Introduction

Looked at from the side of theological thought, the Christian tradition is a sustained process of reflection on the significance and implications of Jesus of Nazareth in the light of the being of God. The process has two other fundamental features. First, it did not start from scratch, but (as Part 1 demonstrates) arose as a development within and out of the already long tradition of the religion of Israel, crystallized above all in the Hebrew Bible. Second, in this process belief about God himself came to be profoundly modified as a result of the phenomenon of Jesus and of thought concerning him: in various ways, God came to be seen as ‘Jesus-like’.