Jesus-Shock [Hardcover]

Jesus Shock is the second in a series of short works on seminal concerns of the impact that Jesus Christ made in the world. The first work, The Philosophy of Jesus (St. Augustines Press, 2007), explored philosophy in light of Jesus, rather than the other way around. The present work investigates the reception Jesus received both in His lifetime and continuously to the present time, not only from His enemies, but from His friends, a reception of shock, astonishment, even disgust. Perhaps a few remarks from the book best explains it: The point of the title: Imagine a storm has downed a telephone wire so that everyone who touches it is shocked in every cell of his body. Well, the storm of Gods crazy love has downed (incarnated) Jesus, and everyone who touches this live wire is shocked in every cell of his soul. The question of the book: Why is Jesus the most non-neutral, the most controversial, the most embarrassing name in the world? Why is talking about Jesus like talking about sex? This whole book is really about a single movie line, the greatest line in the greatest movie in history. Bet you know what it is. . . . What was the bitterest controversy of the Protestant Reformation, both between Protestants and Catholics and between different Protestant denominations, the one that had both sides calling the other not just heretics but devils? Answer: It was not Justification by Faith, the hallmark of the Reformation, even though that question is about nothing less momentous than how to be saved, how to get to Heaven. It was not the relation between religion and politics, even though that was a matter of life or death (literally, on battlefields and at guillotines and hangings) and not just a matter of truth or falsity, or of good or evil. It was not about the sufficiency of the Bible, or the corruption in the Church, or the r