Freeing Jesus

March 1, 2021
Bass (Grateful, 2018) writes that a friend once asked her, of Jesus, "Who is he really?" In this illuminating work of memoir and theology, Bass offers a variety of answers by identifying six persons of Jesus: Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence. She addresses them chronologically in the context of her own life; thus, her explication of Jesus as friend appears when Bass was a little girl, singing "Jesus loves me / This I know." Jesus as teacher finds her aging from Sunday School to confirmation, and so forth as Bass grows up to attend a religious college, a seminary, and, finally, Duke University, where she receives her Doctorate. Along the way, she offers a good deal about herself and her personal experiences of theology, humanizing what might otherwise be arcane material. Not to worry, however, for her writing is always lucid and a model of clarity. Freeing Jesus, she concludes, means finding him along the way. Thanks to her enlightened commentary, many readers will be enabled to make that discovery.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 16, 2021

Approaches to Jesus generally gravitate to one of two poles: the abstract Jesus of Trinitarian theology or a reconstructed Jesus of historical speculation. Although useful, neither idea encompasses the compelling figure of the Gospels or Epistles, nor--as independent scholar Bass (Christianity for the Rest of Us) contends--do they embrace the full extent of the believer's spiritual encounters with God. Bass sets out to instantiate a number of motifs about Jesus (such as "friend," "teacher," "savior," and "presence") in a series of autobiographical sketches that run from childhood in mainline protestant churches, through various stages of evangelicalism, to what may be called progressive Christianity. These encounters are further developed with biblical and theological reflections. At each point the reader confronts a very tangible Jesus, more substantial than mysticism but every bit as intimate. VERDICT As with mysticism, highly personal accounts of Jesus run the risk of portraying the Jesus one wants to see, rather than encountering the transformative power of the Spirit. Bass neatly avoids most of this and so provides a portrait of Jesus for progressive Christians of all stripes that is as tangible, compelling, and biblical as the Christ of their more fundamentalist counterparts.--James Wetherbee, Wingate Univ. Libs., NC

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.