The Mind in Another Place

Book excerpt: A witness to the peculiar way of being that is the scholar’s Luke Timothy Johnson is one of the best-known and most influential New Testament scholars of recent decades. In this memoir, he draws on his rich experience to invite readers into the scholar’s life—its aims, commitments, and habits. In addition to sharing his own story, from childhood to retirement, Johnson reflects on the nature of scholarship more generally, showing how this vocation has changed over the past half-century and where it might be going in the future. He is as candid and unsparing about negative trends in academia as he is hopeful about the possibilities of steadfast, disciplined scholarship. In two closing chapters, he discusses the essential intellectual and moral virtues of scholarly excellence, including curiosity, imagination, courage, discipline, persistence, detachment, and contentment. Johnson’s robust defense of the scholarly life—portrayed throughout this book as a generative process of discovery and disclosure—will inspire both new and seasoned scholars, as well as anyone who reads and values good scholarship. But The Mind in Another Place ultimately resonates beyond the walls of the academy and speaks to matters more universally human: the love of knowledge and the lifelong pursuit of truth.