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Course 7 · Lesson 4.4

Acts as history and as theology

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 7 outline

Module 1: The World of the New Testament

  1. Second Temple Judaism in the time of Jesus
  2. Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and other movements
  3. Rome, the Herods and the province of Judea
  4. Hopes, protest and revolt in Jewish political life

Module 2: Jesus in History

  1. Sources for Jesus: Christian, Jewish and Roman
  2. The quests for the historical Jesus and their methods
  3. Criteria of authenticity and their limits
  4. Historical results and Christian confession

Module 3: The Gospels as Books

  1. The gospels and ancient biography
  2. Traditions of authorship and the arguments about them
  3. The synoptic problem: the evidence of agreement and difference
  4. Solutions: Markan priority, Q, Matthean priority and others
  5. Four portraits of Jesus: the distinct emphasis of each gospel

Module 4: Acts and the Spread of the Church

  1. Pentecost and the Jerusalem church
  2. The mission to the Gentiles and the council at Jerusalem
  3. Paul in Acts and in his own letters
  4. Acts as history and as theology

Module 5: Pauline Theology

  1. Paul and his letters: occasion, authorship and order
  2. Gospel, faith and righteousness in Romans and Galatians
  3. Christ, the Spirit and the body of Christ
  4. Reading Paul: traditional, new perspective and other approaches

Module 6: Johannine Theology

  1. The Gospel, the three letters and Revelation: authorship questions
  2. Word, light, life and love in the Gospel of John
  3. The signs and the I am sayings
  4. The Spirit, the community and the Johannine letters

Module 7: Hope, Authority and Church Order

  1. The kingdom of God and last things in Jesus and the apostles
  2. Ways of reading New Testament eschatology
  3. What an apostle was and how apostolic authority worked
  4. Offices and order in the first churches
  5. How Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches read the evidence

Module 8: The Testaments Together

  1. Fulfilment and continuity: how the New Testament uses the Old
  2. Law and covenant across the Testaments
  3. Comparing Paul and John: a method
  4. Shared convictions and meaningful differences

All courses

Program / Course 7: New Testament Theology and History / Lesson 4.4

What you will learn

  • Explain why Luke and Acts are read together as one two-volume work.
  • Describe the main arguments about the genre, date and sources of Acts.
  • Identify the main theological themes of Acts, including the Spirit, witness and God’s plan.
  • Weigh arguments for the reliability of Acts and the criticisms of it.

The big idea

Acts is both a history and a work of theology. The author, who also wrote the Gospel of Luke, set out to tell how the message of Jesus reached from Jerusalem to Rome, and to show that this was the work of God through the Spirit. Scholars debate how accurate its details are, when and where it was written, and what sources it used. These debates do not require choosing between history and theology: ancient historians wrote with purpose, and Luke does so openly.

Key terms

Luke-Acts
A name for the two-volume work formed by the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, both addressed to Theophilus and linked by their prefaces.
Speech in ancient history
Ancient historians such as Thucydides composed speeches suited to the speaker and occasion, aiming to give the general sense of what was said.
Apologetic historiography
A scholarly term for history written to defend or commend a group, as some scholars think Acts does for the church.
Western text
A form of the text of Acts found in Codex Bezae and some other witnesses, about ten percent longer than the usual text, with notable differences.
Witness
A person who testifies to what has been seen and heard. In Acts the apostles are above all witnesses of the resurrection (Acts 1:8, 1:22).
Salvation history
A way of describing the Bible as the story of God’s saving acts through time. Luke-Acts is often read as dividing history into periods of Israel, Jesus and the church.
Dei (it is necessary)
A Greek word Luke uses often to speak of what must happen according to God’s plan, such as the suffering of the Messiah.

Background

The Gospel of Luke and Acts are linked by their openings. The gospel begins with an address to Theophilus and a statement of purpose (Luke 1:1 to 4), and Acts begins by recalling ‘the former treatise’ (Acts 1:1). Together they make up about a quarter of the New Testament, more than the letters of Paul. The author was probably a Gentile Christian well versed in Greek and the Septuagint, and tradition identifies him as Luke, a companion of Paul, a view held by many scholars and doubted by others.

For most of church history Acts was read as a trustworthy account of the apostolic age. In the nineteenth century, F. C. Baur of Tübingen argued that Acts is a late work that softened an original conflict between Peter and Paul. Later scholars such as Martin Dibelius stressed Luke’s skill as a writer and theologian. Recent work debates how to read Acts as ancient literature.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Genre and sources

Acts has been classed in many ways: as ancient historiography, as a biography of the church’s early leaders, as an apologetic work, and, by a few, as something near to an ancient novel because of its adventures and miracles. Most scholars see it as a form of historical writing, in the tradition of Greek and Jewish history, with a strong religious purpose. Its preface and its dates, its names of officials and its detailed itinerary fit this.

The sources are debated. The ‘we’ passages (Acts 16:10 to 17, 20:5 to 21:18, 27:1 to 28:16) may come from a travel diary or from the author’s own experience. For the early chapters, Luke may have used traditions from Jerusalem and Antioch. The speeches are the author’s compositions in the sense of being written by him, but many scholars think they preserve the substance of early preaching, and others see them as largely his own.

Step 2: The question of reliability

Those who defend Acts’ reliability point to places where it fits outside evidence. Local titles such as politarchs at Thessalonica, the proconsul at Corinth and Cyprus, and the details of sea travel in Acts 27 match what is known from inscriptions and ancient sources. William Ramsay, an archaeologist who began as a skeptic, argued in the early twentieth century that Luke was a careful historian. Craig Keener and others have produced very full studies defending Acts’ general credibility.

Critics note that Acts’ agreement with outside evidence on titles and places does not show its stories of miracles or speeches are accurate. They point to differences with Paul’s letters, to the author’s tendency to present the church as united, and to his apparent lack of knowledge of Paul’s letters. Some date Acts to the early second century. Most scholars today place it between about 80 and 95 AD. Others, mainly conservative, date it before 64 AD, noting that Acts does not report the deaths of Paul or James.

Step 3: Theological themes

Acts is shaped by the outline in Acts 1:8: witness in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. The Holy Spirit leads the church at every turning point: at Pentecost, in Samaria, at Cornelius’ house, at Antioch and in the choice of mission (Acts 13:2). The word of God ‘grew and multiplied’ (Acts 12:24). Prayer, signs and bold speech mark the apostles’ work.

Acts also shows that what happens is according to God’s plan, and that the message of Jesus fulfils the Scriptures of Israel. Roman officials often find no fault with the apostles (Acts 18:14 to 15, 23:29, 26:31), which has been read as an argument that Christianity is no threat to Rome. The book ends with Paul in Rome ‘preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him’ (Acts 28:31), an ending that leaves the story open.

Step 4: Holding history and theology together

A common mistake is to ask whether Acts is history or theology. Ancient historians wrote with aims, as Thucydides did in explaining how Athens fell. Luke’s declared aim, that Theophilus may know the certainty of the things in which he was instructed (Luke 1:4), joins both interests.

A fair reader weighs each claim. Where Acts agrees with the letters and outside evidence, it deserves confidence. Where it stands alone, as in its stories of miracles, its trustworthiness depends partly on how one judges the author and the possibility of such events. These are questions on which Christians and non-Christians alike differ.

  1. What do Luke’s preface and the dating of events suggest about the author’s intentions?
  2. Why might the author of Acts present the Roman officials as favorable to the apostles?
  3. How should a reader treat speeches that were written by the author but may preserve earlier preaching?
  4. What is the significance of ending Acts with Paul in Rome and the story unfinished?
  5. Which kinds of evidence would increase or decrease your confidence in a claim in Acts?
  6. How does the outline of Acts 1:8 shape the book?

Examples

Luke’s sea voyage

The voyage and shipwreck in Acts 27 gives specific details of winds, soundings and the handling of the ship. Classicists have shown that these details match what is known of ancient sailing in the Mediterranean, though they differ over whether this proves an eyewitness or a skilled writer.

The speech on the Areopagus

Paul’s speech in Athens (Acts 17:22 to 31) quotes Greek poets and argues from creation to the resurrection. It matches Luke’s literary style and also reflects themes found in Paul’s letters, such as God’s patience and the call to repent. Scholars disagree about how much goes back to Paul.

The Western text

Codex Bezae has a different, longer form of Acts, with added details. Some scholars see it as a later expansion and others as a possible early revision. The existence of two forms shows how the text was copied and edited in the early church.

Different perspectives

Catholic view

The Catholic Church holds Acts as inspired Scripture, with Luke as its author, and uses it for teaching on the Church’s origin and the Spirit’s role. Catholic scholars such as Joseph Fitzmyer have written major critical commentaries, treating Acts as history shaped by theology.

Orthodox view

Orthodox tradition reads Acts in the liturgy during the season after Pascha and sees in it the history of the church’s life in the Spirit. The book supports the Orthodox emphasis on the apostolic community and on Pentecost.

Protestant view

Protestants have valued Acts for its accounts of preaching and conversion. Evangelicals often defend its historical accuracy, as in the work of F. F. Bruce and Craig Keener. Pentecostals see in it a model for the life of the church. Liberal Protestants such as Dibelius gave attention to Luke’s theology and craft.

Critical scholarly view

Scholars generally treat Acts as a work of ancient historiography with strong theological aims. They accept much of its framework while debating its detail, its date and its sources, and they caution against both uncritical trust and blanket doubt.

Why it matters

Acts is the only continuous account of the early church, and the way it is read affects how the beginnings of Christianity are imagined. Learning to read it as both history and theology teaches a way of approaching ancient texts that applies far beyond this book.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Acts is a neutral record without a point of view.

Correction: Acts has a clear aim to show how the gospel spread under the Spirit’s guidance. All ancient history had aims, and they must be read with them in mind.

Misunderstanding: If Acts has theology, it cannot be historical.

Correction: Theological purpose and historical reporting can coexist. Ancient historians combined them, and each claim must be tested.

Misunderstanding: Everything in Acts has been proved by archaeology.

Correction: Inscriptions and ancient sources confirm many names, titles and places. They do not confirm miracles or the content of speeches.

Misunderstanding: Acts was written while Paul was still alive.

Correction: Some scholars think so because the book ends without his trial or death. Most date it later, from about 80 to 95 AD, arguing that the ending is a literary choice. The question is open.

Knowledge check

How are Luke and Acts related?

They are two volumes by the same author, both addressed to Theophilus. The gospel’s story of Jesus leads into Acts’ story of the church, and the two share vocabulary and themes. Together they make up about a quarter of the New Testament.

What are the ‘we’ passages, and what are the proposed explanations?

In parts of Acts the narration switches from ‘they’ to ‘we.’ Some scholars see this as the author’s own presence with Paul, others as a source such as a travel diary, and others as a literary convention for sea voyages.

Give one argument for and one against the reliability of Acts.

For: many names, titles and places in Acts match inscriptions and ancient sources, and its itinerary is detailed. Against: it differs from Paul’s letters on some points, presents the church as more united than Paul’s letters suggest, and includes speeches written in the author’s style.

What are two main themes of Acts?

The Holy Spirit leading the church and empowering witness, and the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome as God’s plan fulfilling the Scriptures. Other themes include prayer, the unity of the church, and the place of Gentiles.

What do scholars disagree about in dating Acts?

Some place it before 64 AD because it does not tell of Paul’s death. Most place it about 80 to 95 AD, and a few place it in the second century. The ending may reflect a literary decision and not ignorance.

Think it through

  1. Does knowing that Luke had a purpose make you trust his account less or more?
  2. What do you find most convincing about Acts as history, and what least?
  3. Why do you think Luke ended the book as he did?
  4. How might a church use Acts without treating it as a rulebook for every detail?

Independent assignment

Reading an Acts speech

In your own notebook, write 350 to 500 words. Read Peter’s speech in Acts 2:14 to 36 or Paul’s speech in Acts 17:22 to 31. Summarize its argument in five sentences, note how it uses Scripture or Greek culture, and write a paragraph on whether you think it is a report or Luke’s composition, giving reasons. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study