God’s final envoy

It was a public holiday here yesterday. This allowed me not only to spend a nice morning at the beach, but also to read Marinus de Jonge’s insightful and sensible little book, God’s Final Envoy: Early Christology and Jesus’ Own View of His Mission (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). I especially appreciated de Jonge’s method of researching the historical Jesus: he focuses on what is “characteristic” about Jesus, instead of simply trying to identify what is “distinctive” through the criterion of dissimilarity. And de Jonge’s emphasis on the “theocentric” character of early christology deserves attention.