Christianity is the world’s largest religion, with more than two billion members. But in addition to being vast and popular, it is extremely complex and often highly contradictory.

Professor Luke Timothy Johnson explains why the central figures, elements, and creeds of Christianity are hard to fathom yet give Christianity its distinctive character.

These lectures present a sense of Christianity’s essential features and varieties. Among the issues surveyed are:

• Christianity’s birth and expansion across the Mediterranean world
• the development of its doctrine
• its assertion that Jesus was both a man and God
• its transformation upon becoming Rome’s imperial religion
• its many and deep connections to Western culture
• the tensions in Christianity today.