This chapter offers an overview of the fascinating and complex world of Islamic Christology by using the Qur’an and Hadith, the primary sources of Islam, as a starting point. It condenses the wealth of literature that Muslim exegetes, philosophers, and mystics have produced on the Islamic representation of Jesus and Mary, examining what they consider to be authoritative Islamicized forms of Christian beliefs.

St. Thomas Aquinas developed his account of the instrument doctrine by carefully attending to the work of St. John Damascene, in particular Book III of his On the Orthodox Faith. The Damascene himself was drawing upon a long tradition of reflection on Christ’s humanity that reaches as far back as Origen. In this chapter, John’s account of the doctrine and its basis in Maximus the Confessor’s writings is assessed, and five synthetic propositions are brought forward to summarize the doctrine. These propositions are nearly the same as what we find in Aquinas’s mature Christology. This chapter shows that far from being unique to Aquinas’s own Christology, the instrument doctrine is a basic patristic desideratum.

This chapter explores the spread of Christianity in Late Antiquity, focusing on archaeological evidence and methodological challenges in tracing its expansion. It examines how Christianity transitioned from a marginalised faith to an institutionalised religion, emphasising regional differences in its adoption across the Mediterranean and beyond. The chapter discusses a variety of materials, including early Christian inscriptions, artefacts, funerary practices and architectural remains such as churches, baptisteries and monasteries. Sites like the house church at Dura Europos and early Christian catacombs provide crucial insights into the religion’s early development. The study also highlights the role of missionary activity and the influence of state policies, particularly after Constantine’s legalisation of Christianity in the fourth century. A major argument is that Christianity spread unevenly, with urban centres adopting it earlier than rural areas. The transition was not uniform, as some regions experienced periods of resistance or syncretism with existing religious traditions. The chapter underscores the difficulty of identifying Christian material culture due to the overlap with pagan symbols. The chapter rounds off by calling for a more critical approach to interpreting archaeological evidence and suggests that future research should focus on regional case studies to refine our understanding of Christianity’s complex expansion.

This chapter examines the development of early Christian iconography, tracing how visual representations evolved between the third and fifth centuries. It explores a wide range of materials, including paintings, relief sculptures, mosaics, inscriptions and artefacts such as sarcophagi, lamps and glassware. Historical texts are also incorporated to provide context for the meanings behind Christian imagery. The chapter argues that early Christian art did not emerge in isolation but was heavily influenced by Roman artistic traditions. Many motifs, such as the Good Shepherd and the story of Jonah, were borrowed from Graeco-Roman visual culture and reinterpreted with Christian significance. It also addresses the debate over the absence of explicitly Christian imagery in the first two centuries CE, suggesting that early Christians likely relied on religiously ambiguous symbols before developing a distinct visual language. The discussion then shifts to the impact of imperial Christianity in the fourth century, which led to more monumental depictions of Christ, often portraying him as a ruler rather than a humble shepherd. Finally, the chapter highlights the crucial role of funerary art in shaping Christian visual culture, noting that many early depictions survived in catacombs and sarcophagi, reinforcing beliefs in salvation and resurrection.

O’Casey was born into a Protestant family and his father worked as a clerk for the Irish Church Missions, an evangelical society that aimed to convert Catholics. This chapter argues that O’Casey radically reimagined Christianity, depicting characters that inadvertently travesty or re-enact Christianity’s meanings. More broadly, however, he treats the love of the divine as parallel to the love of freedom and country; rather than a strict code, such love is a life-affirming source of inspiration akin to art and poetry. O’Casey’s sophisticated understanding of the value of Christianity has little to do with sectarian differences or superstition, but inheres in caring actions, love of life, and a determination to feed the spirit along with the body.

Chapter 4, ‘The Efficacy of Empirical Vision’, argues that physical sight can and should lead to belief in John. Scholars often cite John 2:23; 4:48; and 20:29 as evidence for John’s own critique of physical seeing as a means of coming to belief. The chapter argues that close reading of John 2:23 and 4:48 reveals human hearts to be the true cause of unbelief and shows that physical sight is the catalyst for all unbelief and all belief. Neither does John 20:29 condemn sight as a means of acquiring belief. Rather, it suggests that mediated seeing – via the text of the Gospel – can be as efficacious for belief as an actual encounter with Jesus. The chapter concludes that sight is complex, but that no critique of the positive relationship between sight and belief exists in John.

Chapter 1, ‘My Lord and My God’ in John 20:30–31’, asserts that the cause, content, and consequences of belief all suggest that Jesus is God. In John 20:27–29, Thomas sees Jesus and calls him ‘my Lord and my God’. After Jesus blesses those who believe without seeing him, John claims that he has written down signs in this book so that his readers can come to believe that ‘Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God’ and ‘receive life in his name’ (John 20:30–31). The proximity of both statements is not coincidental but reveals that 20:30–31 describes the same fullness of belief as Thomas’s exclamation. What emerges is that John’s portrayals of the ‘signs’, the titles ‘Christ’ and ‘Son of God’, and the resulting ‘life in his name’ are fundamentally theological. True belief will always make Thomas’s declaration.

This chapter articulates God’s purpose, which could be identified with the term ‘election’, but which here I break down into three themes – incarnation, creation and eschatology. If God’s character is not to change, God’s way of bringing about that purpose must be entirely consistent with the nature of that purpose. Thus the incarnation is both the means and the end of God’s purpose. God’s ultimate purpose is for us to be with God: God achieves that purpose by being with us. The incarnation is God being with us: the eschaton is us being with God. Creation is incarnational, because the purpose of creation is to be the theatre of God’s relationship with humankind, and because Jesus demonstrates what creation is and where it belongs in the story of God. The gospels portray the incarnate Jesus as the one through whom creation turns into heaven, and the flaws in existence are overwhelmed by the foretaste of essence.

A brief conclusion summarizes the argument as a whole, asserts that God is physically visible in Jesus’s body, considers the impact of this conclusion on Johannine scholarship, and suggests further areas of research.

Recognizing God in Jesus may be the goal of belief, but one must ask whether God himself is available for recognition. Chapter 2, ‘Divine Visibility’, argues that John’s Christology affirms the visibility of God by reconciling the notion of an ‘unseen’ God to the visibility of the Father that Jesus presents. It proposes that John 1:18a is best read as ‘no one has ever [fully] seen God [yet]’. Three pieces of evidence support this claim, chief among them a survey of Early Jewish, biblical, and Rabbinic literature revealing that one may not assume that all – or, perhaps, even many – Hellenized Jews embraced Platonist notions of invisibility. If one reads John’s God as ‘unseen’, rather than as ‘invisible’, the visibility of God in Jesus becomes possible and the tension between the seeing and not seeing God passages can be resolved.

This chapter examines the figure of Jesus in the letters of Paul, where Jesus is most often called Christ or messiah. The analysis briefly considers the linguistic puzzles around Paul’s use of the word “Christ,” then trace the contours of Paul’s particular account of Jesus as the Christ: his being sent by God, dying for others, effecting the resurrection of the dead, subduing all rival powers, and handing over kingship to God.

Despite its familiarity, the fourfold canonical gospel presents a challenge for interpreters, captured in the famous symbols of the evangelists. Mark’s Jesus embodies the paradox of the crucified king of Israel. Matthew adds to this a portrait of Jesus the Prophet-like-Moses and Davidic shepherd who renews Israel’s covenant. Luke presents Jesus as Lord and prophet who brings redemption and distinctively champions the poor. John’s Jesus is the Word from the beginning and glorified Son of the Father. These subsequently canonized gospels stand out as authoritative amidst proliferating Jesus books. An approach that respects the fourfold gospel’s catholicity as well as its holding together of tensions in the historical impact of Jesus of Nazareth on his followers may be a fruitful path toward perceiving the one Jesus in the canonical Four.

The presence and power of Jesus in early Christian material culture are mediated through texts, visual depictions, and other objects, representing and re-presenting Jesus across various contexts. Focusing especially on the first five centuries ce, the analysis addresses Jesus in the materiality of text, liturgy, relic, and symbol, revealing early Christian theologies and practices that resonate in later historical periods and highlighting the complex dialectic of Jesus’s presence and absence in material forms.

In exploring ancient apocryphal traditions, we uncover a tapestry of Jesus’s portrayals both converging and contrasting with canonical gospels. These “Jesus books” – infancy, ministry, passion, and dialogue gospels – showcase early Christianity’s narrative dynamism. Apocryphal texts reveal Jesus as a wise or petulant child, challenging Jewish norms or Torah-observant, literate, philosophical, mythological, hell-conquering, and anti-apostolic. These diverse depictions, addressing sociocultural and theological questions of the era, provide alternative or supplementary perspectives on Jesus’s identity and teachings, significantly contributing to our understanding of early Christian diversity and doctrinal development.

In the Islamic tradition, Jesus is revered as a prophet to the Israelites, not as divine himself. The Qur’an selectively adopts Christian narrative lore about Jesus and Mary, omitting key gospel narratives like the passion. Jesus’s miraculous conception is acknowledged, paralleling Christian tradition without implying divinity, while his death on the cross is recast as a divine deliverance of Jesus from his enemies. The post-Qur’anic tradition portrays Jesus as a world-renouncing ascetic and stresses his humanity and subordination to God.

This chapter shows the Jewish context of the New Testament and discusses the implications of the fact that while these writings are primarily Jewish, they have become Christian scripture. The documents highlight continuities and discontinuities between Judaism and Christianity, including themes found throughout the Documentary History, such as covenant and the identity of the people of Israel.

This chapter shows the Jewish context of the New Testament and discusses the implications of the fact that while these writings are primarily Jewish, they have become Christian scripture. The documents highlight continuities and discontinuities between Judaism and Christianity, including themes found throughout the Documentary History, such as covenant and the identity of the people of Israel.