When the Jesus Seminar was getting a load of publicity for its controversial publications ranking the reliability of Jesus' words in the Bible, Luke Timothy Johnson came to the rescue of traditionalists.

A professor of New Testament and Christian origins at Emory University in Atlanta, Johnson picked apart the seminar's conclusion that only a tiny fraction of the quotes attributed to Jesus were authentic. He wrote about it in "The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels."

Johnson has bona fide academic credentials - a Ph.D. from Yale in New Testament studies - and no connection to fundamentalism. He's a former Benedictine monk who is still a Roman Catholic. The combination lent widespread credibility, even among more liberal Christians, to his arguments that the search for the "historic Jesus" could not be separated from the New Testament accounts of him.

But Johnson has written dozens of other books, including studies of Luke and Acts, on living the Christian faith and on the Apostle Paul.

It is on Paul that Johnson will focus when he serves as this year's guest speaker for the Spencer Edmunds lecture series at Second Presbyterian Church in Roanoke Sunday and Monday.

Johnson will preach at the 9 and 11 a.m. services Sunday morning, then begin the lectures that night at 7 with "The Case Against Paul." They conclude Monday at 7 p.m. with "Why Paul Liberates."

Johnson answered questions about the series and other topics in a recent e-mail exchange with The Roanoke Times:

Paul is variously seen as the chief architect of the Christian religion or as its chief corrupter. Where do you place him in the history of Christianity?

I don't see Paul either as architect or corrupter, although I understand that Paul is often regarded as the evil genius who created Christianity. That is one of the perceptions I hope to correct in my presentations. Paul is an important figure in early Christianity, but he is not its inventor. As for whether he is a "corrupter" or "betrayer" of the "Jesus Movement," I will try to show just the opposite: Paul is a faithful interpreter of Jesus. Paul's impact on the subsequent history of Christianity is connected to the place he holds in the New Testament canon. I want to show that such influence is more benign than malign.

The title of your lecture series is "Paul the Apostle: Oppressor or Liberator?" Looking first at the oppressor label, Paul is frequently cited by critics who believe his view of the role of women in the church and home, of the place of homosexuals in the world, even of the acceptability of slavery, are a perversion of the message of Jesus. What is your take on that?

My first presentation will go into some detail on the "case against Paul" made by the folks you mentioned, and others as well - Jews, for example, and Enlightenment critics and liberation theologians. It is certainly important to acknowledge the ways in which the use of Paul in the church has supported patterns of oppression. But I want to suggest that when Paul is read rightly, he is a source of liberation much more than of oppression. The key word, to be sure, is "rightly."

Some defenders of Paul believe that some of the so-called oppressive material attributed to him is actually the work of editors who misrepresent Paul's theology. What do you think about that?

I think that the position holding that Paul's letters are full of interpolations cannot be sustained. Indeed, I am a maverick in my guild for holding that Paul authored all 13 of the letters attributed to him, whereas the conventional wisdom thinks he wrote only seven and the other six were written after his death by followers. Some solve their issues with Paul by appealing to the "good Paul" (who wrote his letters) against the "evil Paul" (who wrote the inauthentic ones). I regard that as a scientifically weak and theologically unhelpful position. I think that all the letters were authored by Paul during his lifetime, even though he may not have "written" any of them. I know that sounds self-contradictory. But it's not. You have to hear the presentation to see why it is not.

Paul is less frequently labeled a "liberator." In what ways did he "liberate" the followers of Jesus?

One reason I call Paul a liberator is because he is usually not thought of in those terms. How can knowledge advance unless we challenge lazy communal convictions? Paul liberates readers because he demands that they think. And he liberates them because he helps them learn how to think in a certain way, according to "the mind of Christ."

What do you think Paul would think of the church today, particularly its missionary or evangelistic efforts?

It is always difficult to say what a character of 2,000 years ago would say about present circumstances. But one thing is sure: Paul simply would not understand or approve of the intense individualism and narcissism that characterizes many contemporary Christians.

On another subject, you have been a frequent critic of the Jesus Seminar. Now that the hoopla that surrounded the early publicity over its work has died down, what sort of long-term impact do you expect from that group and its publications?

The contemporary quest for the historical Jesus is like a virus within Christianity that grows acute from time to time. There have been flare-ups of a visible sort for the last 250 years. And if we go back to the early centuries of the church, we can see that the quest for a Jesus "just like us" or "more like us" or "easier to understand" lies at the heart of such early heresies as Arianism. [The fourth-century priest Arias taught that Jesus Christ was the first of God's creations, but not an equal part of a trinitarian God.] The new quest found many fans precisely because a robust and intellectually compelling form of orthodox doctrine is rare in the churches.

What methods or sources would you recommend for a layperson seeking to better understand modern scholarship on the Bible and Christianity?

There is a great deal of wonderful scholarship available to people. If you don't have a college or seminary in your neighborhood whose professor of Scripture can lend you or point you to a good introductory text or survey, then go to a bookstore. But it is much better to go to a Cokesbury bookstore, for example, than a Borders, because Borders and Barnes and Noble tend to run mainly with what is novel, and what is novel is rarely a good place to start. It is also good to go to a Cokesbury rather than one of those bookstores that sells only devotional items and 19th century biblical commentaries. Don't go to the Internet unless you get the names of some solid scholars from that professor or a well-read pastor.

In other words, do what you do when you need a plumber or a roofer. You don't hire a workman without consulting, because there are too many ripoffs out there. The same with scholarship; there are as many charlatans as there are reliable craftspeople. Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.