The Revelatory Body: Theology as Inductive Art

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."