Who Do You Say I Am?: On the Humanity of Jesus

Human existence is a bodily existence. A first principle of historic Christianity has been that Jesus assumed our humanity and everything essential to it in order that God may redeem all of our existence. Christ is the revelation of God and the revelation of true humanity. As we seek to understand our embodied experiences of the world and one another we do so in light of the embodied life of Jesus Christ. Jesus's humanity shows us what it means to live an embodied human life rightly and how we, as embodied human beings, can relate to the world around us. In this book we invite readers to explore with us why the humanity of Jesus is central to the Christian understanding of community, society, salvation, and life with God. Over the span of these ten chapters this book draws from biblical, historic, and cultural discussions as it enters into the breadth of the significance of the humanity of Jesus and explores how the reality of the Incarnation challenges and redeems our broken social structures, racial and ethnic divisions, economic systems, and sexuality.

George Kalantzis is Professor of Theology and Director of The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies at Wheaton College. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Caesar and the Lamb: Early Christian Attitudes on War and Military Service.


David B. Capes is Dean of the Graduate School and Director of the School of Theology at Houston Baptist University. He has authored a number of books including Old Testament Yahweh Texts in Paul's Christology (1992) and Rediscovering Paul (2007).