The gospels indicate a development in the apostles' attitude toward Jesus. They first see him as a person of power and only later come to accept him as the Messiah. They are depicted as reacting with horror to his initial descriptions of how his Messiahship would be lived out. Only after the resurrection do they come to recognize his betrayal and death as the way God was willing to have salvation achieved. Thus the disciples are described as people in the process of experiencing and of developing conviction on the basis of that experience. Christianity rests on that bedrock." (p. 23)

William A. Barry