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Scot McKnight's April cover essay, "The Jesus We'll Never Know," and his March review of Brian McLaren's most recent book reinforce each other: Portraits of the "real" Jesus tend to be self-portraits.

The superb twin offerings brought me back to graduate studies in Toronto, where, in a seminar on Hans Küng's On Being a Christian, a professor noted that Küng was recapitulating in his own person the entire history of Protestantism, from the justification debates around the Council of Trent to religious pluralism. The same can be said of McLaren, who is recapitulating the same history as he moves out of fundamentalism to a liberal social gospel.

About On Being a Christian, late Catholic writer Ralph McInerny quipped that it portrayed Jesus as "the man who would be Küng"; McLaren's Jesus looks like "the life of Brian."

John Bolt
Professor, Calvin Theological Seminary
Grand Rapids, Michigan

It's hard to see why McKnight depicts historical Jesus studies so negatively just when those studies are getting exciting again. Perhaps his expectations are too high; as he states near the end of the essay, "Faith cannot be completely based on what the historian can prove." The quest to base faith solely on historical research is of course doomed to fail. That might have been the aim of Rudolf Bultmann and others, but it is not that of modern Jesus scholars.

N. T. Wright, Craig Keener, and Darrell Bock are right: Jesus scholarship provides an appropriate context for faith, not a substitute for it.

Art Witulski
Nashville, Tennessee

McKnight rightly insists on the need for faith in approaching the "real Jesus," but reasons less surely when he suggests that historical Jesus studies are futile because scholars cannot agree. I've heard that reasoning before: "There are many truths; therefore, there can be no Truth." Yet some of the truths from historical Jesus studies helpfully reveal aspects of that multifaceted Truth upon whom our theology and salvation rest.

A big thank-you to those scholars who, without wavering in faith in our Lord or the inerrancy of God's Word, face the facts of history and share them with the rest of us, giving us a surer foundation for and richer experience of faith.

Dwight Gingrich
North Bay, Ontario

Regarding "210 Million Reasons to Adopt" [April], Christianity Today's editorial on adoption, it's time that Western churches try to look at Haiti's crisis through the eyes of Haitians.

Instead of taking children out of their heritage and country (and, often, away from relatives), why not regularly support in-country Christian programs that provide a nurturing environment and solid education? Haitian children would then grow up among their own people and become leaders in government, commerce, and education—leaders who can lead the nation out of its slump. They would also, by and large, be leaders with biblical convictions. Imagine what this could do for Haiti and for God's mission there.

Gaylan Mathiesen
Fergus Falls, Minnesota

As an adoptive parent, I appreciated CT's editorial point that a stable family home is more crucial for a child's development than remaining in his or her birth country, only to be institutionalized or live on the streets. The opposite view is preventing many needy children from finding families. My daughter's birth country put a moratorium on all international adoptions shortly after we brought her home two years ago. While the loss of culture, homeland, and all that is familiar must be dealt with compassionately, there is no substitute for a loving family.

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June 2010, Vol. 54, No. 6