Description
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. His analysis includes:
- a description of the competing symbolic worldviews that have framed the discussion on miracles, including secular debates and theological imagination;
- interpretation of miracles consonant with the biblical construction of reality in the Old and New Testaments;
- 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.
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Reviews
"This volume offers a wonderful foray into a neglected area of the biblical narrative. Johnson serves as a faithful guide who walks readers through difficult biblical passages while offering a much-needed and refreshing path forward. It is a rare volume of biblical scholarship that ought to find its way onto the “must read” list of anyone engaged in the practice of ministry." - Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology
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.