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BOOKS Wisdom for Any Season LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON The risen Christ shows himself in the wounds of the world. This is the apparent paradox—actually, the heart of the good news—that organizes...

From monk to scholar (February 2022)

Opening to the World Luke Timothy Johnson My journey from young monk to mature scholar Late in the summer of 1963, I entered the novitiate at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Covington, Louisiana, thinking...

The Gospels (October 2021)

Too Original LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON Sarah Ruden is a translator of ancient literature with considerable experience and a good reputation. She has translated from the Latin Augustine’s Confessions,...

Religion Booknotes (June 2021)

BOOKS Religion Booknotes Luke Timothy Johnson RAYMOND E. BROWN AND THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL RENEWAL Donald Senior, cp Paulist Press $29.95 | 376 pp. Without question, the Sulpician priest Raymond...

â€œElan Vitalâ€ (May 2021)

POETRY ELAN VITAL Luke Timothy Johnson Know that limits are for leaping; are but theorems, lines and brackets drawn imposingly but bare around the past of when and where, and do not...

Religion Booknotes (January 2021)

Religion Booknotes Luke Timothy Johnson THE BOOK OF REVELATION A Biography timothy beal Princeton University Press $26.95 | 288 pp. I suspect that no great argument was needed to make the Book...

Religion Booknotes (June 2020)

BOOKS Religion Booknotes Luke Timothy Johnson THE TALMUD: A BIOGRAPHY barry scott wimpfheimer Princeton University Press, $26.95, 320 pp. F ar more than a mere book, the Babylonian Talmud...

God's Library (July 2019)

Luke Timothy Johnson How We Got the Good Book God's Library The Archeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts Brent Nongbri Yale University Press, $35, 416 pp. Only two biblical topics...

religion booknotes (May 2019)

Religion Booknotes Luke Timothy Johnson John Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators translated and edited by Bryan A. Stewart and Michael A. Thomas Eerdmans, $65.00, 684...

Can We Still Believe in Miracles? (February 2019)

ARTICLES Can We Still Believe in Miracles? We Can, We Must Luke Timothy Johnson The topic of miracles concerns God's presence and power within creation and the capacity of humans to experience...

How a Monk Learns Mercy (October 2018)

ARTICLES How a Monk Learns Mercy Thomas Merton & the Rule of St. Benedict Luke Timothy Johnson Ihave read Thomas Merton off and on since I was thirteen, and over those sixty years have gone...

Religion Booknotes (August 2018)

RELIGION BOOKNOTES Luke Timothy Johnson Seven Ways of Looking at Religion The Major Narratives Benjamin Schewel Yale University Press, $40, 248 pp. The key word in this title is "narratives."...

The New Testament (March 2018)

BOOKS Luke Timothy Johnson No Compromises The New Testament A Translation David Bentley Hart Yale University Press, $35, 616 pp. Only a very few translators of the Bible have produced...

Religion Booknotes (December 2017)

RELIGION BOOKNOTES Luke Timothy Johnson Looking back at my first six installments of Religion Booknotes, I discover that I have mostly paid attention to scholarly books. And I confess to a taste...

Religion Booknotes (June 2017)

RELIGION BOOKNOTES Luke Timothy Johnson The World's Oldest Church Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura-Europos, Syria Michael Peppard Yale University Press, $50, 336 pp. The city of Dura was a Roman...

Religion Booknotes (February 2017)

RELIGION BOOKNOTES Luke Timothy Johnson The Letters of Robert Giroux and Thomas Merton Edited and Annotated by Patrick Samway, SJ University of Notre Dame Press, $29, 397 pp. Even casual readers...

religion booknotes (October 2016)

RELIGION BOOKNOTES Luke Timothy Johnson The Catholic Enlightenment The Forgotten History of a Global Movement Ulrich L. Lehner Oxford University Press, $29.95, 264 pp. The perception of Roman...

Religion Booknotes (June 2016)

RELIGION BOOKNOTES Luke Timothy Johnson Shared Stories, Rival Tellings Early Encounters ofJews, Christians, and Muslims Robert C. Gregg Oxford University Press, $39.95, 712 pp. Over two dozen...

RELIGION BOOKNOTES (October 2015)

RELIGION BOOKNOTES Luke Timothy Johnson Contesting Catholicity Theology for Other Baptists Curtis W. Freeman Baylor University Press, $49.95, 477 pp. The strangeness of Curtis Freeman's title...

The Myth, The Monk, The Man (September 2015)

The Myth, the Monk, the Man Reading & Rereading Thomas Merton Luke Timothy Johnson When The Seven Storey Mountain was published in 1949 and became an instant classic, Thomas Merton was only...

How Jesus Became God (February 2015)

THEOLOGICAL BOOKS Luke Timothy Johnson History & Divinity How Jesus Became God The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee Bart D. Ehrman HarperCollins, $27.99 416 pp. Bart Ehrman has...

The Commonweal Catholic (October 2014)

90TH ANIVERSARY ISSUE The Commonweal Catholic It Started with Origen Luke Timothy Johnson Over the past several years I have spoken at some wonderful colleges and universities across this...

The Myth of Persecution (August 2013)

Luke Timothy Johnson Prosecuting the Persecuted The Myth of Persecution How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom Candida Moss HarperOne, $25.99, 320 pp. Historians of Christianity...

Balthasar (April 2013)

Luke Timothy Johnson God’s Eye View Balthasar A (Very) Critical Introduction A half-century after the opening of the Second Vatican Council, it is worth remembering that many important...

Revelations (July 2012)

Luke Timothy Johnson Canon Fodder Revelations Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation Elaine Pagels Viking, $27.95, 256 pp. Politics is always the operative word in Elaine...

Interpretive Dance (February 2012)

Interpretive Dance How the Brazos Biblical Commentary Falls Short Luke Timothy Johnson In 2005, a commentary on the Acts of the Apostles by Jaroslav Pelikan, the great historian of theology,...

Powers & Principalities (October 2011)

ARTICLEs Powers & Principalities The Devil Is No Joke Luke Timothy Johnson In the seventh letter of his 1942 epistolary novel The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis nicely captures our...

Dry Bones (February 2010)

Dry Bones Why Religion Can’t Live without Mysticism Luke Timothy Johnson T he great religious battle of our time is not the one being waged between believers and unbelievers. To be sure,...

How Is the Bible True? (May 2009)

How Is the Bible True? Let Me Count the Ways Luke Timothy Johnson It seems an obvious thing to say that Christians read the Bible in order to search for truth; that we do not read these...

Human & Divine : Getting Jesus right (January 2008)

Human & Divine Did Jesus Have Faith? Luke Timothy Johnson J ust over a year ago, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued a notification concerning certain elements in...

Homosexuality & the Church (June 2007)

Homosexuality & the Church Two Views A Scripture & Experience Luhe Timothy ohnson I s the present crisis in Christian denominations over homosexuality really about sex? I don't think so....

A Sense of an Ending (December 2006)

The Good Word A Sense of an Ending Luhe ~rnothy ~ohnson O ne of the many elements of a coherent Christian vision lost in the past half-century is a clear sense of how things end. Catholics...

Keeping Spirituality Sane (November 2006)

The Good Word t",l b. o 0 Keeping Spirituality Sane Luhe "l~mothy ~ohnson "~'~ 7" "That are we to make of all the books on ~k ~ ] s p i r i t u a l i t y cramming the shelves at Borders and...

The Catholic Presence (October 2006)

The Good Word The Catholic Presence Luhe ~mothy ~7ohnson I reading s Looking of there something such the back, fierce a called I thing see journalistic that...

Thank You Sister (September 2006)

The Good Word Thank You, Sister Luke mothy ohnson M dence y Sister 1955 football was of that Mercy a Hollywood very coach young evi- in did not always make...

The Nuptial Mystery by Angelo Cardinal Scola (July 2006)

~a v,t @ ra Luke Timothy ohnson Body Beautiful The Nuptial Mystery Angelo Cardinal Scola Translated by Michelle K. Boras Eerdmans, $29, 444 pp. E verything that pleased...

The Chosen (June 2006)

The Good Word The Chosen Luke Timothy Johnson I started this series of essays to celebrate signs of hope in Catholicism. My last reflection ("A Larger Sense of Church," May 19) touched on...

A Larger Sense of Church (May 2006)

The Good Word A Larger Sense of Church Luhe Timothy ~ohnson T ay Catholics, I think, are way ahead | of the hierarchy in embracing an ec- I I "!\11 No SH~mlr i umenical vision of the...

With Thankfulness & Praise (April 2006)

The Good Word With Thankfulness & Praise Luke Timothy Johnson I can get as nostalgic as the next ex-seminarian about the worship we experienced at St. Joseph Abbey, circa 1960. Filing into the...

Trust the Laity (March 2006)

The Good Word Trust the Laitx t Luhe q~rnothy ~ohnson I t is a teaching moment that happens in every seminary. The professor has finished presenting some difficult point in theology, Scripture,...

Signs of Hope (February 2006)

The Good Word Signs of Hope Luke ~mothy ~ohnson I f we're to believe movies like Grumpy Old Men, the 1993 Jack Lemmon-Wal- ter Matthau comedy about two feuding septuagenarian...

After the Big Chill: Freedom is a theological value (January 2006)

After the Big Chill Intellectual Freedom & Catholic Theologians Lul~e Timothy ~ohnson S uppose we indulge our fondest hopes. Let us imagine that Pope Benedict XVI turns out to be quite unlike...

Caring for the Earth (July 2005)

Caring for the Earth Why Environmentalism Needs Theology Luhe ~mothy Johnson <2a t..,i uq A T he impending environmental crisis is, like all important realities, a theological problem....

The Pontiff in Winter (March 2005)

Luhe Timothy jTohnson Tragic Flaws The Pontiff in Winter Triumph and Conflict in the Reign of John Paul II John Cornwell Doubleday, $24.95,336 pp. J ' ohn Cornwell is best known for...

Christian Community in History (January 2005)

Books Luhe Timothy ohnson Theology from Below? Christian Community in History Historical Ecclesiology, Vol. 1 Roger Ha@t Continuum, $34.95, 423 pp. R oger Haight is a Jesuit now...

A NEW GNOSTICISM (November 2004)

A NEW GNOSTICISM An old threat to the church Luke Timothy Johnson Historical analogies are both tempting and tricky. They are tempting because we like to learn about the present from past...

The Beginning of Wisdom (January 2004)

Among the patriarchs The Beginning of Wisdom Reading Genesis Leon R. Kass Tin' Free Press, $35, 720 pp. Luke Timothy Johnson eon Kass is a professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the...

Correspondence Johnson, pro & con (July 2003)

CORROSPONDENCE Congregationalists? After more than fifty years of reading Commonweal and being grateful for the many past insights you gave me in the practice of my Catholic faith, I find that you...

SEX, WOMEN & THE CHURCH (June 2003)

SEX, WOMEN & THE CHURCH The need for prophetic change Luke Timothy Johnson The consequences of the sexual-abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States continue to unfold. On...

CHRISTIANS & JEWS: STARTING OVER (January 2003)

CHRISTIANS & JEWS: STARTING OVER Why the real dialogue has just begun Luke Timothy Johnson How should Christians think about Jews? Or better, how should Christians think about themselves with...

Continuing the conversation: The church & anti-Semitism (March 2002)

Continuing the conversation The church & anti-Semitism Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's recent lengthy article in the New Republic (January 21), "What Would Jesus Have Done? Pope Pius XII, the Catholic...

A Marginal Jew, vol. 3 (November 2001)

THE STORY SO FAR A Marginal Jew Rethinking the Historical Jesus Volume HI: Companions and Competitors John Meier Doubleday, $40, 669 pp. Luke Timothy Johnson While many of the recent...

Christianity in Jewish Terms (April 2001)

TURNING TABLES Christianity in Jewish Terms Edited by Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, and Michael A. Signer Wrsti'icw Press, 530, 4.18 pp. Luke Timothy...

A DISEMBODIED 'THEOLOGY OF THE BODY': Some think the pope's ideas about sex and love are the answer to modern sexual confusion. A theologian and biblical scholar disagrees (January 2001)

A DISEMBODIED 'THEOLOGY OF THE BODY' John Paul II on love, sex & pleasure Luke Timothy Johnson apal teaching on human sexuality has received some positive reviews recently. A number of these...

Desire of the Everlasting Hills (November 1999)

BOOKS The gospel according to Cahill Desire of the Everlasting Hills The World Before and After Jesus By Thomas Cahill Voubkday, $24.35,343 pp. Luke Timothy Johnson T his is the third in...

Abraham on Trial, The Curse o f Cain (July 1999)

BOOKS How not to read the Bible Abraham en Trial The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth Carol Delaney Princetoni University Press, $29.9\ 2% pp The Curse ef Cain The Violent Legacy of...

Raymond Brown, R.I.P. (September 1998)

He can never again be an effective spokesman for government assistance allied to moral discipline. His legendary flexibility will inevitably be interpreted not as a means to a policy but as a...

The Bible as It Was (July 1998)

led to a bookish narrowing of his sensibility, rather than an expansion of it; and in the same way, Kazin is reduced by his own definition. Better and more representative are his remarks...

Quarantine (May 1998)

Jesus in the desert Luke Timothy Johnson II H im Crace has pulled off the literary equivalent of a perfect triple-triple jump in iceskating. He has written a novel that has Jesus as its...

So What's Catholic About It? (January 1998)

SO WHAT'S CATHOLIC ABOUT IT? The state of Catholic biblical scholarship Luke Timothy Johnson ca ~ n what sense might biblical scholarship as practiced in North America these days be...

A MESSAGE FRON CARAVAGGIO What can Caravaggio's Saint Matthew and the Angel tell us about the nature of revelation? Five contributors explore the mystery of how God communicates with us (June 1997)

A MESSAGE FROM CARAVAGGIO A Symposium on Revelation LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON • KATHLEEN NORMS SANDRAM. SCHNEIDERS • DONALD SENIOR • SUSAN A. ROSS As the controversy surrounding the Jesus Seminar...

WHO IS JESUS? In confronting the question, some academics tend to neglect the very best sources (December 1995)

WHO IS JESUS? The academy vs. the Gospels Luke Timothy Johnson From the start, Christianity has been rooted in the paradoxical claim that a human being executed as a criminal is the source of God's...

A Big-Enough God by Sara Maitland (November 1995)

THEOLOGY: FROM PICE TO LICE A Bis-Enough God A Feminist's Search for a Joyful Theology Sara Maitland Henry Halt and Company, $22.50,191 pp. Luke timothy Johnson The four chapters that make up...

Correspondence: (February 1995)

CORRESPONDENCE It's unanimous Minneapolis, Minn. To the Editors: Liz Leibold McCloskey has added her voice ["Orphaned at Birth: Women in the Church," January 27] to those of the fanatics who want...

Testing the Gospel story (November 1994)

Meier has pursued with such diligence, intelligence, and integrity. I note with some bemusement that the advance readers' copy I am using for this review trumpets the volume as "John Meier's quest...

Telling the whole story (May 1994)

RAYMOND E. BROWN'S ACHIEVEMENT Telling the whole story LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON T he publication shortly before Easter of this massive study of Our Lord's Passion and death was timely...

Debate & discernment (January 1994)

DEBATE & DISCERNMENT SCRIPTURE & THE SPIRIT Luke Timothy Johnson Homosexuality as an issue internal to the life of the church poses a fundamental challenge not only to moral discernment and...

The crisis in biblical scholarship: (December 1993)

'OF MAKING MANY BOOKS THERE IS NO END': ECCLES. 12:12 The crisis in biblical scholarship LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON n a recent review of the...

Something fundamental is afoot (January 1993)

WHAT ARE THEY SAYING ABOUT GOD? Something fundamental ix afoot LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON Imost twenty years ...

A marginal Mediterranean Jewish peasant (April 1992)

MEIER & CROSSAN ON THE HISTORICAL JESUS A marginal Mediterranean Jewish peasant has always refused to remain simply a historical figure. This represented a satisfactory state of affairs for...

When modernity sows the seeds (January 1992)

AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF TRADITION When modernity sows the seeds LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON These two books have much in common. Each is written in a self-consciously personal and confessional mode...

The Distancing of God (June 1991)

in this regard are widely known. Less publicized are the sweetheart deals from the latter part of 1988--which redistributed the remaining riches of the S&Ls to America's wealthiest...

Johnson, Mary

Johnson, Norman

Johnson, Paul

Johnson, Philip E.

Johnson, Phillip E.

Johnson, Reviewed by Luke Timothy

Johnson, Robert

Johnson, Robin

JOHNSON, ROGER A.

Johnson, Samuel

Johnson, Sandra H

Johnson, Siddie Joe