The Saving Mysteries of Jesus Christ: A Christology in the Wesleyan Tradition

By Edgardo Colón-Emeric and Mark Gorman

Jesus is Lord! This scandalous confession is an act of worship, a pledge of allegiance, a call to service, and a saving act. Yet who is Jesus Christ? How should we understand his life, his death, his resurrection, and his work of salvation? This book offers a perspective from the Wesleyan tradition on these vital questions. It introduces readers to christology, the study of Christ. The authors encourage readers to ponder the mystery of salvation at work in Christ's entire life and to make the confession "Jesus is Lord" their own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Sep 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532676086

Edgardo Colón-Emeric

Edgardo Colón-Emeric is the Irene and William McCutchen Associate Professor of Reconciliation and Theology and Director of the Center for Reconciliation. He is the author of Óscar Romero’s Theological Vision: Liberation and the Transfiguration of the Poor (2018) and Wesley, Aquinas, and Christian Perfection: An Ecumenical Dialogue (2009).

Book preview

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The Person of Christ

True God of true God,

Light from Light Eternal,

Lo, he shuns not the Virgin’s womb;

Son of the Father, begotten, not created;

O Come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

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For many Christians, it is hard to imagine a Christmas season without singing John Wade’s O Come, All Ye Faithful. As with so many beautiful things, however, our familiarity with the hymn, and perhaps our sentimental attachments to it, may cause us to miss the depths of the poetry contained within. This stanza, for example, captures in just a few lines essential components of Christian belief: Christ is true God, and Christ is eternal, meaning Christ did not come into being at any point in time. Christ is the Son and not a creature. These lines emphasize the divinity of Christ, but hidden within them is the awesome mystery of the incarnation: Lo, he shuns not the Virgin’s womb. Christ is divine, yet Christ is also human. And, as the refrain of the hymn reminds us, our calling is not to solve this paradox but to offer our adoration to Christ the