Jesus and the Quest for Secular Justice

Catholic New Times, Dec 18, 2005

Jesus and the Quest for Secular Justice. By Pierre L'Abbe 0-9735487-2-X $16.95, 94p.

Jesus and the Quest for Secular Justice surveys major contemporary writings on the historical Jesus and traces the history of these works through the 19th century up to the school of writers associated with the Jesus Seminar in the U.S. By mapping the positions Christian writers have taken on the historical Jesus, L'Abbe shows that the fundamentalist position moves full circle into the anti-theist position, where both attempt to recreate Jesus in their own image. Only the picture of the human being found in the world's major religious literatures, L'Abbe argues, gives a realistic image of human nature. Here human nature is flawed, and consequently, the closest human society will ever come to achieving a true international justice is by pursuing the religious principles of compassion.