A rhyming text consisting of questions about the meaning of the cross that is seen in churches and about how Jesus must have felt explains how it fit into God's plan, what happened to Jesus, and what part it has in the life of Christians.

The cross stirs intense feelings among Christians as well as non-Christians. Robin Jensen takes readers on an intellectual and spiritual journey through the two-thousand-year evolution of the cross as an idea and an artifact, illuminating the controversies—along with the forms of devotion—this central symbol of Christianity inspires. Jesus’s death on the cross posed a dilemma for Saint Paul and the early Church fathers. Crucifixion was a humiliating form of execution reserved for slaves and criminals. How could their messiah and savior have been subjected to such an ignominious death? Wrestling with this paradox, they reimagined the cross as a triumphant expression of Christ’s sacrificial love and miraculous resurrection. Over time, the symbol’s transformation raised myriad doctrinal questions, particularly about the crucifix—the cross with the figure of Christ—and whether it should emphasize Jesus’s suffering or his glorification. How should Jesus’s body be depicted: alive or dead, naked or dressed? Should it be shown at all? Jensen’s wide-ranging study focuses on the cross in painting and literature, the quest for the “true cross” in Jerusalem, and the symbol’s role in conflicts from the Crusades to wars of colonial conquest. The Cross also reveals how Jews and Muslims viewed the most sacred of all Christian emblems and explains its role in public life in the West today.

Life is hard . . . then you die. It’s as simple as that. Dead bodies stay dead. So in this modern, scientific age, how can any reasonable person possibly believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead? Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy turned out to be myths. How is Jesus’s Resurrection any different? How can there possibly be any credible evidence for an event that happened two thousand years ago? The resurrection of Jesus is the most important event in the history of the world—if it’s true. If Jesus did rise, then he is God, the ultimate reality itself. In him, you can find the meaning of life, the secret of happiness, and the way to eternal life. Raising Jesus provides the evidence to show that it really is true. In this era of “alternative facts,” Raising Jesus relies on the most balanced and up-to-date scholarship to shed trustworthy new insights into the evidence. It does this in an easy-to-follow, systematic way using engaging illustrations to reveal the logic of complex arguments. Most importantly, it deals head on with the biggest problem most people in our modern, scientific age have with the resurrection: the philosophical objection that dead people simply don’t come back from the dead. Raising Jesus ultimately shows how believing Jesus rose from the dead is, in fact, the most reasonable conclusion you can make.

Michael Reed's invaluable study shines new light on Mormons' complex and ambiguous relationship with the cross. Reed's research, the most exhaustive ever undertaken on this subject, should help other Christians understand the historic, cultural and religious context out of which Latter-day Saint attitudes toward the cross emerged-and it should help Latter-day Saints find greater spiritual meaning in this most poignant and profound of Christian symbols.

The Symbolism of the Cross is a major doctrinal study of the central symbol of Christianity from the standpoint of the universal metaphysical tradition, the 'perennial philosophy' as it is called in the West. As Guernon points out, the cross is one of the most universal of all symbols and is far from belonging to Christianity alone. Indeed, Christians have sometimes tended to lose sight of its symbolism of its symbolical significance and to regard it as no more than the sign of a historical event. By restoring to the full spiritual value as a symbol, but without in any way detracting from its historical importance for Christianity, Guenon has performed a task of inestimable importance which perhaps only he, with his unrivaled knowledge of the symbolic languages of both East and West, was qualified to perform.