Quotes from Luke Timothy Johnson

As a human being, the way Jesus responded to God in faithful obedience and gave his life in service to other humans-is the pattern for all authentic humanity renewed by the Spirit of God.

It is a form of generational narcissism to change texts to suit one's own needs.

Those who are in pain — most of the world's populations at any given moment — do not do a lot of thinking, speaking, or writing about suffering. All their energy goes into surviving. That is why a lot of what is said and written about suffering seems hollow to those actually in pain.

Any profession of faith…entrusts the mind and heart to a truth that cannot be proven but can be lived.

For if there is an actual and present rule of God in the world, then it must be found, not in the conquest of visible enemies, but in the triumph of love and life, however halting and partial, over sin and death. And this is the work of the Spirit. And it is the calling of the Church.

God's image…is found not best in individual humans, but in humans as they relate to each other.

If we are called to attention by God's Life and Holy Spirit, then the 'spiritual life' is not a pleasant option we might like to pursue when we have space and time; it is that which is now creating its own space and time within us, and to neglect it is to lose ourselves.

Religious experience involves an encounter with the holy, the mystery of the totally other that opens like a chasm before humans in unexpected ways, making impossible the denial of its presence.

amen, I tell you: The locution is peculiar to Jesus. The term "amen" would ordinarily respond to the speech of another ("so be it," "yes"), and come at the end. The Gospels show Jesus validating his own speech beforehand; an unmistakable sign of prophetic self-consciousness.

Luke thus provides the last part of the prophetic pattern, that of rejection by the people. As Simeon foretold, this will be worked out in the subsequent narrative in terms of a division within Israel between those who do and those who do not accept this prophet. But this ominous opening already suggests a reason why many Jews later on in Acts reject the Gospel, precisely because it is meant for all (cf. e.g., Acts 13:44—52).