This typological survey of Asian Christologies examines leading missionaries and theological writers about Jesus from antiquity to the present. It raises critical hermeneutical issues regarding the indigenized faces of Jesus, Asian soteriological engagement with sociopolitical and religious contexts, and the role of languages and arts in Asian understandings of Jesus Christ. Jesus bears many faces, but his church in Asia – as is true also in other continents – remains dynamically catholic as well as indigenized – and precisely this dialogical tension of universality and indigeneity makes the church authentic and its mission transformative.

The chapter gives a broadly chronological account of the ‘quest of the historical Jesus’. The discussion raises questions about the meaning of the term ‘historical Jesus’, the extent to which the ‘quest’ can be divided into self-contained periods of study, and about the purpose of such study, especially when it is approached with different methodologies and presuppositions. Such disputation, it is argued, should encourage an attitude of modesty among scholars involved in the ‘quest.’

Jesus of Nazareth’s future engages Christian hope and the fulfillment of creation’s purpose. Jesus’s earthly life and divine identity are inseparable. This union both constitutes and challenges perceptions of linear time and functions creatively to intertwine past, present, and future. Jesus’s transformative impact on humanity and history signifies the final reconciliation and realization of God’s kingdom, which is manifest both in his historical presence and in his eternal nature.

Jesus of Nazareth was a first-century teacher, miracle worker, and messianic figure. His chief aim was to promote religious renewal among the Jewish people in anticipation of the kingdom of God, which he believed to be dawning in his ministry. His personal authority and vision of fundamental change won many sympathizers but also created fierce opposition.

This chapter considers five practices, or constellations of practices, that emerge from imitating Jesus: (1) care for the poor and needy, including the contested practice of seeing Christ in the poor; (2) sacramental practices of the Lord’s Supper and baptism; (3) prayer, including lament; (4) forgiveness, reconciliation, and peacemaking; and (5) self-giving or kenōsis. Each practice flows in its own way from the twin imperatives to love God and the neighbor.

The resurrection of Jesus, pivotal to Christian history and praxis, is universally attested in early Christian sources, even if often critiqued or sidelined as myth or apologetics in modern scholarship. Paul’s letters and of the Gospels in their narrative diversity document the resurrection’s transformative and abiding impact on Jesus’s followers. In bringing the aspirations of myth and metaphor to fruition in time, the resurrection of Jesus is both an event in history and yet constitutes a new reality that transcends the register of available language and analogy.

This chapter examines the figure of Jesus in the letters of Paul, where Jesus is most often called Christ or messiah. The analysis briefly considers the linguistic puzzles around Paul’s use of the word “Christ,” then trace the contours of Paul’s particular account of Jesus as the Christ: his being sent by God, dying for others, effecting the resurrection of the dead, subduing all rival powers, and handing over kingship to God.