennessy shows how the Renaissance cult of individuality brought with it a demand that the features of the individual be perpetuated, a concept first manifested in the portraits that fill the great Florentine fresco cycles and led, later in the fifteenth century, to the creation of the independent portrait by such artists as Sandro Botticelli, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Giovanni Bellini, and Antonello da Messina. Pope-Hennessy goes on to describe the process by which Titian and the great artists of the High Renaissance transformed the portrait from a record of appearance into an analysis of character.