The cover of One Jesus, Many Christs offers 4 depictions of Jesus as envisioned by various cultures. But don't get affected by this display, because behind this cover is simply a milder sort of yet another attempt to prove that ancient Christian orthodoxy and heresy were on equal terms, and only the fact that orthodoxy won the battle keeps us from realizing it.
To the end of proving this, Riley overstates even the most minute disagreements and takes silence as dissent at every opportunity. Not that this is all: The book contains a great deal of useful information (though nothing you won't find in other books we have profiled) and seeks to explain Christian missionary success in agreeable terms of ideology. However, the reader will need Dunn and Bauckham as antidotes. Riley will admit to a certain degree of unity in the various streams of Christian thought he hypothesizes, but refuses to have the divinity of Jesus as part of that mix, although oddly, the resurrection is included.
In short, this admittedly readable little volume is simply one of the least offensive attempts to subsume Christian faith under the impositions of political correctness. Truth once again takes a back seat to not being offensive.
-JPH