Product Review

With Christology, VeliMatti Kärkkäinen provides an up to date, comprehensive introduction to the topic in which voices from around the globe are heard. He offers three main perspectives on Christology (biblical, historical, and contemporary) and attempts to combine classical and contextual work done in Christology over the course of church history. Kärkkäinen compares and contrasts how the Gospel writers and the apostle Paul understood the person and work of Jesus Christ. He then focuses on the christological discussions that took place in the early church and the ways in which scholars have attempted to understand Jesus. The heart of Christology is an extended discussion of ten major Western Christologies from well known theologians such as Karl Barth, Stanley Grenz, and John Hick. The final part of the book delves into contextualized interpretations about Christ in various parts of the world. Feminist, process, black, and post modern Christologies extant in North America and Europe are discussed and evaluated. Asian (Christ as universal Savior), African (Christ as Ancestor), and Latin American (Christ as Liberator) Christologies round out the discussion. Christology is ideal for readers who desire to know how the global Christian community understands the person and work of Jesus Christ.