Miracles: God’s Presence and Power in Creation (Interpretation: Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church)

by Luke Timothy Johnson

Publisher:

Westminster John Knox

, 2018

Overview

Miracles are not confined to the stories of Scripture; these signs of God’s presence and power in creation are experienced throughout our daily existence. Yet cultural challenges and modernity’s skepticism have marginalized belief in them as unreasonable and irrational, says Luke Timothy Johnson.

In this excellent resource for church professionals, Johnson reclaims Christian belief in miracles as integral to recovering a proper and strong sense of creation, recognizing the validity of personal experience and narrative and asserting the truth-telling quality of myth.

Key Features

• Presents a description of the competing symbolic worldviews that have framed the discussion on miracles, including secular debates and theological imagination;
• Lays out an interpretation of miracles consonant with the biblical construction of reality in the Old and New Testaments;
• Includes suggestions for four areas in the church’s life—teaching, preaching, prayer, and pastoral care—that can work together to shape a symbolic world, within which believers can expect, perceive, and celebrate the miracles in everyday life.

Contents

• Part One: Framing the Discussion
  • Miracles in Christian History
  • The Problematic Category
  • Reframing the Discussion
• Part Two: God's Presence and Power in the Old Testament
  • The Mighty Acts of God
  • The Signs of the Prophets
• Part Three: God's Presence and Power in the New Testament
  • Signs and Wonders in Early Christian Communities
  • Gospel Miracles
  • Miracles in Mark and Matthew
  • Signs and Wonders in Luke-Acts
  • The Signs of the Incarnate Word
• Part Four: Pastoral Implications
  • Recovering a Sense of Wonder

Top Highlights

“They are a rehabilitation of imagination as the essential organ of cognition, a renewed sense of creation as the continuous self-disclosure of God in the world, a recognition of the revelatory capacity of human somatic experience, and an appreciation of the particular way mythic narratives communicate truth.” (Page 46)

“seriously the witness of human experience through the ages” (Page 12)

“Nothing about this imagined world is empirically verifiable. Yet by imagining the empirical world we all inhabit in this fashion, the Bible also reveals a world, and by revealing it, opens as well the possibility of humans living in it as though real.” (Page 51)

“construct worlds on the basis of shared imagination, and we engage in shared practices that serve to make what we” (Page 50)

“Problems lie outside the human person and are potentially soluble:” (Page 48)

Praise for the Print Edition

In his characteristically robust and thorough way, biblical theologian Luke Timothy Johnson tackles head-on what is the most challenging affirmation of Christian faith—the reality of miracles in a secular world. Drawing on his own sure grasp of the Bible, including the miracle accounts of both the Old and New Testaments, he invites his readers to imagine the world as the Scriptures imagine it—recognizing God’s dynamic presence in creation, incarnation and resurrection. This is not only a work of sure scholarship but also a manifesto of faith.

—Donald Senior, C.P., President Emeritus and Professor of New Testament at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

Rejecting an atomistic approach to miracle stories in terms of "what really happened," Johnson invites us to imagine biblical miracle discourse as a testament to God's presence and power in Israel, in the early church, and in our own experience.

—Greg Carey, Professor of New Testament, Lancaster Theological Seminary

In Miracles, Johnson invites us to re-read Scripture as a means of re-imagining the world and cultivating both a renewed sense of wonder and an enlivened capacity to perceive the ongoing power and presence of God in creation.

—Mary F. Foskett, Wake Forest Kahle Professor and Albritton Fellow, Department for the Study of Religions

Product Details

• Title: Miracles: God's Presence and Power in Creation
• Author: Luke Timothy Johnson
• Series: Interpretation
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox
• Publication Date: 2018
• Pages: 368
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Topic: Biblical Studies

About Luke Timothy Johnson

New Testament scholar and early Christianity historian, Luke Timothy Johnson (1943–), is the Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University. Professor Johnson earned his BA in Philosophy from Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, an MDiv in Theology from Saint Meinrad School of Theology, an MA in Religious Studies from Indiana University, and his PhD in New Testament Studies from Yale University. A former Benedictine monk, Johnson has taught at Yale Divinity School and Indiana University. He is the author of more than 20 books, has published a large number of scholarly and popular articles, anthologies, book reviews, and other academic papers, and lectures and received several awards for excellence in teaching. He often lectures at universities and seminaries worldwide, where he is widely perceived as the leading conservative scholar on the debates surrounding the Jesus Seminar, taking stances against its view of Jesus.