Who is Jesus Christ for the twenty-first century? The author of Christian Theology, Millard J.
Erickson, seeks a relevant expression of faith in a Savior who is fully God and fully man
a Christology that takes into account conflicting theologies and needs.
The Word Became Flesh returns the theological discussion to what Christ said about himself and
what Scripture deems important to stress.
A survey of church history explains how the church first answered conflicts over the deity and humanity of Christ at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. But Erickson finds the Definition of Chalcedon too narrow and negative a response to the
"Christs" of liberation, feminism, blackness, functionalism, universalism, and postmodern theologies, among others. There must be a new Chalcedon, a doctrine that confesses what Jesus is not, but that also affirms all that he is.