Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity: A Missing Dimension in New Testament Studies

Luke Johnson here issues a provocative call for a radically new direction in New Testament studies that can change the way we have viewed the entire phenomenon of early Christianity. Johnson is convinced that the dominant ways of studying early Christianity tend to miss its specifically religious character, because of a disjunction between formal religion and “popular” religion. Through three case studies on baptism, glossolalia, and meals, he proposes to show how a more holistic, phenomenological approach can be made. His approach makes possible the inclusion of the world of healings, religious power, ecstasy, and spirit. This, he argues, is the religious experience of real persons in the study of early Christianity.

Johnson concludes that there is still much to be learned about early Christianity as a religion, if we can find a way to get at the category of real experience. He maintains that early Christian texts reflect lives that are caught up in and defined by a power not in their control but controlled instead by the crucified and raised Messiah Jesus.

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