ABSTRACT
In the Gospels, the Word was made flesh to make graphic and vivid his triumph over all human vulnerability. A major crisis of human vulnerability is moral failure and accompanying guilt. The Gospels provide stories of Jesus’ raising the dead. Crossan portrays Jesus as dealing with hunger in a fascinating way. Augustine described the human heart as restless. Equally restless is the human mind. The Gospels offered astonishing answers and left a legacy of astounding problems. In some respects, the cold, hard fact of human self-alienation is the most perplexing manifestation of human finitude. Alienation is such a deep-seated condition of human existence that it seems to have what might one might call “trans-species” roots. Status anxiety remains perhaps one of the most difficult psychological problems with which the human species must contend. Belief in demons and their intrusion into human affairs was widespread in the first-century Mediterranean world.
