"Who do people say the Son of Man is? . . . But you . . ' who do you say I am?'(Matt. 16-14, 15). Jesus of Nazareth's famous pair of questions, handed down to us in the Gospels, is still open. The answers his first followers gave were only the beginning. Later disciples, scholars, the curious, enemies-all have given their answers. And the variety of these answers, the passion with which they have sometimes been expressed, their mutual contradiction and conflicting content down the length of history and across the breadth of humanity testify to the vitality of this personage, at once so strange and so familiar, whose coming has split human time in two.
"In Faces of Jesus the reader will meet passionate disciples, perplexed scholars, critics, and researchers-with varying view' points. We have set up no standards of orthodoxy for our selection. We have considered only the authors' responsibility, integrity, and seriousness-and not because we pretend neutrality or indifference, but because we do not consider ourselves to be in charge of anyone's faith or unbelief. And because we passionately believe in the vitality of Jesus of Nazareth to make his way, as he did from the beginning, in the history and the life of the men and women of our time."