Sydney Anglican Archbishop, Dr. Peter Jensen and Professor John Carroll debated about the identify of Jesus, as Professor Carroll released his latest book, The Existential Jesus, which argued that the Jesus found in Mark was not typical to what has been described in the church doctrine.
From the Seymour Centre lounge in Sydney, the Sydneyanglicans.net reported that Professor Carroll, a sociology professor at La Trobe University, described Jesus as a man of "extraordinary charisma" and "the loneliest stranger," a man who was anti-institutional and anti-teaching.
Dr. Jensen remarked that he liked the book written by Professor Carroll, and appreciated how he took a fresh approach to examine the narrative structures used in the Gospel of Mark.
Professor Carroll told the Sydneyanglicans.net that if you cannot make a narrative sense of our lives then our lives are meaningless. The Archbishop challenged the author to reconsider the importance of the Old Testament to which the professor said that Jesus has superseded it.
Archbishop Jensen presented a series of lectures on Jesus Christ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio station in December 2005, with the hope of provoking Australians to read the Gospel and recognise the significance of Jesus in today's contemporary setting.