Jesus in the Power of the Spirit

The pioneer of contextual theology concludes his trilogy on the person and message of Jesus with a profound meditation on the significance of Jesus for a post-Christian world. Probing and exploding the distortions of a religion too-long married to Western culture, Song finds Christians in the Third World who "are discovering that Jesus full of grace...is greater than the apostles and larger than Christianity." In their stories and insights, Song detects the Spirit of truth alive and well - although resisting domestication within the narrow confines of theologies that "curtail the magnitude of God's salvation" to suit their own preferences. In conversation with them and with Song, we are compelled - as was Jesus - by the Spirit to cross the frontiers of truth. After his explorations of the person of Jesus in Jesus, the Crucified People (1989) and of the message of Jesus in Jesus and the Reign of God (Fortress Press, 1993), Song here extends the picture in surprising ways. Whether in a Buddhist parable, a Rabbinic tale, a Yoruba drama, or the Tao Te Ching, Song finds the "open truth" of Jesus Christ at large in the world. In the end, for Song, the Incarnation is a more subtle, far-reaching, and earth-shattering event than one simple historical moment - or movement - can contain. As its Spirit-driven winds reach our shores, we are invited by Song on a theological journey to wherever it prompts.