Luke Timothy Johnson's The Revelatory Body

Slated for a September release date marks another book from the prolific pen of Luke Timothy Johnson, R.W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Emory University, Candler School of Theology. The volume, The Revelatory Body, addresses the oft-neglected theme in theology, namely, the physical body.

Here is the description:


Argues that theology can respond faithfully to the living God only by paying due attention to human bodily experience Scripture points to the human body and lived experience as the privileged arena of God's self-disclosure in the world, says Luke Timothy Johnson. Attention to both ordinary and extraordinary manifestations of the Holy Spirit in and through the body is essential for theology to recover its nature as an inductive art rather than a deductive science and to serve as an expression and articulation of authentic faith in the living God. Willingness to risk engaging actual human situations — rather than abstract conceptualizations about those situations — is required of the theologian, Johnson argues. In The Revelatory Body he celebrates human experiences of activity, pleasure, pain, weariness, and aging, showing how theology might be enlivened through careful attention to the ways in which these bodily experiences disclose the movements of the Holy Spirit.

Fortunately, thanks to a Lenten lecture series recently delivered at The Cathedral of St. Philip's in Atlanta, Johnson offers a sneak preview of his forthcoming work. The five-part series can be accessed here.