The rain came down, and the water came up, but the speakers still managed to cross the Willamette River to Corvallis, Ore. Held for the first time entirely outside of New York City, the Trinity Institute went on in the midst of Noachic floods which plagued the Northwest.

The opening event, a film titled "Jesus Christ, Movie Star," was screened during the last of the torrential rains, without the advertised commentator, Harvey Cox. The sun came out the next morning to give attendees a vision of the beauty of Oregon, and the light shone brightly for the next two days, for the 700-800 persons inside the auditorium and for those watching at more than 300 satellite downlink sites across North America.

The institute opened Feb. 9 with an address by Marcus Borg titled "From Galilean Jew to the Face of God: The Pre-Easter and Post-Easter Jesus." Mr. Borg, professor of religion at Oregon State University, presented a carefully nuanced portrait of the historical human being, and a description of how that developed into the figure whom the church knows as the Christ of faith.

John Dominic Crossan, emeritus professor of religious studies at DePaul University, focused on Jesus as a Jewish peasant, with the emphasis on peasant.

Alan Segal, professor of religion at Barnard College, and a Jewish historian, contributed both to the Christian perspective on Jesus and to the Jewish one, in bringing Jesus' Jewishness to the fore. He emphasized Buber's understanding of faith and certainty: "The true person of faith lives not in surety, but in holy insecurity."

Karen Jo Torjeson, originally a patristics scholar, professor of women's studies and religion at Claremont Graduate School, focused on second-, third-, and fourth-century images of Jesus, specifically Jesus as victor, teacher and world ruler (pantocrator), and their liturgical use.

Harvey Cox, Harvard University professor of divinity, addressed the wistful longing of Generation X for a sense of direction and something in which they can believe. He highlighted the fact that this is the first American generation to mature in an age of religious pluralism, and noted the striking surge of interest in Jesus among the young of many (and no) religious backgrounds.

Huston Smith lived up to his reputation as "grand old man" of religious studies in asserting that dialogue with other of the world's religions has much to teach Christians about Jesus, not just the historical Jesus, but the Christ of faith. He urged a recovery of the traditional worldview which takes seriously a spiritual realm, and asserted that this cosmology accords with the best of modern science.

The institute was marked by a desire to open dialogue with conservative Christians and people of other faiths. Professors Segal, Cox and Smith made especially pointed pleas to reflect on what can be learned about the Christ of faith in dialogue with those of other theological persuasions. Several of the speakers pointed to the continuing usefulness of the ancient credal formulae in this age of great change and questioning.

(The Rev.) Katharine Jefferts Schori