Family
Wife: Leslie Pett Johnson, happily married
since 1977, 3 children.
Youthful Shaping Experiences
- 1. Being overwhelmed by radical evil while touring a concentration camp gave me a compulsion to understand and engage culture.
- 2. Coming out of a cult through reading scripture and the Heidelberg Catechism enabled me to see evangelical theology as the explanation of God’s grace.
Convictions
- The Church always faces 2 crucial questions:
- 1. Will we truly trust in God’s grace? (The key to theology.)
- 2. Will we properly engage our culture with the Word of God? (Key to worldview and ministry studies.)
Ministry experience
- teaching ethics, phil. and religion in secular colleges, 14 years;
- Pastor, 10 years (including church planting). Foreign missionary (pastor/prof.), 9 years;
- 3 different Christian School Boards, including being founding chairman of a school;
- Campus ministry (IVCF staff); hospital chaplain; social analysis (writer for Chuck Colson).
Seminary Teaching Fields
- Ethics and Apologetics, basic and advanced courses, including the history of ethics and apologetics.
- Systematic Theology and Church History, at the seminary core course level.
- Reformation Theology and Ethics.
Method
- When possible I prefer a dialogical or Socratic teaching method that emphasizes critical thinking and discernment skills.
Personal Role Model
- Ezra 7:9,10 “The gracious hand of his God was on him. For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the Lord, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel.”
Books and Articles
- I have written a number of articles, reviews, and book chapters for various projects in the English, Russian, Czech, German, and Lithuanian languages. I personally write only in English and German. I hope to continue to write both popular and academic materials, primarily in ethics, worldview studies, apologetics, and the application of a theology of grace to our experience of fallenness. I am currently writing a book length study “Natural Law after Barth: A Protestant Reassessment” that I may also submit as a “Habilitation,” the European advanced doctorate.
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Thomas K. and Leslie P. Johnson
Prof. Th. Johnson received his Ph.D. in ethics and philosophical theology within an interdisciplinary religion and humanities program from the University of Iowa (1987) after spending a year as a research scholar at Eberhard Karls Universität (Tübingen, Germany) sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service, the German equivalent of a Fulbright fellowship. His university studies included the equivalents of non-thesis MA degrees (1983) in three fields: History of Christianity, Comparative Theology and Ethics (Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic) and Psychology of Religion. more ...