1. Why do you think McCabe says that "Jesus is not a god" on the first page? (Hint: McCabe is not trying to overthrow the outcomes of those councils we've discussed, so something else is happening here...)
2. What do you think McCabe means when he says that "Jesus lived out his humanity more consistently than I do"?Also, what does this statement tell you about what is means to be a human being?
3. Explain what McCabe is trying to say on the second page when he says that the presence of Jesus after his death was not like being haunted by a ghost. In other words, why shouldn't we think of Jesus as a ghost?
4. McCabe writes that it's totally incorrect to say that the Jewish leaders hated Jesus because they didn't believe in God's love and mercy and grace. So what was it about Jesus that made some of the Jewish people upset at the time?
5. McCabe points out that from a strictly historical perspective, we can say that Jesus seems like a generous, insightful, courageous figure who was either a little egotistical or maybe something else. But, McCabe says that some of his followers were convinced that Jesus was definitely something else. How did those earliest Christians see Jesus?
6. The early Christians did not simply invent the name "son of God"out of thin air. What did it mean before it was used to describe Jesus, and how did its meaning change when it was applied to Jesus?
7. Why is "faith" something more than agreeing with what Jesus said, according to McCabe?
8. McCabe compares the relationship between Jesus and God to the relationship between a human child and her human parent. Spend some time reading that part carefully. In your own words, explain how the comparison works and where the comparison doesn't quite match up. In other words, how is that relationship between God and Jesus similar to human relationships with parents, and how is it different?
9. Finally, try to explain what you think McCabe means when he says in the final paragraph: "Of course the eternal love is enacted in our world in the crucifixion, in blood and torture and death, because that is the sort of world we have made of God's creation: a tragic world in which loving obedience and faithfulness mean suffering and persecution."