Journal: Emmaus Journal
Volume: EMJ 13:1 (Summer 2004)
Article: In Memoriam S. Lewis Johnson, Jr. (1915–2004)
Author: Anonymous

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EmJ 13:1 (Summer 2004) p. 3

In Memoriam
S. Lewis Johnson, Jr.
(1915–2004)

It is with sadness, yet with faith in him who is “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25), that we note the death of Dr. S. Lewis Johnson, Jr. on January 28, 2004. At the time of his home-call, he was eighty-eight years of age. Dr. Johnson was committed to the training of young men for the ministry (2 Tim. 2:2), and a number of the Emmaus faculty remember him as one of their revered mentors and teachers. We could not have had a better one, for he was “an eloquent man...and he was mighty in the Scriptures” (Acts 18:24).

Lewis Johnson was born in Birmingham, Alabama on September 13, 1915. While attending a series of sermons given by the late Donald Grey Barnhouse in the early 1940s, he became a born-again Christian. In 1943 he moved to Dallas to attend Dallas Theological Seminary, where he earned a Master of Theology degree in 1946 and a Doctor of Theology degree in 1949. Upon graduation he became a professor at Dallas Seminary, where he would teach Hebrew, Greek, and Systematic Theology in a career that spanned three decades. After retirement from Dallas Seminary, he served for a number of years as Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.

Dr. Johnson was a superb teacher and preacher. His wonderful lectures at Dallas Seminary were eloquently delivered in a cultured southern accent. The lectures were well prepared and based on his careful attention to the Greek and Hebrew texts as well as his wide reading in commentaries, theologies, and other learned literature. Even later in life he continued to read voraciously. As one of the elder statesmen of the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School faculty, he had a reputation for being “right up to date” in his reading. Dr. David Dunbar, now president of Biblical Theological Seminary, said that at that time Lewis Johnson was still the “second most well-read man on the Trinity faculty,” pride of place being occupied by the able D. A. Carson.

One illustration of his love for the Word and for his students took place during the spring semester of 1969 at Dallas Seminary. A classmate, Richard Cooper, and I signed up to take Dr. Johnson’s course on the Greek text of the Book of Revelation. We decided to get to the classroom early since such a course would attract a roomful of eager young scholars. We arrived to find the room

EmJ 13:1 (Summer 2004) p. 4

empty, and by the time the class was to begin there were only six of us and our professor. Yet one would have thought it was a lecture hall ...

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