“Passions of the Christ” by F. Scott Spencer (and Steve Chong)

Steve Chong is a pastor in Australia, and a student together with me in Portland Seminary's Doctor of Ministry program in Semiotics. In our program, we read lots of deep and heady books, then comment on them to each other in a weekly forum. Just recently, we were reading and talking about F. Scott Spencer's book, "Passion of the Christ: The Emotional Life of Jesus in the Gospels." Steve—whose posts are always creative—decided to both illustrate and summarize his response. Then, he created the same illustrated summery for his wife, Naomi Chong, and I was utterly charmed when he created one for me as well.

“Passions of the Christ” by F. Scott Spencer

I was already intrigued by and warmly disposed to reading a book about Jesus’s emotional life. Clearly he had one, being, as it were, fully human, and though ancient texts do not spend nearly the time modern ones do on descriptive detail in this vein, still, the Gospels all portray Jesus as having a range of feelings.