News and Information
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322

Release date: March 3, 1999
Contact: Elaine Justice, Assistant Director

RECOGNIZING REALITY OF JESUS' RESURRECTION IS KEY TO CHRISTIANITY'S FUTURE, SAYS EMORY'S JOHNSON

Many mainline Christians have been lulled into thinking of the resurrection of Jesus as a one-time event rather than an ongoing reality, says Emory University New Testament scholar Luke Johnson. He will address what he considers this crisis of the Christian faith in "Jesus and the Culture Wars: What's at Stake," as part of Emory's Great Teachers Lecture Series Thursday, March 25. The lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. in Cannon Chapel, 515 Kilgo Circle on the Emory campus. The event is free and open to the public. For information call 404-727-7020.

Johnson, Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Emory's Candler School of Theology, created a scholarly firestorm in 1996 with his book, "The Real Jesus," acclaimed as the first hard-hitting scholarly critique of the so-called "historical Jesus" movement and the Jesus Seminar, small but well-publicized group of scholars who debate historical aspects of Jesus' life and ministry.

In blunt language, Johnson led the charge against academics who would try to reconstruct Jesus from historical evidence alone, ignoring the aspects of religious faith that often transcend historical investigation.

A 1996 New York Times article by Peter Steinfels called Johnson "an unlikely polemicist," whose background as a former monk and practicing Roman Catholic made him "a walking illustration of how unsatisfactory labels like conservative and liberal can be."

Now Johnson's at it again. His two latest books, "Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity" (1998) and the newly published "Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospel," also stand at odds with those who, in his words, "would remove all vestiges of the supernatural from the Christian faith."

"For many Christians, the resurrection is simply an event on the liturgical calendar, a problem we have to explain rather than the absolute reality that brings us together," says Johnson. If the resurrection is not true, he adds, "then every 'amen' is a lie; we [Christians] would be acting out this incredible charade."

The urge to verify, analyze and reduce Christianity to a set of explainable events is a remnant of what Johnson calls "enlightenment thinking" that gave rise to the great democratic movements of- the 18th century, but has largely failed to recognize the reality of religious faith.

"The church has allowed the game to be determined by the enlightenment project for so long," says Johnson. "I'm shocked that what I'm saying is taken to be controversial when last time I looked at the scriptures, the resurrection was the driving force that formed the Christian community."