Luke and Christian Unity

Getting off on the Same Foot

What the author Luke did in his Gospel and in The Acts of the Apostles is one of the most influential forces in all of Christian history, thus impacting the rest of Western history and world history as well.  To oversimplify his tour de force just a bit, it was to present the new break-away (from Judaism) faith as unified.

Christian unity has been a major point of focus for both Christian leaders and laity since the origins of a Christian belief system and church.  It was a particular issue during the first century and the writing of the texts that eventually became the New Testament (roughly 300 years later in our present form).  This appears in most developed form in the book of Acts.   It has again been an important issue for the last few centuries.  Christians today have varying opinions about the importance of unity, whether that be of beliefs (theology) or of fellowship and cooperation (as in the “ecumenical movement,” the National and World Council of Churches and less formal movements among the more conservative). 

The Ideal and the Reality

So, if you are a Bible reader, serious Christian, or an ancient history buff, how carefully have you read the book of Acts? Have you seen in it Luke’s fairly obvious piece-it-all-together-and-smooth-over-the-conflicts attempts? (Which, incidentally, succeeded pretty well!)  

I know I long missed it — like for decades, even with a theological education.  So without a good background, and even with it, you may not spot it on a light reading.  For one thing it is easy to be distracted by all the action, the drama and the brilliantly-constructed speeches (supposedly created on the spot by key characters at crucial junctures — but a common rhetorical device we can give Luke some leeway on).

If you are a serious student of the Bible, have you also compared Luke’s and Paul’s accounts of key events like Paul’s conversion experience, his early (?) introduction to the Apostles and other Jerusalem believers, and the “Jerusalem Council”?  What about other statements Paul makes in anger or sarcasm about “men from James” or “super apostles,” his confrontation with Peter and various references to a different understanding of the “gospel” than his own?

Doing this comparing and re-reading Acts with an eye for Luke’s main purposes and themes, I think it you may have some “Aha!” moments, as I have.  You may come to the realization that various New Testament writers, including authors of the Gospels, were not just warning of future departures from the true faith (or correct beliefs).  They spoke, often indirectly, of contemporary opponents within the new faith who also thought, just as certainly, that their version was the right one.  

We can safely assume that Luke’s Acts was one of the later NT books composed even though it covers events only up to the mid-60s or so, with Paul under arrest, headed to Rome (none have dates attached).  Thus, Luke was quite aware of this in-fighting and knew it was a problem and would continue to be.  So he took it on aggressively.  His success was a major influence on how Christians, yet today, with tons of scholarship showing a more complete and accurate picture, tend to wrongly perceive the early Church as developing in a more-or-less unified and smooth way, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (another key theme of Acts). 

So what have you seen in this most fascinating “linkage” (in more ways than covered here) book?  How has Luke’s “history” influenced your beliefs, your actions, or your participation with Christian churches?

Your Questions and Struggles

I Need Your Feedback!

I am working on a short book and need you to help me be sure it hits the issues you, and many like you, are dealing with.  Your comments below will help greatly.  I have many issues I’d like to deal with, but they may not always be ones that many people are interested in.  So I would much appreciate some input.

As one part of this, I’m starting to collect stories of people’s spiritual journeys — or any small or large aspect of them.  For example, some I know are struggling within churches where they feel they don’t fully fit.  But finding a good fit may not be easy.  Or leaving behind friends may be a problem.  Others are just beginning to question or doubt things they’ve been taught and don’t know where to look for deeper answers, or who to trust (if anyone).  These are a couple of the areas I’m particularly interested in writing more about, in an organized way that I want to be as helpful as possible. 

But if your particular issue or need doesn’t seem to fit within this exactly, I’d still like your input – this is wide open for anything to do with spirituality, religion, etc., whether or not you are personally involved in anything formal in these areas–any group, etc.

To take it one step further, I am also collecting stories of people’s journeys or any aspect of them particularly meaningful to them–a struggle, a breakthrough, a triumph (or what feels like one), etc. 

I would love to send a free copy of the book (not even titled yet, but it will have to do with a personal psychology of spiritual seeking and growth) to everyone who contributes a relevant story of anywhere from a few paragraphs to a page or two.  (I can’t promise to read lengthy tomes right now!) 

Later we can discuss whether I may want to quote or paraphrase from it, with anonymity probably, and definitely if desired.  But I am happy to send the book regardless–just for your effort and being helpful (it will at least initially be an ebook). I will be working on a good system for doing this, and for us to correspond, but for now, just please share your questions or issues as a comment and indicate if you might like to share a story–either right there or that you want to send it to me privately.  Thank you!

Reading the Signs of the End Times — Acts

Recently we were discussing the day of Pentecost – how it was, according to Luke, the launch point of the Christian Church.  (Luke didn’t yet label the movement that, but most Christians do in retrospect.) Skillful story-teller that he is, Luke weaves several important themes into his description of the events of this momentous day, 50 days (pente=fifty) after the death of Jesus. 

 The main point in focus today is the way Luke deals with one key aspect of Jesus’ major theme of the Kingdom of God (or Kingdom of Heaven) – when it will be instituted and the Holy Spirit’s role in this.  In chapter 1, Luke has reported that between Jesus’ resurrection and his ascension, the apostles had asked Jesus,

 “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom toIsrael?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (1:6-8, NRSV). 

They Got the Power!

In chapter 2, Luke gives a description of that very “reception” of “power” via the Holy Spirit, evidenced by speaking in languages known to diaspora Jews living in Jerusalem but not to the apostles. (Luke is not precise on this point but seems to suggest that most or all of the “believers” – about 120 – were doing this speaking, not just the twelve apostles, now including Matthias, added in Judas’ place.) Next, Luke introduces Peter, giving the interpretation of what has been happening with the “tongues speaking,” and tying it to the theme important to all Jews then, and which the apostles had asked Jesus about – the restoration of the kingdom to Israel.  They had been looking for one beyond even that of David and Solomon in those idealized days – this one “… the Lord’s great and glorious day [in which] everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (2:20-21).  (This, the surrounding material and other Hebrew prophecies not cited here by Luke, emphasize the ongoing centrality of Israel and Jerusalem, but with the inclusion of “the ends of the earth,” or people all over the known world.) 

So, what about the “last days” or end times? Were they being introduced back then, nearly 2000 years ago, by the Holy Spirit? Luke surely suggests that this is how Peter saw it, representing the other apostles (2:14) as he spoke to the befuddled crowd of over 3000 that had apparently gathered quickly – where, we are not told. 

You may note my careful wording about Luke’s “quoting” of Peter.  The best way I’ve found to understand supposed quotations, or at least close paraphrases of lengthy speeches by Peter, Paul and others in Acts, is his use of a common rhetorical device.  Authors of that day often composed precisely constructed, rhetorically powerful “speeches” to put into the mouths of key characters at critical junctures. 

Luke says that Peter referred to a prophecy of Joel: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.… They shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist.  The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day…” (2:17-22).

Apocalypse Now or Kingdom Delayed?

 

So, within two chapters, Luke has sought to direct his readers’ perception of not necessarily a new “religion,” but a contemporary and potentially powerful updating of Jewish messianic hopes.  The term “apocalyptic” is a technical one to biblical scholars, but also one that has been in church tradition and even come into current popular usage via things like a major movie, “Apocalypse Now,” around three decades ago.  To Luke (no doubt a Gentile) and still a proportionally very small group of believers (relative to all Jews and pagans) in the late first century, Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah.  They had expected “apocalypse now” and with its failure to materialize, they had some serious problems. 

One of them was how to get respectability for budding Christianity among either Jews or Gentiles (non-Jews), or ideally both.  A long tradition was important, not only to Jews but also in Greco-Roman culture.  How to establish a long tradition, now that the immediacy of the Kingdom spoken of by Jesus and his promised “this-generation” return emphasized by Paul and others had faded? Thinkers like Luke realized the need for a new casting of prophetic interpretation, given this unexpected and unsettling delay; and also given the apparently very small conversion rate in Jerusalem and Israel itself. Note: this need for a new grounding and looking forward was greatly intensified for Palestine-area Jews because of the incredible destruction of life (estimates range from ½ to 1 ½ million), property and even the magnificent Temple in the war of 66-70 (or 73 forMasada—the final stand).     

The answer in an oversimplified nutshell: The Holy Spirit could be used as the claimed agent for introducing what otherwise seemed too much of a disjuncture – the covenant of Jehovah with Israel was envisioned as a New Covenant, for Gentiles as well as Jews, that God had promised and, just that morning was instituting.  He had inaugurated it initially by raising Jesus from the dead (2:30-32).  Peter goes on with our central point by saying, “… having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear” (2:33).  Luke judged that a “wonders and signs” story here (with healings, etc. soon to follow, which may indeed have happened, as they may well have with Jesus) was important evidence.  It would take that to make convincing the major bridge his Acts stories were creating between Jewish and Christian faith.  

Does Peter (or Luke?) Blame All Jews?

 

There is a lot more that is fascinating in this pivotal chapter, along with chapter one of Acts.  We won’t take time to discuss the possible reason for a likely major number inflation by Luke in saying “about 3000 persons were added” (2:41) to the believers after Peter finished speaking.  This despite having charged this Jewish crowd with murder – crucifying Jesus (2:36).  He did not blame the Romans, nor merely the Roman-supporting priestly leadership, with Roman help. 

Was there any major event of tongues speaking at all? If so, did a crowd of at least 3000 gather, listen to Peter’s theologically and politically well-tailored message and convert en masse (less than two months after Peter’s denying Jesus, according to the Gospels, and running away at the crucifixion; not to mention getting his theology down in great detail, before the Holy Spirit had even shown up)?  This is far from the only place we see Luke purposely setting up situations (which may have happened in some fashion) through which to make epic points – vital connectors in the great epic of Israel and the emerging one of the Christian Church.   

Luke certainly didn’t entertain any prospect that the restoration of the Kingdom to Israel would never come.  Did he envision a lengthy period of 2000 years or more before it would happen? It seems neither he nor any of the New Testament authors thought in those terms.  So what else was in Luke’s imaginative choice of events, stories, and the theological spin he gives them? Did he unwittingly set up hundreds of generations of Christians to see the “end times” as certain within their own generation?  Or to be content to see the Kingdom as only spiritual, with no concern about an “end game?”

We will continue to explore these questions…. What are your thoughts?  

Barth, Hitler, Etc.

Athanasius96 and I have had a brief (but important of course!) conversation on his blog at: http://perichoretictheosis.wordpress.com/. It was mainly about Karl Barth (and Bonhoeffer a bit, as related). Even for an analytical kinda guy like me, with relevant education, Barth is tough to follow, but Michael does some great summarizing and deciphering!  Anyway, why bother at all with Barth? A few reasons:

 1) Both conservative and liberal leaders often rate him as the 20th century’s most influential theologian.

(Must have been doing SOMETHING right, huh?)

2) He listened “religiously” to the irreverent Mozart and felt Mozart “heard something ultimately gracious at the core of the universe and sought to express it.”

3) He did theology with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. (Oh… and he was a Swiss “Christian socialist.”)

4) Before you criticize him for #3b, he was among the very first to smell the rat that was Hitler and to write to Christians (and everyone) with severe warnings, ultimately becoming primary author of the important Barmen Declaration which at least supported the small proportion of German churches that opposed or resisted Hitler.  Refusal to sign onto support of Hitler got him kicked out of Germany–we’re lucky he was Swiss. 

 I figure anyone like that might have something useful to say once in a while. 

Any impressions about Karl Barth? Any curiosity?

Do You Experience God? As Holy Spirit?

How do you experience God? Or do you believe you don’t at all?

The last two posts have been on the first historian of the Christian Church, Luke, who wrote a Gospel later titled by his name, and the Acts of the Apostles.  Actually, more on his themes than on Luke as a person.  I noted that Luke emphasizes the “coming” of the Holy Spirit as absolutely necessary and the force behind the implementation of a New Covenant and the empowering of the Apostles and others to live it out and spread it.  For both Luke and Christianity as it developed after him, the Holy Spirit was, and typically is yet known as the “Person” (of the Godhead) working within both believers (toward greater holiness, guidance, empowerment and sometimes phenomenal “gifts of the Spirit”) and non-believers (toward coming to salvation).  Many people view our many and varied experiences of God as coming through the Holy Spirit. 

Rather than go further into theology or history now, I wanted to turn “practical” — to your and my daily and lifespan experiences.  I plan to take this personal and practical approach alternately with one that spends more time on history and ideas. 

So back to my lead-in question: Do you experience God? If so, in what ways or what experience (perhaps one-time), or experiences?

Or are you not consciously aware of experiencing God but perhaps think about him/her and believe you someday (perhaps after death) will have a positive encounter (i.e., experience God)?

 

The Earthly and Cosmic Jesus — Luke and Paul

Jesus as Founder of Christianity?

This post is a continuation of the last one on the Holy Spirit launching the Church, according to Luke in the book of Acts (New Testament).  Acts is a crucial book in how Christianity developed for a number of reasons.  Among them is how it was able to successfully tie together Jesus’ teachings with Paul’s, leading to the kinds of beliefs that competed well and eventually prevailed among many widely varied ones in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.  (This was a long gestation period we often jump right over from our distant vantage point). 

Paul actually says very little about his view or understanding of Jesus’ earthly life and teachings, occasionally appealing to what he’d “received” and more often, assertively, to what was “revealed” (by God) to him–this revelation, with Jesus’ appearance to him, was the authority he cited for his commission as an Apostle.  This is a lot of weight to put on a subjective experience, not validated by any outside source.  Luke seems to recognize this, with other problems, and writes so as to enhance Paul’s authority beyond the base of Paul’s direct followers.  In the process, he harmonizes or glosses over serious conflicts and differences (of real substance) between Paul and the Jerusalem leaders of Jesus-followers (not properly “Christians” at this point). 

There are several themes important in Acts, and this harmonization of Jesus and Paul is perhaps the most important, at least historically.  However, it is fraught with problems both historically and theologically.  We cannot develop them fully right now (or most eyes would probably glaze over). 

Did Paul Observe or Invent his Christ?

What is fascinating to those of us who, either by upbringing, by later choice or by the combination, study the New Testament (NT) probingly is that much of Christianity has come to follow a theology laid out almost solely by Paul, initially.  That is, more so than a focus on the teachings of Jesus.  Some have called this a “theology about Jesus” more than the “theology of Jesus.”

Now, let’s be clear: there are large and important aspects of overlap–things that Jesus apparently taught that Paul did also.  But one of them, difficult for believers even by the end of the NT era, was an expectation of a very soon arrival of the Kingdom of God (or a dramatic earthly expansion from a point of already “among” or “within you,” for Jesus).  For Paul, having to make sense of Jesus’ crucifixion, it was a matter of the return of Christ–definitely expected within his lifetime (or such a timeframe of the 50s to 60s), and a culmination of the victory already won my his “cosmic” Christ (not the same as the modern “New Age” cosmic Christ) over cosmic evil and the “rulers of this age.”     

In brief summary, there was a lot of this and other detail of Pauline thinking that had not gone down well with the more Jewishly-loyal leaders in Jerusalem.  (Note: Paul’s lifetime and the period covered by Acts ended just prior to the devastating Jewish war with Rome, ending in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70.)   For the young Church of the end of the first century (post-70) to be more unified and appear to have grown from a Holy-Spirit led beginning, Luke realized a major work (a “history” of sorts, though a polemical and theological one) needed to be written… and so he did it!

What sense do you have about the Book of Acts? Do you even pay it much attention? Do you agree that it may make Luke, along with his Gospel, the most influential writer of all time, or since the time of Christ?

When the Holy Spirit Reportedly Launched the Church.

Did you realize that to biblical author, Luke, it was not so much Jesus as the Holy Spirit who got the Church off and moving? And it was around this time of year, about 1,982 years ago!

For those who follow a liturgical church year, Jewish holidays or anniversery dates just for fun, we are in the 50-day period between Easter and the Day of Pentecost.  Even if you are not a Pentecostal (with other “charismatics,” the fastest growing segment of global Christianity), you may realize that name derives from what Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, reports to have happened that particular day–some interesting things, to say the least.

For non-Christian readers and those largely uninterested in church matters or Christian theology, let me strongly suggest that this post and related ones to follow are relevant to you, too, in that they will cover things important to any understanding of how Jesus could have unintentionally prompted, and ultimately his followers accomplished, the “taking over” of Jewish scriptures and certain beliefs in the creation of a new religion (or “the true faith,” to many Christians). 

Now Acts is the only New Testament book which contains some narrated history of the first three-plus decades of the early “Church” (when the “Church” in the Christian sense can be said to have begun is uncertain and controversial).  The connection to Pentecostalism is that which the movement is most noted for – tongues-speaking, along with other “gifts of the spirit” not practiced by most denominations.  That is what stands out particularly to most people in the story by Luke about the first “Christian Church” Day of Pentecost – miraculous speaking of numerous Mediterranean-area languages, unknown to the speakers but understood by members of the gathered crowd.

The story goes that the Holy Spirit had just been poured out on the relatively small group of Jesus’ disciples in Jerusalem (apparently “about 120,” Acts 1:15).  To whatever extent this event was real and accurately related, perhaps the earlier “sound like the blowing of a violent wind” (from heaven—2:1) helped, with the subsequent speaking of praises to God in various languages, to draw a large crowd (eventually 3000 or more, “about 3000” being the purported number of converts! [2:41]).  How the scene moved from the “house where they were sitting” (2:2) to enough open space to accommodate at least 3000 people so that Peter could address them all is not explained.

The day of Pentecost was an important Jewish holiday at the time, though the word “pentecost,” meaning fifty, is Greek–“common” (or koine, as opposed to classical) Greek having become the major trade language that was widely known and used, especially for written communication, in the area.  Pentecost was the ancient Jewish Feast of Weeks fifty days after Passover – bringing in the first-fruits of the corn harvest.  In church tradition it was known as Whit Sunday or Whitsunday (the name retained mainly in the UK in recent times).

For our purposes, the main interest is in two things:

1) How Luke uses this event, symbolically and supposedly historically.  The point is his development of the scope of history – how God led the transition from a Jewish interpretation of Israel’s vital covenant relationship with God to an expanded and primarily Gentile (non-Jewish) Christian view of both covenant and cosmic/earthly history – no small stuff here! (I do have serious doubts about the historicity – the numbers claimed as well as just what happened and what Peter may have actually said – doubts reinforced by Luke’s repeated differences of reporting from St. Paul, Josephus, the first century Jewish/Roman-employed historian, and other problems throughout Acts.)

2)    This first “Christian” Pentecost event creates a clear marker for the reported ascension of Jesus.  According to Acts, this took place at least a day or more prior to Pentecost (1:9-2:1).  No big stir is reported (significantly!) by Acts in Jerusalem just following Jesus’ death and storied resurrection.  However, according to the same author here and in his Gospel (Luke), along with at least two other Gospels, Jesus was appearing to various disciples during this period between the resurrection and Pentecost (beginning with the women!).  I’ll later show how Luke skillfully relates Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit and Jesus’ subsequent post-resurrection departure to the theme of the work of the Holy Spirit in such a grand project as the transformation of Judaism into Christianity!

Now, accounts in the Gospels cover a number of astounding and attention-getting events that would indeed have caused a great stir in Jerusalem if they occurred even similarly to what is reported (check especially Matthew for the most incredible of these).  We will later explore what some of these are and why I can so definitely make such a statement.  I do not do it lightly, in that my extensive study has taught me one important lesson, if nothing else: be very careful to not project back into an ancient situation any assumptions as to how things “must have been.” It is all too easy and common to assume things from personal observations and more modern circumstances that may not have been in effect then and there.  This is particularly the case for “defenders of the faith” when they, incidentally, make a case for things about “eyewitness accounts” and the earliest Jesus-followers supposedly founding a unified and continuous Church.

Getting history seriously wrong (or purposely slanting it as well, as I will continue to illustrate with Luke) has been and continues to be the foundation of a host of other misconceptions, often dangerous and damaging ones, that grow from it.  Similarly, assuming stories to be history which are either complete fabrication or major embellishment and exaggeration put onto much simpler, “smaller” core facts has led to the weaving of detailed theologies which have been taken as “Gospel truth.”  It’s more than time we move seriously along with unraveling such treasured but largely impure fabrics and create a more wearable garment.

What are your observations about this important section of Scripture which sets up not only the rest of the book of Acts but virtually all of the traditional understanding of how the Christian Church was launched and empowered from the beginning?