Abstract
The Mind in Another Place is an autobiography with a difference. Johnson’s purpose is to “focus entirely on my life as a scholar, with the goal of showing outsiders and would-be insiders alike some of the dimensions of the life of the mind as lived by one scholar for over 50 years” (p. x).
Johnson sees Parts 1 and 2 as “mainly an intellectual memoir” with Part 1 about “becoming” and Part 2 about “being” a scholar (p. 6). Johnson was born in 1943 and grew up in a village in Wisconsin with five older brothers and sisters. His father died when he was 2 months old, and his mother also died in 1955. In 1957, he went to study for the priesthood and says that Catholic school gave him the “sense of structure, stability, and sanity that I desperately needed” (p. 40). At the age of 19, he decided to enter monastic life, since being a parish priest did not appeal to him, and being a monk combined the possibility of “both sanctity and scholarship” (p. 54). Later, he was sent to study at Saint Meinrad School of Theology by the abbot and was ordained as a priest in 1970. However, he spent all of 1970–71 back at the monastery in Louisiana. He attended a local charismatic group, where he met Joy, who had six children. In 1971, he began his doctorate at Yale, but in the middle of his degree, he fell in love with Joy, and so he left the monastery and married her in 1974.
He gained his doctorate in 1976, despite his changed personal circumstances, and a post at Yale Divinity School. In 1982, he became an associate professor at Indiana University. Unlike Yale, he was the only member of the department who dealt with “the life and literature of earliest Christianity,” but he appreciated the wide diversity of specialisms within the department at Indiana (pp. 117–118). During this period, he completed a commentary on Luke in 6 months: “there is no shortcut. Wake in the morning, go to the desk, work through the passage. Wake up tomorrow, go to the desk, work through the next passage. Do this until you reach the end” (p. 129). In 24 months, he wrote just over a thousand words on Luke-Acts. The mind has to be in another place.
At 48, he became Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Candler School of Theology, and he stayed at Emory University until he retired. At the heart of his efforts was pedagogy and trying “to imagine a student’s real needs” (p. 144). He gives great detail to help the reader to appreciate how much “sheer time” conscientious scholars spend outside research and writing (pp. 139–145). In addition, he sought to “get off the media merry-go-round” as soon as possible (p. 150) over one quickly written book that was in danger of eclipsing works that had taken years. In later years, he found himself reading and grading student papers in the kitchen whilst caring for his wife Joy. Despite Joy’s death and Covid, in retiring he has found that his “habits of scholarship” (p. 174) have not left him.
In Part 3, Johnson deals with the virtues necessary for scholarship. The intellectual virtues he gives are those of curiosity—“the spirit of inquiry” (p. 189), a respect for evidence “that keeps our research honest” (p. 193), mastery, wide and critical reading, imagination, and clarity and cogency. In the next chapter, he deals with the moral virtues of courage, ambition, discipline, persistence, detachment, contentment, and multitasking, which he admits is not an Aristotelian virtue. He thinks curiosity and courage are rightly first in each list and affirms that “nothing so demonstrates scholarly courage as holding as true what everyone around me declares as false” (p. 212).
Johnson’s aim was to show outsiders what the life of the mind was like for him as a scholar and in that he succeeds. The book communicates well, explaining the author’s personal situation as it pertained to his scholarly life and giving detail as to tasks and responsibilities undertaken. In addition, Johnson’s articulation of what he holds to be the necessary intellectual and moral virtues for a scholar adds a significant extra dimension, which complements the autobiographical sections. Students considering entering the academic life should find this book very useful, and not just those wishing to be biblical scholars. It is also an informative and thought-provoking read for those of us with an interest in the life of scholars.