ABSTRACT
There is an old idea of sociology as a humane discipline, bringing together philosophy, anthropology and cultural criticism, to explore what it is that makes humans distinctive and how that distinctiveness might be made sense of. John Carroll is one of the few remaining exponents of this vision of sociology and the shocking originality of his position is exemplified in The Existential Jesus. The book is a portrait of the most extraordinary individual in Western history and an exemplar of sociology as a humane discipline exploring the meaning of human distinctiveness. But what is the relationship between the existential Jesus and the Christian Jesus?
