Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of
the Gospel by Luke Timothy Johnson
A Book To Be Read More Than Once
The Real Jesus made Luke Timothy Johnson famous as the leading
debunker of the historical-Jesus movement. In Living Jesus: Learning the
Heart of the Gospel, Johnson makes a more constructive presentation--a
meditative and scriptural explanation of his understanding of the real
Jesus. The most important question concerning Jesus, according to
Johnson, is Do we think he is dead or alive? The book begins offering its
own answer to that question with an enthusiastic essay on the
resurrection, which culminates with another question: How does Jesus
now find continuing embodiment as life-giving Spirit? As all-powerful Lord,
in any fashion he chooses! Johnson describes a Jesus who is living all
around us, in the canon, creed, sacraments, lives of the saints, and
elsewhere. Johnson then provides readings of each gospel, Acts, Pauls
epistles, and Revelation to give his arguments scriptural mooring. The
Real Jesus rambles a bit--at times, it reads suspiciously like class lecture
notes--but its got a good heart. The books goal is to wake readers up so
they can live in the truth, so that we might become living texts speaking

Jesus in the world--saints from whom others also might learn Jesus.
--Michael Joseph Gross
Personal Review: Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the
Gospel by Luke Timothy Johnson
lt johnson is a moderately conservative catholic (in fact an ex-monk) who
has written extensively on nt studies. this 203 page book can be read in a
few hours and is not bogged down with scholarly jargon. essentially he is
putting into perspective the value of historical Jesus studies. lt states that
if Jesus is today alive for Christians, how then can we get a reliable
picture of Him by using the means by which we study dead people! he has
been gently criticised by some including ben witherington and raymond
brown for separating the Jesus of history from the Jesus we worship - but i
don't think that is the focus of johnson's argument. i think lt is simply
pointing out (quite validly) that historical critical studies can give only a
limited picture of Jesus. he uses as an interesting example adolf hitler. if
we were to perform a study in "historical hitlerology" (attempting to
construct a portait using what hitler thought of himself as well as the
thoughts of his closest associates), we would indeed come up with a
picture of hitler that would be quite different than what we know to be true.
i would agree that this comparison is a little oblique, but johnson makes a
good point. the first few chapters may seem a little fluffy to some but they
move quickly into the meat of the work. all in all, this is a very readable
work. not everyone will agree with johnson but all those interested in
Jesus studies need to be exposed to his point of view!
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