What does the story of Christ the Savior actually signify from a political and economic standpoint? And what does it mean for a member of society, in terms of active engagement, to believe in Jesus?
At the turn of the new millennium, the Vatican issued doctrinal censures against the tracts of three Catholic theologians: The Political Scripting of Jesus focuses on the disputation triggered by these notifications to lay the groundwork from which an answer to these questions may be ventured.
The stakes behind Rome’s inquisitorial game are exposed by exploring the strictly political agendas of these controversial works as well as the socio-existential dilemmas that are posed by the various “stories” of Jesus at a time of quasi-complete Catholic disaffection in the West.
The discussion of all such topics is accompanied by a variety of literary themes and sociological excursions, such as the Gospel of Judas, Veblen’s reflections on primitive Christianity, Tolstoy’s re-elaboration on the New Testament, and the multicultural reverberations of Christianity, such as may be found in the writings of Japanese Catholics, such as R. Akutagawa and S. Endo.