Jesus and the Gospel
“To be a Christian means, in one aspect of it, to take Christ at His own estimate; and it is one step to this to feel that He is putting the most serious of all questions when He asks, Who say ye that I am? Much of the indifference to Christianity in certain circles comes from the refusal to treat this question seriously” (James Denney, Jesus and the Gospel: Christianity Justified in the Mind of Christ [London, Hodder & Stoughton; New York, George H. Doran Company, 1908], viii-ix).
In this work, Denney appeals to Christians to be confident that “the attitude to Christ which has always been maintained in the Church is the one which is characteristic of the New Testament from beginning to end, and that this attitude is the only one which is consistent with the self-revelation of Jesus during His life on earth” (vii). But he also appeals to those outside the Church to “look at the facts” and understand that the place they may allow Jesus in this world is not the place the Christian faith gives him nor the place he himself claims (viii).