This book assembles twenty-five popular lectures for learned Catholic audiences. The essays are rooted in reflection on Scripture, but are quite varied in content, from Jesus as “revolutionizing time,” the meaning of the love commandment, the significance of the redactive process of the New Testament canon for understanding the authorial intent of the text as a whole (for it is not just an assemblage of unrelated, occasional writings), the meaning of a conservative (not “regressive” and thus not opposed to being “progressive”) pope, the place of sacraments and how they work, the real loss of abandoning practices like confession and fasting, the nature of faith and of prayer, the futility of fanaticism, the rejection of violence, the distinctiveness of Christianity, and numerous other topics. Linda Maloney has provided a lucid and elegant English rendering of the German original.

Lohfink recalls a 1969 saying that he copied “from somewhere” in his diary: “Traditions are like lampposts. They light the way we are supposed to follow, but only drunkards hold on to them.” His own approach is deeply traditional—no suspicion of heterodoxy here—and remarkably insightful. His foes are the purveyors of the individualistic, narcissistic, therapeutic babble that substitutes in many ways for spirituality and the rigors of discipleship, and the intellectuals (Käsemann, for example) who would relativize the tradition or minimize the desirability of unity in the church. He spends much time discerning what it means to be a member of the assembly that is the church—the church is not a hierarchy, though it has offices; not a theocracy, though God is sovereign; and not a place for intellectually flaccid faith. He finds prayerful, academically informed (but not “controlled”) reflection on the Bible especially to reveal a Jesus who is untamable and relevant to understanding how to live as Christians together today.

He addresses difficult theological questions directly and clearly: “How can the death of one man be the salvation for all?” “Because he found the solution, the solution of the reign of God, the solution of the new life together in which each is there for the others. He not only found it; he lived it. He not only lived it; he died for that solution and so expressed his self-surrender for others in this ultimate, unmistakable way” (103). Like Sobrino (not cited), Lohfink finds that Jesus was killed for who he was and what he did, that his death was not “willed” by God, but that out of that tragedy, God wrought redemption for Israel and all the world.

To walk in the light of the tradition is a challenging task. Lohfink's lectures are best read as learned and challenging meditations on how to go about that task. They are stimulating spiritual reading for those with some theological learning. One does not need to agree with his positions, but one cannot but respect his insights about the Bible as first and foremost the church's book, and about the relevance of Jesus, as long as we do not attempt to domesticate the challenges to us of his life and teaching.