Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospel by Luke Timothy Johnson (review)

672 BOOK REVIEWS to come; "Scripture is held to shine now with a light reserved only for a Day yet to be" (170). But Scripture in Henry's view is produced by God, whose work will not suffer from the effects of sin. Fackre might be able to argue that we cannot fully understand Scripture because of the effects of sin, but this is a different issue from the inspiration and truth of Scripture. He also criticizes Henry's views on inspiration and inerrancy on the grounds that they imply that we attain clear knowledge from Scripture rather than seeing in a mirror darkly, a clear knowledge that is in fact only attainable in the world to come. Yet infallible truth is not the same as complete truth that tells all there is to be known, and Henry claims only the former, not the latter, for Scripture. Fackre's criticism of Henry on inspiration and inerrancy is not easily reconciled with the valuable point he makes against Thiemann's and Pannenberg's views, to the effect that "Unless the Holy Spirit is thought to be other than the Author of truth (the source of a disconfirmable hypothesis), a conviction born of the third person of the Trinity must be trustworthy knowledge" (221); how can error be compatible with trustworthy knowledge? And how do we reach "a conviction born of the third person of the Trinity" if not in reading what that person says in Scripture? The failings of Fackre's book should be seen in the light of the extreme difficulty of his task. The questions he obscures or fails to address are not easy ones to answer; no one can confidently promise to succeed in doing so. Fackre's real failing in this book may lie in his not choosing either to discuss a narrower and more manageable range of subjects, or else to give the topic the fuller and more in-depth treatment that it demands. The Queen's College Oxford, Great Britain JOHN R. T. LAMONT LivingJesus: Learningthe Heart ofthe Gospel. By LUKETIMOTHYJOHNSON. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999. Pp. ix + 210. $22.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-06-064282-3. In the preface to this important new book, Luke Timothy Johnson describes it as a "less polemical and more constructive sequel" to his 1996 publication The RealJesus. The title of this new work, LivingJesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospel, can be taken in two different senses, both of which are central to Johnson's argument. Taken in the first sense, the title indicates the foundational Christian belief that Jesus is alive. While this may appear to be a trivial point, Johnson wants to emphasize that many of those who apply historical methods to the Scriptures (i.e., the Jesus Seminar) neglect it. Taken BOOK REVIEWS 673 in the second sense, the title indicates that authentic Christian living is a participation in the mystery ofJesus. This participation is understood especially as a sharing in the pattern of his redemptive, self-sacrificial love. For Johnson, an adequate reading of the Scriptures and a life of authentic Christian spirituality are mutually dependent. He argues, in effect, that to understand the gospel properly one must have an experiential knowledge that Jesus Christ is the resurrected and living Lord. Conversely, any reading of the Scriptures that does not help us come to know this living Jesus is deficient. Moreover, the development of an authentically Christian spirituality necessarily includes an experience of what Johnson calls "the transformation of our human freedom" by the Holy Spirit, as we come to participate more deeply in the pattern of life established by Jesus. LivingJesus is divided into two parts, each comprised of six chapters. The first part is devoted primarily to a discussion of (1) the theological and spiritual importance of the Christian conviction that Jesus is alive, (2) the mode of his current existence, and (3) the way we can know or "learn" him. It includes a survey of the Book of Revelation and the New Testament epistles in support of his basic objectives and principles. The second part is devoted primarily to a survey of the four canonical Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles...