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    What Jesus Meant
    What Jesus Meant
    What Jesus Meant
    Ebook148 pages2 hours

    What Jesus Meant

    By Garry Wills

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    About this ebook

    “Garry Wills brings his signature brand of erudite, unorthodox thinking to his latest book of revelations. . . . A tour de force and a profound show of faith.” (O, the Oprah Magazine)
     
    Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What The Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017.

    In what are billed “culture wars,” people on the political right and the political left cite Jesus as endorsing their views. But in this New York Times-bestselling masterpiece, Garry Wills argues that Jesus subscribed to no political program. He was far more radical than that. In a fresh reading of the gospels, Wills explores the meaning of the “reign of heaven” Jesus not only promised for the future but brought with him into this life. It is only by dodges and evasions that people misrepresent what Jesus plainly had to say against power, the wealthy, and religion itself. But Wills is just as critical of those who would make Jesus a mere ethical teacher, ignoring or playing down his divinity. An illuminating analysis for believers and nonbelievers alike, What Jesus Meant is a brilliant addition to our national conversation on religion.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Books
    Release dateMar 2, 2006
    ISBN9781101201367
    What Jesus Meant
    Author

    Garry Wills

    Garry Wills is the author of 21 books, including the bestseller Lincoln at Gettysburg (winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award), John Wayne's America, Certain Trumpets, Under God, and Necessary Evil. A frequent contributor to many national publications, including the New York Times Magazine and the New York Review of Books, he is also an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University and lives in Evanston, Illinois.

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    Reviews for What Jesus Meant

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    • 5/5
      Excellent writing with cogent examples. Good for thinking. A fresh perspective.
    • 4/5
      The title, "What Jesus Meant," gives the impression that what Garry Wills is going to do here is focus directly on the teachings of Jesus themselves and interpret them for the reader. And indeed he does do that, but it's not all he does. From Jesus' teachings he then goes on to discuss the doctrines of the crucifixion and resurrection, about which Jesus himself had little to say at all. Consequently, what we have in this little book is a compact Christology which could easily carry a subtitle: "What Jesus Meant; and What Jesus Means."

      Going back to the earliest sources--the Gospels themselves, and indeed that which precedes the gospels, the letters of Paul (as well as early Church writings)--Wills comes up with much to criticize in the contemporary practice of Christianity. The Jesus Wills sees in the gospels is one who, if he appeared today, would probably be crucified again for the way he would confront the forces of wealth, hierarchy, violence, and privilege--including those in the dominant religious establishment--but make no mistake: in all this Wills is unerringly orthodox in his theology. He says from the start that his book is a devotional work. He believes in divinity of Christ. He believes in the Trinitarian mystery. He believes in the Resurrection. But that's all-the-more why understanding what Jesus truly meant matters.

      In the end, as fits a devotional work, I found the book inspirational. Especially so because, chasing to make the book a Christology, Wills decides to take on such questions as, "Why must Jesus have been crucified?" The doctrine that has had a stranglehold on much Christian understanding over the centuries is that of "substitutionary atonement," i.e. that Jesus had to die an awful death due to the demands of a God that someone had to suffer as a ransom for all the world's sin. Keeping his feet planted in biblical sources, Wills finds scant support for this argument, and offers an alternative meaning that truly does elevate God as One who embodies love rather than bloodthirsty retribution.

      All in all, I would call this a great little Christological primer.
    • 4/5
      Garry Wills is one of those very few Christians (almost invariably Catholic) whom I can sort of respect---honest, knowledgeable, even intellectual, and perfectly willing to challenge fundamental tenets of his religion's dogma and to denounce the current pope and his predecessors. But in the end, it still comes down to blind faith in utterly unsupportable mystical gibberish---and his intelligence just makes it even more inexcusable, as it must require that much more evasion to maintain.
    • 5/5
      Unambiguously, Garry Wills cuts to the heart of the gospel in his book “What Jesus Meant.”

      As in “Lincoln at Gettysburg” and “Nixon Agonistes” (my two favorite Wills books) the author looks at a familiar set of facts and draws startling insights. In this book I was fascinated by Wills’- a former Greek professor at Johns Hopkins University - ability to draw insightful and nuanced meaning from his personal translations of familiar New Testament verses.

      Like Jesus, Wills subscribes to no later day political as he explores the meaning of the “resign of heaven” promised by God’s son. Like Jesus, he speaks plainly and bluntly about power, wealth and even religion itself.

      Able to be read in a single sitting, “What Jesus Meant” is sure to spark a personal internal debate over your understand of Jesus and the Scriptures. Finish it and you will join me in thanking Wills for enhancing your understanding of religion’s role in our society today.
    • 4/5
      Sure to make you think twice (or at least think more) about things you've been taking for granted.
    • 4/5
      Wills has an interesting perspective on who and what Jesus was. He believes, as his foreword states, that Christ was not a Christian. ". . . he is not just like us, he has higher rights and powers, he has an authority as arbitrary as God's in the Book of Job. He is a divine mystery walking among men. The only way we can directly imitate him is to act as if we were gods ourselves - yet that is the very thing he forbids. He tells us to act as the last, not the first, as the least, not the greatest. And this accords with the common sense of mankind. Christians cannot really be 'Christlike.' As Chesterton said, 'A great man knows he is not God and the greater he is the better he knows it.' The thing we have to realize is that Christ, whoever and whatever he was, was certainly not a Christian."

      Wills offers some thought provoking analysis of what the Gospels really have to say about Jesus. His is an anti-establishment view. He claims that religion killed Jesus, that Jesus was opposed to religion as it existed in his day and that he "did not found a church."

      Don't read this book if you don't want to question your preconceptions.
    • 5/5
      Garry Wills goes to the source - the market place Greek spoken by Jesus and His contemporaries and shows us what Jesus really meant. Not to found a church with any structure; not to create another religion with all its complexity and rules; but to free all people by showing them God's love and promising to be with them for all eternity.

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    What Jesus Meant - Garry Wills

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