Jesus Christ Liberator: A Critical Christology for Our Time

How do we distinguish preaching concerning Jesus from an ideology built around the figure of Jesus by a group of people? What force is behind, propelling the preaching? An idea or a historical person?

The only aspect of interest to faith is that he existed.

The image of Jesus that emerges from the Gospel of John is hieratic and transcendent, moving always in the divine sphere.

Jesus is the one who demonstrates the will of God better than anyone and in a definitive manner—where to find it and how to realize it.

Jesus is presented as the liberator of the poor, the sick, sinners, the socially and religiously marginalized.

For this reason every life of Jesus will necessarily partly reflect the life of its author. There will always be interpretation.

Jesus is the cosmic victor over death and the devil, liberating the earth of its alienating forces and inserting a divine peace, though he refuses to reveal himself explicitly and publicly as the Messiah.

Can we reconstruct a history without at the same time already interpreting it?

The Gospels are above all a theological interpretation of the events rather than an objective and disinterested description of the historical Jesus of Nazareth.