The Second Coming

The Blessed Hope, by George Eldon Ladd. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1956. $3.00.

Dr. Ladd of Fuller Seminary has followed up his earlier book, Crucial Questions about the Kingdom of God, by dealing directly with a vital part of the believer’s faith: Just what is the Blessed Hope? “The central thesis of this book,” he says, “is that the Blessed Hope is the second coming of Jesus Christ and not a pretribulation rapture” (p. 11). He continues: “The Blessed Hope is not deliverance from the Tribulation; it is union with the Lord at His coming” (p. 12). He shows that this was the historic view of premillennialists until about 125 years ago when J. N. Darby and others introduced a belief in a pretribulation rapture. Chapter 2, “The Rise and Spread of Pretribulationism,” traces this belief in England and America down to the Scofield Bible but also notes that important premillennialists up to the present day have rejected it. There follows a biblical study of the passages dealing with the Blessed Hope, the Tribulation, the Rapture, the Resurrection, and there is found “no support for the idea that the return of Christ will be divided into two aspects—one before and one after the Tribulation” (p. 89), but rather that the Blessed Hope is that reunion with Christ which “occurs at the Revelation of Christ in glory” (p. 100).

With this aspect of the book not all will agree, but we think Dr. Ladd has proved his point. Perhaps he might have made it even stronger by showing that a correct exegesis of Daniel 9:27 declares Christ, not the Antichrist, to bring sacrifices to end in the midst of the 70th week, thus leaving no foundation for a supposed three and a half-year tribulation under the Antichrist or a supposed seven-year lapse between the rapture and the glorious appearing of the Lord.

This book, however, is not only directed against the idea of a separate rapture but it is also directed against the idea of the “any-moment” coming of Christ, and there the reviewer feels bound to take issue with Dr. Ladd. He argues that, since such events as the tribulation and the preaching of the Gospel in all the world have yet to be fulfilled, the Lord could not come now. The command to watch “cannot be used to prove an any-moment unexpected coming of Christ for which the believer is to watch, for the day of the Lord will come only after definite signs such as the Antichrist and the apostasy which will indicate that the end is near” (p. 109). It is “a false assumption,” he says, “that belief in the any-moment return of Christ is identical with a biblical attitude of expectancy” (p. 153). In a chapter entitled “Watch,” he examines scriptural passages such as Mark 13:33–37 and Luke 12:37–39, and concludes, “The point of the warning is that we cannot say it will be soon; we do not know when” (p. 116).

But the point of the warning in these passages is rather that since we do not know the time, therefore we cannot say it will be either soon or distant and we must always watch. It is just as wrong to say, “My Lord delays His coming” as it is to insist that He must come now. No doubt Dr. Ladd would agree to this. His terminology may be elastic. He says, “If we are awake and Christ comes today, we are ready. If we are awake and Christ does not come until tomorrow, we will still be ready” (p. 115). And yet, in his identification of the pretribulationist view with the any-moment view of our Lord’s coming, and his emphasis on those events which must first be fulfilled, and in repeated rejection of the any-moment coming (“the biblical teaching of watching is not the equivalent of watching for an any-moment of Christ,” p. 163) he gives the impression that our expectancy of the Lord’s return ought not to be such as to allow us to sing, “Jesus may come today.”

Of course, the great problem is just how it is possible to expect Christ to return at any time, even immediately, if we also believe that certain signs of his coming have not yet been fulfilled. The most difficult sign is perhaps the conversion of the Jews. If this outpouring of God’s grace must precede the appearing of Christ, must we not then postpone His coming or at least hold our expectancy in abeyance, until the Jews turn to him? No. In matters of prophecy we have to distinguish between events about which we can have a high level of assurance as to their specific fulfillment, such as the Resurrection and the Judgment, and those of a lower level such as the exact nature of the millennium. And firmly on the higher level of assurance is the joyful duty of watching at every moment for the coming of Christ, for we are told again and again in the plainest language always to be ready because we know not at what hour the Lord will come. On a lower level of assurance are the signs: the salvation of the Jews, antichrist, tribulation. They may be fulfilled or may have been fulfilled in another way than we would expect.

To reject the separate, secret rapture is not to reject the any-moment coming. The any-moment glorious appearing of Christ, whether now, soon, or distant, is in the reviewer’s estimation the Blessed Hope.

ARTHUR W. KUSCHKE, JR.

Not Orthodox

The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, by Hans Hofmann. Scribner’s, New York, 1956. $3.95.

This is a painstaking and faithful interpretive summary of the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, which traces its development from its earliest inception in his pastoral experiences in Detroit to its mature expression in The Nature and Destiny of Man and Faith and History. Hofmann uses a great number of quotations, often letting Niebuhr speak for himself.

Even though Niebuhr’s major works are readily accessible, a summarization is not out of place. An understanding of the background and development of Niebuhr’s thought is important, and this cannot be had by reading even his most systematic work. To get a rounded view without such an interpretive summary one would have to make a long and arduous study of a number of Niebuhr’s works.

Hofmann’s treatment is divided into four major sections: “The Beginning,” “Religion and Society,” “Sin as Man’s Severance of His Relatedness to God and Society,” and “Faith and Society as the Poles of the Original and True State of Man.” The treatment, therefore, revolves around the correlation of God, man, and society, in which man is the key link (pp. 91, 110). As Niebuhr sees it, the problem is not in God or in religion as such, nor is it in the external conditions of society. The problem lies first of all in man himself. Because of a disturbance of man’s relationship to God, his relation to society and society itself are disturbed (pp. 114, 236 et. al.).

The main source of difficulty is found in man as sinner (p. 113 f.). Hofmann believes that Niebuhr’s entire theology may be expounded around this theme. His book was originally published in Switzerland under the title, The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, in the Light of His Doctrine of Sin.

Sin is indeed a major theme in Niebuhr’s thought. In terms of it he has criticized some of the most cherished tenets of social and theological liberalism. But to look at Niebuhr’s position from the biblical point of view is to rejoice on the one hand that he recognizes sin at all and especially that he sees the spiritual nature of sin; and yet it is to regret on the other hand that he refuses to recognize, e.g., an actual pre-fall state and an historical fall. Looking at man here and now, Niebuhr says, without any concern for his historical origin or development, what tools do we need to interpret his present condition? The answer is that we need certain myths that have come to us in the Christian tradition: e.g., the fall and original sin. The Christian doctrines are myths, supra-scientific, imaginative expressions which must be taken seriously but not literally, which God has used for his revelation of himself and of the state of man. As with the other doctrines of the Christian faith, we have in Niebuhr’s view of sin a basic reconstruction of the biblical position.

The question of myth has been widely discussed lately, and the controversy is by no means closed. Very interesting is Hofmann’s comparison of the position of Niebuhr and Rudolf Bultmann, who is famous for his program of demythologization (p. 75 ff.). Niebuhr sees the supposed myths in the Scriptures as indispensable vehicles of divine revelation, while Bultmann finds the essential thing in the existential meaning underneath the form of mythical speech. But it is clear that Niebuhr is as radical as Bultmann in relegating biblical material to the realm of myth (cf. p. 92 f.). For both men such doctrines as the original sinless state, the fall, the preexistence of Christ, the doctrine of the two natures of Christ, the ascension, the session on God’s right hand, and His coming again in glory are myths and cannot be taken literally in any sense. Observing closely one sees that the current fray is a variation on the theme of supernaturalism versus anti-supernaturalism. Whatever remnants of supernaturalism might remain in Niebuhr (as Tillich claims), he is quite solidly anti-supernaturalistic.

With this in mind, it is noteworthy that Hofmann’s book is almost entirely free of criticism. In addition, we note that Hofmann has not fully laid bare the change of meaning that standard theological terms have undergone in Niebuhr’s thought. I would judge that while Hofmann has been faithful in his presentation, he has pictured Niebuhr as somewhat too orthodox, just because he has not always let Niebuhr’s terms be seen in their changed meaning. Niebuhr’s theology is indeed a modification of liberalism, but it is in no instance a return to orthodoxy.

ROBERT D. KNUDSEN

Wisdom Of Prophets

The Parables of the Old Testament, by Clarence E. Macartney. Baker, Grand Rapids Michigan. $2.00.

There is an abundance of material on the parables of the New Testament, but very little that deals with the parables of the Old Testament. In his research preparatory to the writing of this volume, Dr. Macartney discovered that neither in America nor in Great Britain could he find a single book that dealt with the parables of the Old Testament. In the preparation of this volume, therefore, he described his feeling as being similar to the experience of the men of the sixteenth century who sailed upon seas that never before had been cleft by the keel of a ship.

Dr. Macartney finds that the principal difference between the parables of Christ and those of the Old Testament consists in the fact that nearly all of the parables of our Lord taught spiritual truth that is timeless, whereas the parables of the Old Testament were messages for a special occasion. Despite this fact, the author maintains that the parables of the Old Testament teem with suggestions of truth, which are relevant for any age, and in many instances they may be made the vehicle of evangelical truth.

Included in this volume are two fables, the only ones in the Bible, that of the Trees and that of the Thistle and Cedar. The general purpose of the fable and parable is the same, said Dr. Macartney, to illustrate moral and spiritual truth by comparison with what actually transpires. But the fable differs from the parable in that in the fable the subjects of the mineral or vegetable or animal kingdom “feign to speak and act with human interest and passion.”

The content of this volume will provide biblical material that will be new and fresh to most congregations.

The nine chapters in this volume, as Dr. Macartney expresses it, represent the garnered wisdom of prophets, chroniclers, and seers, some of them known and some of them unknown, but all worthy of a better acquaintance.

Dr. Macartney has written scores of volumes, but it is doubtful if any contains the marked originality, vivid description and powerful presentation equal to this work produced in his earlier ministry and reprinted for readers of today.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

Typology?

Devotional Studies of Old Testament Types, by Fred H. Wight. Moody, Chicago, 1956. $3.50.

Perhaps no area of biblical interpretation has suffered more acutely at the hands of the higher critics than Old Testament typology. The reviewer once sat under a seminary professor who hurled the typical approach wholesale to the rubbish heap of antiquated imaginations. Wight justifies the method by appealing to Jesus’ and Paul’s use of it, an observation that ought to silence all objections.

Discreetly the author, a Baptist minister, in his introduction first defines a type as “a person, thing or event in the Old Testament designed (underlining my own) to represent or prefigure some person, thing or event in the New Testament.” It is regrettable that his presentation of the subject in many instances repudiates that definition by confusing and equating analogies with types. We could illustrate at length for the examples are numerous, but several will suffice. All are taken from the chapter on I and II Samuel: “The Kingdom of Saul, a Type of the Self-Life”; “David at the Cave of Adullam, a Type of Christ Our Captain”; “Bringing the Ark to Jerusalem, a Type of Revival in the Church”; and “Mephibosheth, The Type of a Sinner Saved by Grace.” Parallels of this kind may be drawn by analogy, but they certainly do not belong to typology. Incidentally, this mode of exposition is largely responsible for bringing typology as such into disrepute.

Wight is at his best when he deals with characters who prefigure Christ, like Joseph and Moses, studies of interest and value. Elsewhere, however, he tends, even within the bounds of legitimate typology, to fanciful and exaggerated conclusions which bear reminiscences of Origen’s allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament and Augustine’s comments on the parables. This of course critically weakens the historical impact. He further forces certain features into his dispensational eschatology.

The book exhibits a tendency to needless repetition, at times a lack of correlation of points and occasional deceptive literalisms. Though solidly evangelical and loyal to the Scriptures as the fully-inspired Word of God, it is difficult to recommend this volume. It will confuse and mislead the theologically unoriented and prove too much of a surface study for preachers who will want to stretch their mental muscles with works like those of Fairbairn, Habershon and Baron.

RICHARD ALLEN BODEY

Perfumed, Beribboned

The Old Story of Salvation, by Sophia Lyon Fahs. Starr King and Beacon, Boston. $3.00.

It is evidently the author’s purpose in this book to retell the Story in the Bible (she would distinguish this from the story of the Bible) as a living narrative which may be found woven through the largely extraneous material from Genesis to Revelation; and then to discuss the meaning and significance of that story for the purposes of modern, liberal religion. The book is in two parts. The first is the aforementioned historical narrative and is a very fine, condensed Bible Story which includes, uncritically, the traditional theophanies, miracles, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, etc., to the end of the Revelation. The second part, which is the meat of the author’s writing is called “The Unanswered Question: ‘What is Truth?’ ” In this last 40% of the book, she offers her opinions on the religion which she believes may be found, not by mutilating the story, but by understanding it as a myth and fable. The result is a perfumed and beribboned Hegelian idealism in modern dress. Except that not even Hegel would have taken such liberties with traditional religious concepts.

The author, who has no evident use for orthodoxy, whether traditional or “new,” identifies herself with the Council of Liberal Churches. She explains, in a burst of confidence, that she developed her ideas while working with the boys and girls in the Church School of the Riverside Church of New York City.

One of the milder views she elaborates in the discussion section is the now familiar one, that the “original” Christian faith was “not what Jesus believed, but what the Christian church early came to believe about Jesus.” And the author believes that her’s is “not a study of history directly, but rather of a great tradition which has molded history.”

She feels that it is “crude reasoning” to present the death of Christ as an atonement. He died, essentially for the same reason that Socrates and Ghandi died, an ideal person going down in defeat, despised, rejected, his cause apparently lost. Moreover, Jesus never thought of himself as a Messiah, never sent out disciples to preach and baptize in His name, never would have claimed to be the only savior among the world’s saviors. One’s heart goes out to those boys and girls at the Riverside Church.

G. AIKEN TAYLOR

Popular Biography

By Faith Alone, by W. J. Kooiman. Philosophical, New York, 1955. $6.00.

It is not necessary for any reviewer to tell evangelical Christians how valuable Dr. Martin Luther, whose biography is ably and attractively presented in this excellent book, is for our present-day evangelical believers who adhere to salvation by faith in Christ without works. But there may be a need to introduce the readers to Professor Kooiman of the University of Amsterdam since he may not as yet be known to many evangelical Christians in America. To say it briefly, he is instructor of church history in the University of Amsterdam and is a most influential preacher and radio speaker in the Netherlands, whose interest in Luther is deep and inspiring. Believing that evangelical Christendom must hold to the doctrine of God’s free grace in Christ Jesus, he proclaims this precious doctrine with a conviction that stirs and enlivens those who listen to him. His Life of Martin Luther was written as a pastor who keeps in mind his parishioners, both young and old. In 1954 the reviewer read it in Holland in the original. Later, he read it in a German translation, and now he has read it in an English translation by Dr. Bertram Lee Woolf which is so masterfully done that no fault can be found with it. Dr. Kooiman’s biography of Luther is not scientific in the strict sense of the term, but rather is popular. Yet in accuracy, depth, and comprehensiveness, so far as Luther’s life and work are concerned, it is truly scientific within its scope. The reviewer recommends Kooiman’s By Faith Alone to all evangelical Christians and hopes that it will become as popular in the English-speaking countries as in the Netherlands and Germany.

JOHN THEODORE MUELLER

That indefatigable searcher for facts, Wilbur M. Smith, reports some interesting findings in Moody Monthly (Aug., 1956). An analysis of the 29th volume of Who’s Who in America, that is, of pages 13–112, yields this result, namely that 30% of those listed indicated some religious affiliation. Of the 1650 biographical sketches 53 were of clergymen. “The list reveals more Episcopalians and Presbyterians than all the other denominations combined.” However, “by far the greater number of the more prominent educators, scientists and writers do not indicate any religious affiliation. The same goes for playwrights, musicians, radio and TV men.” What mean these figures? Has religion become peripheral among those who mould the American mind? Or are they merely too shy to disclose their deepest loyalties?

“All this, and Revival, too” thus runs an article in The Christian Herald (Sept., 1956) on the Sector Plan of the American Baptist Convention. This plan is helping the churches utilize their total resources in new communities. During the past five years more than 3000 churches, Baptists and other communions, have used the plan with remarkable results in spiritual growth and power.

Canon Wedel writes a welcome warning in The Journal of Religious Thought (Spring-Summer, 1955) on “The Meaning of the Church”:

The phenomenal growth of the Pentecostal ‘sects,’ which ignore, for a time at least, the call to erect Gothic shrines, could remind us of the fact that “Church” in the New Testament, meant first of all a people of God united by a common faith and the living presence of Christ as Holy Spirit and not by institutional ambitions.

Wedel decries the mania for pompous church buildings in America. Air-conditioning, luxurious appointments, expensive side chapels and streamlined nurseries are the order of the day. But can they ever be a substitute for what really matters in the house of God? Wedel speaks prophetically when he says that “the body of Christ is something more than genial sociability. It stands under the judgment of holiness.”

Cross Currents, a Catholic journal, contains a challenging article by Father Henri Dumery on “The Temptation to Do Good” (Winter, 1956). It is a serious and eloquent plea for full religous liberty. Read and ponder: “What faith finds is God Himself, and not dogmas”; or: “But we do not become believers by assimilating a theory, reciting a history or riveting together syllogisms”; or: “Faith does not recopy a formula, and it does not blindly underwrite a formula; Faith opens itself to a presence, it receives a new life, and is bound to a new significance of existence of history.” But what elates both mind and heart are words like these: “Only the belief that liberty of conscience is inalienable will re-establish true faith; with the correlative paradox of a sincere unbelief and an apparent incredulity which is faith within non-belief.”

Will some of the Catholic bishops in beautiful Spain take Father Dumery’s words to heart? This Catholic priest is absolutely opposed to any form of coercion against unbeliever, schismatic or heretic. Truth, argues Father Dumery, is always ready to hear St. Paul; it will refuse to listen to Torquemada.

Professor Bela Vassady, an exile from stricken Hungary, in an article in Theology Today (July, 1956) plows a deep furrow as he writes on “The Power of Christlike Living.” Over against the cults of assurance Vassady stresses the need of negative thinking in terms of the Gospel’s call for self-depreciation, self-denial, humility and repentance. But though we are summoned to lose our lives for Christ’s sake, this demand “is always embedded in the proclamation of a new, divine positiveness.” The bootstrap strategy of the cults of assurance, Vassady rightly maintains, cannot lastingly dissolve man’s feelings of loneliness, emptiness and insecurity. But where men experience by faith the divine pardon of their sins, wondrous powers of the spirit are being released. In view of man’s introvert face-saving, that is, bribing one’s own conscience or the ever present extrovert or manward face-saving—“the selling of lies, the playing up of vices for virtues in the sight of others,” or, what is by far the worst, Godward or vertical face-saving—“the most stupid as well as wicked act of man the sinner to strive to deceive God and to believe in the success of his Godward camouflage,” there is but one remedy, namely saving faith! Concludes Vassady: “Saving faith is just the reverse of the complex of facesaving. Whoever dies and is risen with the Lord is saved by faith, and no longer needs to take refuge in a technique of face-saving. The crisis of facing the loss of faith is by such a man again and again overcome by a voluntary act of face-renunciation in the sight of the Lord who died for him.” This is sound pastoral theology because these insights are rooted in God’s holy Word.

Writing on “The Literature of the Fulton Street Prayer Meeting” (Moody Monthly, Jan., 1957), Wilbur M. Smith is convinced that “the Revival of 1858 is the kind of revival America preeminently needs today: caused by a mighty outpouring of the Spirit of God, on every city and hamlet, from the Atlantic to the Pacific; a time of contrition and confession of sin; a time when waves of prayer will sweep over our land; when noonday meetings will see greater audiences than Sunday morning services now see; when ministers with even few gifts well speak with new power never before known by them, and will see hundreds coming forward to receive Christ in an otherwise ordinary service. This could be more nation-wide than any religious movement ever known in America, if a great work of God results from the Billy Graham campaign in New York, and millions are allowed to see, watching televised services in their own homes, the mighty working of the Spirit of God bringing eternal life to those who are receiving Christ as their Saviour.”

Indeed! Be it so! The Lord’s arm is not shortened that he cannot revive his people and with them this great land of ours. Though we perceive it not, spiritual battles are going on in our midst. God’s Spirit is striving mightily with the minds of men. May we acknowledge Christ’s absolute Lordship in all of life, whether in school or shop, home or hearth, in national and international relations, or in our relations with our neighbours of another race. Sursuam corda! Lift up your hearts! Regem habemus! We have a King, His name is Immanuel, God with us, the herald and bringer of life, joy and grace.

The Book of the Acts should need no commendation to Christian preachers. The minister who wants to be sure that he stands in the true apostolic succession will turn to this book time and again. What was the message that the apostles preached, and how did they preach it? How did they adapt their presentation of the message to their varying congregations—Jewish, God-fearing and Gentile? What part did their personal experience of Christ play in their preaching? The preacher who looks for the answers to such questions as these in this book will certainly find it, and if he tests his own preaching in the light of that answer, he will know how far he falls short of the apostolic example.

The Book of the Acts was clearly written as the sequel to the Third Gospel, which is the “former treatise” referred to in Acts 1:1. This conclusion is not based simply on the fact that both works are dedicated to Theophilus, but on wider considerations of style, language and outlook. They were intended to circulate as two parts of one historical work, tracing the beginnings of Christianity from the birth of John the Baptist to Paul’s imprisonment in Rome. It has been suggested that the author projected a third part, in which the story would be carried on possibly to the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70; but this cannot be proved.

When the four Gospels began to be bound up together and to circulate as one collection, early in the second century, the two parts of this historical work were separated from each other. Part I was henceforth part of the fourfold Gospel, and Part II had to pursue a career of its own, under the title The Acts of the Apostles, which it acquired soon after the middle of the second century.

Pivot Book Of New Testament

But the necessity of pursuing a career of its own did not reduce its importance. On the contrary, it occupied an influential position as the pivot book of the New Testament (to use Harnack’s term). It provided the link between the two chief collections of canonical Christian literature—the fourfold Gospel and the Pauline epistles. It supplied at once the sequel to the fourfold Gospel and the historical background to the Pauline epistles. Nor did it only supply the historical background; it supplied most cogent evidence of the reality of Paul’s apostolic commission. A reader of the Pauline letters might conclude that they were written by a man who was anxious to assert his independent apostleship in the face of others who denied it; but how could he assess the validity of the arguments on the one side and on the other? If his only other source of information was the fourfold Gospel, he would find not the slightest reference to Paul there; and he might well believe that the weight of the evidence favored the arguments for the superior authority of those who were companions and apostles of our Lord in the days of His flesh. But no one could read the Acts without realizing that Paul was a genuine apostle of Christ, independently commissioned by Him, and proving by the “signs of an apostle” which accompanied his ministry the truth of his claim that he came in no way behind “the very chiefest apostles” (2 Cor. 12:11).

On the other hand, the Acts served another useful purpose in the second century by showing that Peter and the rest of the twelve were as truly apostles as Paul. When Marcion issued his challenge to the apostolic churches and maintained that all the apostles had corrupted the pure gospel of Christ except Paul, and that even his letters had to be purified from judaizing interpolations, this further value of the Acts came to be appreciated as it could not have been before.

First Century Work

Yet the Book of the Acts is no second-century production, reflecting an age when the antitheses of Paulinism and Judaizing Christianity had been reconciled in a more comprehensive unity. This was the view of the Tubingen theologians of last century, and it has found some advocates in more recent years; but to the historian and archeologist Acts has all the marks of a first-century work. Sir William Ramsay’s studies in this field may have gone out of fashion in many quarters (but not in all, as their recent reissue by a well-known publishing house indicates); but the solid basis which he provided for the first-century dating and high historical value of Acts can hardly be overthrown.

The traditional account is that this book, along with the “former treatise” was not only the work of a first-century author, but of a friend and companion of Paul’s. This account is well founded. It is supported by the most natural explanation of the three “we” sections of Acts—the sections which begin at Chs. 16:10; 20:5, and 27:1, three points where the narrative suddenly changes from the third person “they” and “them” to the first person “we” and “us”. For the most natural explanation of the threefold transition is that the narrator is adopting this unobtrusive means of informing his readers: “At this point I joined the party and was present at the incidents which follow.”

The traditional account goes further, and names the author: he was Luke, referred to on a few occasions by Paul as one of his companions (cf.Philem. 24; 2 Tim. 4:11), and described by him once as “the beloved physician” (Col. 4:14). A careful examination of Col. 4:10–14 indicates that Luke was a Gentile Christian; and the general outlook of the narrative of Acts suggests a Greek author rather than a Jewish one. A document from the later part of the second century makes Luke a native of Antioch in Syria—a highly probable statement. Luke plays such an insignificant part by name in the New Testament that the ascription to him of the Third Gospel and Acts is not likely to have been invented. If the medical element in the vocabulary of the two books can no longer be used to prove that they were written by a physician, it certainly retains considerable illustrative value.

Major And Minor Themes

The author is specially interested in tracing the rise of Gentile Christianity: he tells first how the good news was brought from Jerusalem to Antioch, and then how the chief apostle to the Gentiles carried it throughout the chief provinces of the eastern Roman Empire; at last he brings him to Rome, and ends his narrative with the picture of Paul in the imperial city, a prisoner indeed, but carrying on his apostolic witness to all his visitors under the very eyes of the praetorian guard, without let or hindrance. This picture is the climax of his insistence throughout that Christianity is no threat to imperial law and order—that, in fact, responsible officials in various provinces of the Empire had acknowledged the legality of the Gospel itself and of its messengers. Acts was surely written at a time when this apologetic emphasis was necessary, and Theophilus was probably typical of the more thoughtful members of the Roman upper middle-class who could be trusted to give an unprejudiced hearing to an informed account of the rise and progress of Christianity, instead of accepting the popular misrepresentations.

But many would ask why the advance of Christianity had so regularly been attended by serious disorders, if it was such a law-abiding movement. Luke has his answer to this question: sometimes the Gospel threatened vested property interests, and therefore aroused the hostility of people like the owners of the fortune telling slave-girl at Philippi and the silversmiths of Ephesus; but more often the disorders were stirred up by the leaders of Jewish communities in the various places to which the Gospel came. They were unwilling to accept it themselves, and stirred up riots to try to prevent others from accepting too. So, alongside the major theme of the book, the progressive acceptance of the Gospel by Gentiles, there runs a minor theme, its progressive rejection by the bulk of the Jewish people. And if the major theme reaches its climax in Acts 28:30–31, the minor theme reaches its climax in the verses immediately preceding, where a prolonged disputation between Paul and the Roman Jews is concluded with his quotation of Isaiah 6:9–10 and his announcement that the Gentiles will receive the salvation which the Jews refuse.

The transition from the early days of the Jerusalem church to the Gospel’s forward movement is provided in Chs. 6 and 7 by the story of Stephen. Not only does this story introduce us for the first time to the young man Saul (Acts 7:58); not only did the persecution which followed Stephen’s death drive out many Christians from Jerusalem to carry the Gospel as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch (Acts 11:19); but the very character of Stephen’s distinctive ministry and the terms of his defence foreshadow the church’s Gentile mission. It is remarkable how many of the dominant themes of the New Testament find incipient expression in Stephen’s speech.

Dr. A. T. Pierson wrote a series of studies in Acts which he entitled The Acts of the Holy Spirit. This might well have been the title of the book itself. For the emphasis on the person and activity of the Holy Spirit is even more basic to the book than its apologetic insistence. Right at the beginning of the book, the risen Lord promises the baptism of the Spirit to His followers (Ch. 1:5, 8), and this promise is fulfilled for Jewish believers in Ch. 2, and for Gentile believers in Ch. 10. The apostles and other Christian leaders (like Stephen and Philip) not only preach in the power of the Spirit, but their movements are under His direction; they are witnesses to Christ, but the Spirit is the primary Witness, whose testimony confirms theirs (Acts 5:32).

Thus, in the ministry of Paul in particular, we find a noteworthy combination of the Spirit’s guidance with long-range strategic planning. And there is no suggestion that the two are incompatible. Even if Paul was making for Ephesus when the Spirit diverted him in Acts 16:6–7, the route which he was obliged to take was vindicated from the standpoint of long-term Christian strategy, for it meant that he evangelized the circumference of a circle running through the lands east and west of the Aegean Sea before he settled down for nearly three years in Ephesus, at the centre of that circle, and carried on a more effective campaign of evangelization than would have been possible at the earlier date.

The book may be divided into six sections: (1) The Birth of the Church (Chs. 1–5); (2) Persecution leads to Expansion (Chs. 6:1–9:31); (3) The Acts of Peter and the Beginnings of the Gentile Mission (Chs. 9:32–12:25); (4) Antioch becomes a Missionary Church (Chs. 13:1–16:5); (5) The Evangelization of the Aegean Shores (Chs. 16:6–19:41); (6) How Paul realized his Hope of seeing Rome (Chs. 20:1–28:31).

Tool For Exposition

As I write this, I survey a lengthy array of commentaries on my shelves, many of which I have found of great use in my own attempts to expound the Book of the Acts. The five encyclopaedic volumes entitled The Beginnings of Christianity, edited by Foakes Jackson and Kirsopp Lake (Macmillan, 1920–33), are indispensable to the student, though the preacher who reads CHRISTIANITY TODAY will wish to replace its general liberal emphasis by something more positive. R. B. Rackham’s commentary, The Acts of the Apostles, published in the “Westminster Commentaries” in 1902, is still one of the best expositions of the English text. R. J. Knowling’s commentary on the Greek text in the “Expositor’s Greek Testament” (1900) remains a work of high value. A more homiletic treatment is provided in such works as The Preacher’s Homiletic Commentary: Acts, by Thomas Whitelaw (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1896), C. J. Vaughan, The Church of the First Days Lectures on the Acts of the Apostles (Macmillan, 1890), and G. Campbell Morgan, The Acts of the Apostles (recently reprinted). From another angle, the recent Lowell Lectures by Dr. Henry J. Cadbury, The Book of Acts in History (Harper, 1955), throw the light of the latest research on the historical worth of Acts, providing a worthy sequel to Sir William Ramsay’s St. Paul the Traveller (14th edition, London, 1920).

F. F. BRUCE

The Editors commend in addition to the commentaries mentioned above The Book of the Acts, by F. F. Bruce in the New International Commentary on the New Testament (1954). Not without cause the statement has been made: “The best major commentary on Acts that has appeared in the last fifty years.—EDS.