The present decline not only of Christianity but in belief in God as such is in our day a cause of great interest. A variety of explanations concerning these factors have been discussed by numerous commentators. My interest lies, in a sense, parallel to these contemporary investigations. It is simple: who or what is God? If there is a fall off in belief In God, then what is the reality, nature and operation of that in which fewer and fewer believe? We shall see that the view of God held, certainly in the West, is a fairly simple construct: God as the Creator of all things is the determining...

For centuries St. Paul' version of the Christian fath and Jesus' central role as savior and Lord has been the central and dominating theological construct. In it Jesus functions as a kind of token assigned various theological roles - Messian, Lord. In all of this Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke is in a sense effaced. There is little attention to his actual status as a Jewish preacher and religious reformer of his time. The actual contexts in which Jesus functioned have been shaped to make him an exalted figure - God with skin on, as it were. I argue that a better reading of the...