In this volume, which was first published by Herder in 1980, Hans Urs von Balthasar seeks to introduce readers to the Gestalt of Jesus Christ. The fundamental insight of the book is that the figure of Christ is unsurpassably unique in the history of the world and its religions, as his own followers recognized during his life-time: “To whom should we go, you have words of eternal life. We have believed and have known that you are the Holy One of God.” To believe in Jesus, Balthasar shows, is to do justice to the radiant evidence of his Gestalt. By the same token, it is to know him as who he is objectively: the one who first knew us, with unique intimacy and intensity, through his substitutionary death on the Cross.