DESCRIPTION

Jesus' teaching has changed the world. Yet his sayings can often seem cryptic and hard to understand.

In Love Is His Meaning, Keith Ward explores the various figures of speech and images that Jesus used, and finds they are all ways of expressing and evoking the self-giving love of God, manifested supremely in Jesus' life. They communicate spiritual truths, often not in a literal but in a poetic way. They encourage us to take our own moral decisions with sensitivity and care for others. They show that God's love will never abandon anyone, and that it extends to everyone in the world without exception. And they promise a fulfilment of our hopes for a just and peaceable world that surpasses anything we might describe or imagine.

Putting aside presentations of Jesus' teachings that focus on a literalist, authoritarian, legalistic, judgemental and divisive interpretation, the author shows that what remains is the Gospel of a divine love that is stronger than death, and is the only power that can and will redeem our broken and disordered world.

About the authors:
Keith Ward recently retired as Regius Professor of Divinity and head of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford. A priest of the Church of England and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, he holds Doctor of Divinity degrees from Cambridge and Oxford Universities. Formerly Dean of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and Professor of History and Philosophy of Religion at the University of London, he has lectured at the universities of Glasgow, St. Andrew's and Cambridge. He is a member of the Governing Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, and has taught at Drake University, Claremont Graduate School and the University of Tulsa. Keith Ward is known and loved for his teaching and academic books, but also for his recent books popularising theology, including What the Bible Really Teaches, published September 2004.