With simplicity and elegance, Tanner sketches a historically informed vision of the faith. Chapter 1 recovers strands of early Christian accounts of Jesus and his significance for a very different age. Chapter 2 situates Christology in a religious vision of the whole cosmos, while Chapter 3 lays out the ethical and political implications of the vision. Chapter 4 speculates about the "end" of things in Christ. Tanner's work was developed from the Scottish Journal of Theology lectures in 1999 in Edinburgh.

Kathryn Tanner is Professor of Theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School and author of two Fortress Press titles: The Politics of God: Christian Theologies and Social Justice (1992) and Theories of Culture (1998). She is co-editor of the Guides to Theological Inquiry series.