Living Jesus

by Luke Timothy Johnson

In The Real Jesus, Luke Timothy Johnson persuasively debunked the aims of the historical Jesus movement-and gave us what Christian Century called "one of the most exhilarating religious books published in this decade." Now, in his new book, this brilliant standard-bearer for traditional Christian faith moves beyond his critique of the Jesus Seminar--and guides us step-by-step to the living Jesus of authentic Christian life and faith. For Johnson, the real Jesus is not simply a historical figure--a dead man whose authentic words and deeds can be approached through historical research and textual analysis. Rather, the real Jesus is the resurrected Lord of Christian faith--a living savior who can be encountered in the world today. Being a Christian means learning this living Jesus by "putting on the mind of Christ" and being transformed in his image. Johnson begins by elucidating the mystery of Jesus' resurrection, which is the key to understanding why Jesus still lives. He demonstrates how Jesus is present in the community of the Christian Church--and how the Church is instrumental in helping us learn Jesus. For Johnson, the Christian traditions that the Church embodies--canon, creed, worship, prayer, veneration of saints, charity toward the powerless--are not dilutions of Jesus' message, but essential components of an authentic Christian spirituality. But Jesus also lives in Scripture, and to learn Jesus we must also learn the New Testament. Johnson leads us book by book through the Gospels, Acts, the Epistles, and Revelation, revealing how each text highlights particular facets of Jesus as the living one. He explains why all of the Gospels provide true witness to Christ's ministry--none takes precedence over the others--and how each can help us better understand Jesus. Fortified with this understanding, we can model our lives and faith on Jesus' own and work toward becoming authentic Christians. Cutting through the confusing claims made about the Jesus of history who died long ago, this remarkable book shows how to experience the Jesus of faith who still lives today. By guiding us through the complex, lifelong endeavor of learning Jesus, Johnson offers us a true gift, a book that will illuminate, inspire--and ultimately bring our lives closer to Jesus.

Genres: Theology, Spirituality, Religion, Christianity, New Testament, Faith, Christian

Hardcover

First published December 30, 1998

About the author

Luke Timothy Johnson is an American New Testament scholar and historian of early Christianity. He is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Candler School of Theology and a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.

Johnson's research interests encompass the Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts of early Christianity (particularly moral discourse), Luke-Acts, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Epistle of James.

Reviews

[Anne Geddert · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were definitely nuggets in here!
I wish I understood what he was saying more than I did!

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A NOTED SCHOLAR ASKS THE QUESTION: "DO WE THINK JESUS IS DEAD, OR ALIVE?"

Luke Timothy Johnson (born 1943) is a professor at Candler School of Theology and a Senior Fellow at Emory University. He has written many other books, such as 'The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters,' 'Prophetic Jesus, Prophetic Church,' etc.

He wrote in the Preface to this 1998 book, "In this book I venture to think through the implications that a strong belief that the real Jesus is the living, resurrected Jesus and that being a Christian means modeling one's life on that Jesus as best we can. In that sense it is a less polemical and more constructive sequel to my 'The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus'... I have written this book for people who, like me, find much of what is called spirituality too far removed from traditional Christian faith... Spirituality here means... the response of human freedom to the Holy Spirit of God. For Christians, this encounter involves the person of Jesus..."

He states early in the book, "The most important question concerning Jesus, then, is simply this: Do we think he is dead or alive? If Jesus is simply dead... we cannot reasonably expect to learn more FROM him. If he is alive, however, everything changes... If Jesus lives, then it must be as life-giver. Jesus is... an agent who can confront and instruct us." (Pg. 4-5)

He observes, "Paul places the death of Jesus in Judea (1 Thess 2:14) and blames it on the Jews, 'who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets' (1 Thess 4:15)... In 1 Timothy 6:13 he is more precise: 'Christ Jesus... in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession.' Paul obviously knows that Jesus was crucified ... and he knows the tradition of Jesus' burial (1 Cor 15:4) and of appearances after his death... This is no small fund of information about the life and death of Jesus. Paul's letters, in fact, are the most comprehensive and reliable source of factual information---apart from the Gospels themselves---about the human Jesus." (Pg. 106) He adds, "Paul's distinctive insight is that the PARTICULARS of Jesus' historical existence are simply past and in some sense irrelevant. It is the PATTERN of Jesus' story that the Spirit can reshape, again and again, in countless lives." (Pg. 111)

He admits, however, that "John is so distinctive among the canonical Gospels that the best way to approach his rendering of Jesus may be through a comparison with the Synoptic witness... The Synoptics all sketch a one-year active ministry of Jesus that begins and centers in Galilee, moving to Jerusalem only for Jesus' climactic death. In John... Jesus moves back and forth between Judea and Galilee... Jesus' work centers in Judea rather than Galilee, it lasts three years rather than one... Even the circumstances of Jesus' death and resurrection are different in John's Gospel. Jesus is crucified on the day of preparation for the Passover in John (19:31), so that his final meal is not a Passover celebration as it is in the Synoptics... It is impossible... to fully harmonize the facts of Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection in the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels." (Pg. 177-178)

Later he adds, "Despite the many differences between the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptics---differences that are real and resist harmonization... we find in this narrative recognizably the same Jesus we have encountered throughout the New Testament." (Pg. 194)

This book will be of prime interest to those less concerned with the details about the "historical Jesus," than with what Jesus MEANS to modern Christians.

[Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johnson's book is a kind of intro to discipleship, Christology, and the Gospels rolling into one. He begins with saying that Christians don't believe in the Jesus of the past, strictly speaking, but rather in the living, resurrected Jesus. Discipleship is not about information, it is about learning a person in everyday practice. Yet, Johnson insists that to learn Jesus involves contending with the narratives of Scripture in the community of disciples past and present. We learn Jesus not just when we read the Bible, but when we worship, serve, and forgive.

The last half of the book is an exposition of Christ and discipleship from the books of the New Testament, where Johnson highlights the differences of the Gospels and shows how the diversity challenges the church today. Johnson I think is one of the best biblical scholars to explain how the Bible has a diversity of developing ideas, yet Christians are able to hold to the biblical canon (see his book, Scripture and Discernment).

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. The first half of the book was strong. I appreciated the emphasis on the importance of approaching the living Jesus as a subject and not an object. We can learn *about* a dead person but we can only truly learn *from* a living person in a process of intersubjectivity.
It was a bit hard to follow a cohesive thread throughout the second part of the book because he goes into detail on each Gospel individually. In many ways, this is part of his overall point: the book's conclusion explains the diversity in our portraits of Jesus from the New Testament witness yet identifies the ultimate convergence of these portraits in presenting the character of Jesus and the meaning of discipleship. Nevertheless, the second half of the book read more like an academic textbook whereas the first half of the book engaged me more as a reader.

[Zack Neuhofer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book reflecting on Jesus as “alive” in the NT. Johnson begins by contrasting the ideas of the dead “historical” Jesus from the living Jesus of the Christian church. Johnson then shows that Christians encounter Jesus through participation of in the Church and her sacraments, along with our interactions with the Saints both living and with Christ. I loved his reflection on living Jesus through his marriage and the challenges in his own family life and also the image of his mother as a saint. Johnson then shows how the letters of Paul, and other NT teach us about Jesus as “alive.” Each gospel gets its own chapter and teaches us something unique from its perspective about “living” Jesus. If I remember correctly he related Luke to “signs and wonders” that can be done through Christ.

[Pauline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked the first half of the book, where Johnson talks about what it means to learn Jesus for believers living today. Most of the rest of the book goes through what we learn of Jesus from each book in the New Testament, which is in some places little more than lists of quotes and verse references. It's a good summary of what we learn about Jesus from those texts, but does little to further explore what it means to "learn Jesus" in those ways, other than a very very brief recap at the end.

[Pearl Loewen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first read of Luke Timothy Johnson. I had such high hopes after reading the first 3-4 chapters, expecting to be lead into the experience of learning and living Jesus. Instead, the next 7-8 chapters consist of a dense analysis of the Jesus story in the gospels and epistles, without tying it back to LTJ's theology. Still, he does an excellent job of explaining the diverse portraits of Jesus throughout the NT, the role of fresh prophecy and revelation in our day, and finding and living Jesus outside of scripture, a refreshing perspective.

[Cameron Barham]

“The imitation of Christ in his life of service and suffering—not as an act of masochism for the sake of suppressing one’s own life but as an act of love for the enhancement of others’ life—is not an optional version of Christian identity. It is the very essence of Christian identity. It is the pattern by which every other claim about the spiritual life must be measured if it is to be considered Christian. It is what is learned from Jesus. It is what learning Jesus means.”, p. 201

[Christopher Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johnson's corrective to historical Jesus studies is well taken. The early church did not think they were writing about a dead figure, but a living one. Studying the historical Jesus to help shape Christian faith has diminishing returns after a certain point. No, you have to know (or learn as he likes to say) the living Jesus in order to truly understand who Jesus is.

[Skylar Burris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I slugged through this one. It's not bad, but I had already read two other books by Luke Timothy Johnson, and this one seemed to cover a lot of the same ground. I think if I hadn't read the other two already, I probably would have been intrigued and more impressed by this one. I do think his focus on the "living Christ" is important; it seems obvious, but I feel like previously I've overlooked this argument completely in the debates about what is and is not "historical" in the Gospels: if Christ is truly alive, then you can't truly know him through history, anymore than you can know a 100 year old man based on the first 5 years of his life. The Gospels were written by people who knew the living Christ, not merely the dead, "historical" Christ, and who came from that perspective in their writing.

[J.D. · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the first quarter to half of this book tends to hammer home(somewhat incessantly) what is to be the subject of the book, the remainder is a jumbled mess that lacks much cohesion. I often found myself wondering how all the different portions of this book fit together. I have heard him speak before and seen him quoted in other books I've read and was very excited upon beginning this book. This will certainly not stop me from pursuing his other works, but it's frustrating leaving a book(especially of this nature) and not having much to show for it.

[Adam Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

This feels like a sequel to Johnson's *The Real Jesus.* There he was primarily interested in the ways that historical study cannot reveal to us the "real Jesus," as the real Jesus is the resurrected Jesus present with us now in the Spirit. This book picks up the theme of the living, present Jesus and works through the texts of the New Testament with that focus. A lot of good stuff here, as Johnson is always worth reading.

[Jonathan Sims · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished re-reading this book for the third or fourth time. Though it gets technical at some points (Johnson is a world-renown bible scholar, which brings some jargon baggage with the read), it is powerfully insightful and inspiring. How can we experience the mystery, complexity, and richness of Jesus' presence in our lives today? Johnson helpfully answers this question.

[Dmcconkey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent little survey that evokes much pondering and thinking. Emphasis on ‘Living Jesus” – if you know Him then it must show this truth in living like Jesus – Jesus & Jesus alone is our example and goal. We learn from others mistakes but we learn truth and reality from Jesus.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johnson wrote this into the "quest for the historical Jesus" controversy a few decades ago. His main argument is that because Jesus is alive and personal, we can know Jesus more personally than knowing facts about an "historical Jesus."

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better than Stanton, but less convincing to secular scholars I'm sure. Main pont: don't study Jesus like he's just another old dead guy.

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Still working on this one...

[Beth Peninger]

A couple of things led to my DNF (did not finish) status on this title. I had to get it through inner-library loan and there are no renewals on it and I started it too late to get through it by the due date. The second reason was I kept nodding off when trying to read it - even after a good night's sleep! This tells me that it wasn't engaging enough for me to get through it. I got through all of the preface and chapter 1 and upon starting chapter 2 felt reluctant to try and push through and make it happen before the due date. Johnson's writing is not for me - I found it to be dry and tedious. The topic I was excited about but Johnson's delivery of it left me disappointed. Bummer.