Christianity Today Book Award winnerThe scholarly quest for the historical Jesus has a distinguished pedigree in modern Western religious and historical scholarship, with names such as Strauss, Schweitzer and Bultmann highlighting the story. Since the early 1990s, when the Jesus quest was reawakened for a third run, numerous significant books have emerged. And the public's attention has been regularly arrested by media coverage, with the J...

Is discipleship about personal sanctification or social reform?Believers are divided on a question central to Christian identity: what does it mean to follow Jesus? For centuries, imitating Christ meant the pursuit of holiness, conforming the self to Jesus through self-sacrifice in order to join him in eternal life. But some Christians today consider this model to be self-centered. Instead, they say, true disciples ought to imitate Jesus in confronting corrupt soci...

A witness to the peculiar way of being that is the scholar'sLuke Timothy Johnson is one of the best-known and most influential New Testament scholars of recent decades. In this memoir, he draws on his rich experience to invite readers into the scholar's life—its aims, commitments, and habits.In addition to sharing his own story, from childhood to retirement, Johnson reflects on the nature of scholarship more generally, showing how this vocation has changed over the...

"For me, Paul has always been the most difficult and therefore also most delightful advocate and interpreter of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the human experience of God's transforming power through Christ. In Paul's letters above all I have found the quality of mind and the depth of conviction that could arouse in me both excitement and passion. And it is Paul's letters, above all, that show how important and difficult is life together in the church."— from the preface

A selection of homilies and sermons preached in "Ordinary Time" that focus on the texts of the lectionary and the demands of Christian life. Some are short talks delivered in the context of the monastery, some are sermons delivered to students of theology, some are presentations to congregations scattered across the US, and some are sermons preached at ritual moments of transition.

A selection of sermons or homilies preached over a fifty-year period explicitly linked to the church's liturgical year--thus, In Season. The sermons exemplify how engagement with lectionary texts, the church's cycle of worship, and the circumstances of contemporary believers, can all be brought into lively conversation.

First of a two-volume work providing a framework for understanding the life and thought of the apostle PaulIn this methodological tour de force, Luke Timothy Johnson offers an articulate, clear, and thought-provoking portrait of the life and thought of the apostle Paul.Drawing upon recent developments in the study of Paul, Johnson offers readers an invitation to the Apostle Paul. Rather than focusing on a few of Paul's letters, Johnson lays out the materials necessary to en...

First of a two-volume work providing a framework for understanding the life and thought of the apostle PaulIn this methodological tour de force, Luke Timothy Johnson offers an articulate, clear, and thought-provoking portrait of the life and thought of the apostle Paul.Drawing upon recent developments in the study of Paul, Johnson offers readers an invitation to the Apostle Paul. Rather than focusing on a few of Paul’s letters, Johnson lays out the materials necessary to en...

In this and every age, the church desperately needs prophecy. It needs the bold proclamation of God's transforming vision to challenge its very human tendency toward expediency and self-interest — to jolt it into new insight and energy. For Luke Timothy Johnson, the New Testament books Luke and Acts provide that much-needed jolt to conventional norms. To read Luke-Acts as a literary unit, he says, is to uncover a startling prophetic vision of Jesus and the church — and an ongoing call for ...

Argues that theology can respond faithfully to the living God only by paying due attention to human bodily experienceScripture points to the human body and lived experience as the preeminent arena of God's continuing revelation in the world, says Luke Timothy Johnson. Attentively discerning the manifestations of God's Spirit in and through the body is essential for theology to recover its nature as an inductive art rather than — as traditionally conceived — a deductive sci...

This thoughtful, fully accessible exploration of the creed, the list of beliefs central to the Christian faith, delves into its origins and illuminates the contemporary significance of why it still matters.During services in Christian communities, the members of the congregation stand together to recite the creed, professing in unison the beliefs they share. For most Christians, the creed functions as a sort of “ABC” of what it means to be a Christian and to be part of a worldwide ...

An introduction to ongoing debates on the apostle Paul's life and teaching and his letters' ramifications for the Church of today.The apostle Paul was a vital force in the development of Christianity. Paul's historical and religious context affects the theological interpretation of Paul's writings, no small issue in the whole of Christian theology.Recent years have seen much controversy about the apostle Paul, his religious and social context, and its effec...