to work through these formulae. His doing so testifies to his grace, however, not to the fidelity of such evangelistic formulations, which, in this culture, inadvertently make Jesus out to be a cosmic version of the consumer brands promoted in the thousands of advertisements each of us sees daily. Such brands promise to deliver goods—self-esteem, sex appeal, confidence, coolness—that they have no intrinsic capacity to give. Their power is in consumers’ collective willingness to imbue them with that