Every Christology is part of a grateful and critical dialogue with the Christologies of predecessors and contemporaries, setting its own tiny accents in this great dialogue about the messianic secret of Jesus Christ. Such a critical dialogue necessarily involves being selective. The material from the Bible, the Fathers, and later church history, is complex and often controversial. Exegetes, patristic scholars, historians of doctrine, and philosophers will always want to hear more. But this work introduces the biblical, historical and philosophical contributions with the aim of setting our own tiny accents' in a systematic Christology which finds its primary interpretative key in the resurrection of the crucified Jesus and his presence, and not with the aim of writing a complete history of Christology.

MINI S. JOHNSON was born in 1969 in Bangalore, Karnataka. She graduated from the University of California and then earned her M.A. and B.D. degrees at the San Francisco Theological Seminary. After serving as Executive Director of the National Council of Churches' department of the ministry, she is now general presbyter of the New York Presbytery. She has written articles on varied subjects for several religious periodicals.

In the light of Christian faith, practice, and worship, the branch of theology called Christology reflects systematically on the person, being and doing of Jesus of Nazareth. In seeking to clarify the essential truths about him, it investigates his person and being and work. In facing and tackling these and other such questions, historical, philosophical and linguistic considerations play a crucial role. They can be distinguished if not finally separated. The quest for a historical knowledge of Jesus will make us examine, at the very least, his background in the story of Israel, his earthly career, his influence on the origins of Christianity, and the subsequent development of christological thinking and teaching. Those who have attempted to write the history of anyone or, even more, their own history will recognise just how difficult it proves to express fully through a text any human life. To transcribe adequately the story of Jesus is an impossible dream. As the appendix to John's Gospel observed centuries ago, "there are also many other things which Jesus did." Nevertheless, we need to come up with some historical account of Jesus. Unless it is going to remain outrageously inadequate, any such account must attend not only to the events of his life and death to which we have access, but also to his antecedents in the history of Israel and to the response he evoked, both in the short term and in the long term, through his death, resurrection and sending of the Holy Spirit. Hence, in pursuing the reality and meaning of Jesus' person, being, and work, we will examine some themes from Jewish history and from the origins of Christianity and, in particular, from the development of christological reflection and teaching.

**Contents and Sample Pages**