A FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN LITERARY ANALYSIS OF THE

TRANSFORMATION NARRATIVES IN LUKE-ACTS

By

Caren Salter Silvester

A dissertation

Submitted in partial fulfillment

Of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Education in the School of Education

Bob Jones University

July 1994

A FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN LITERARY ANALYSIS OF THE

TRANSFORMATION NARRATIVES IN LUKE-ACTS

by

Caren Salter Silvester

Approved:

Ronald O. HortonCommittee Chairman

William H. YostCommittee Member

Ward AndersenCommittee Member

Guenter E. SalterCommittee Member

Accepted:

H. Nelson McGeochDean, School of Education

Daniel L. UnruhRegistrar

June 9, 1994Date

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank all of the members of my committee for their gracious and expeditious handling of this paper. Dr. Bill Yost and Dr. Ward Andersen offered thoughtful and helpful critiques of the manuscript. My deepest gratitude goes to Dr. Ron Horton, my director as well as department chairman, whose course in biblical literature gave me the idea for this narrative approach. His painstaking editing of the original drafts resulted in a much clearer and more precise expression of these concepts. I appreciate greatly his kindness, encouragement, and friendship during this process and, indeed, over the past twenty years.

Most of all I wish to thank my parents, Guenter and Johanna Salter, for their unwavering love and support throughout this long doctoral endeavor. It is to them that I dedicate this work.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iiiTABLE OF CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ivChapter

I. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Advantages of a Literary Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

The Authorized Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Fundamentalist Distinctives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

Divine Authorship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Potential hazards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23The Transformation Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

II. THE MIRACLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33The Nature Miracles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36The Healing Miracles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40The Exorcisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54The Rescues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57The Punitive Miracles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

III. THE CONVERSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64The Three Conversions in Luke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67The Three Central Conversions in Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

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Chapter I

INTRODUCTION

Although C. S. Lewis (1969) once claimed that “our age has, indeed, coined the expression ‘the Bible as literature.’” (p. 142), the treatment of the Bible as literature is at least as old as Origen’s and Augustine’s allegorical interpretations of it. Lewis, of course, was complaining about the twentieth century’s refusal to regard the Bible as a uniquely sacred book, and he argued—correctly, as it turns out—that any culture viewing Scripture in a purely secular light would soon ignore it completely.

Lewis properly cautioned against a detached aesthetic veneration of Scripture to the exclusion of theological considerations. That the Bible is more than just great literature, nevertheless, does not mean that its literary status is an illegitimate focus of exploration for Christians. Leland Ryken (1987b), an evangelical who has published extensively in the field of New Testament literary criticism, affirms: “The New Testament is more than a work of literature, but it is not less” (p. 15). Ryken (1984b) frequently points out that the artistry and message of the Bible are complementary and inseparable: “The literary features of the New Testament cannot be separated from its religious meanings, a fact that has unjustifiably inhibited discussion of literary traits that are definitely present in the New Testament” (pp. 2-3).

A frequent hesitancy on the part of fundamentalist Christians to analyze the Bible in a clearly literary manner may stem from a well-intentioned desire to avoid subjecting God’s Word to human criticism. Christians justifiably fear a demystification of the sacred. “If the artistry of Scripture is detached from the message and authority of Scripture and its divine origin is disregarded, literary analysis can promote unbelief” (Horton, 1988, p. 270). Paying close attention to the Bible’s literary features, though, need not preclude acknowledgment of its status as the authoritative revelation of a God whose thoughts are far above ours (Isaiah 55:9).

Quite simply, the Bible demands to be interpreted as literature because it is literature. We can no more successfully divorce its theological content from its literary form than apostate criticism has been able to separate the spiritual values of Scripture from its inerrancy and historicity. Furthermore, the Bible is literature of the highest order. It is a conjunction of history and literature, but to conclude that it cannot be perfectly literary because it is not purely literary (as even Ryken seems to imply) is to limit the capability of the Divine Author. If the Bible is indeed literature, it is the absolute best.

It is axiomatic that good literature teaches and delights—in fact, it teaches by delighting. As Richard Pervo (1987) remarks, the Bible presents “edifying messages in attractive form,” although regrettably “most studies have concentrated upon the profit and ignored the delight” (p. xi). What is often unrecognized is that our God is a God of aesthetics as well as didacticism. For example, roughly one third of the Hebrew Bible is poetry (a fact not immediately recognizable from most English translations). We should thus assume that the distinction between poetry and prose was recognized by God, and that He deliberately chose to render some parts of His message to us in poetry and certain others in more prosaic language as each medium best suited His purpose. We have an obligation to take seriously what God takes seriously: if He thinks a distinction is

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important, we should, too. A knowledge of literary criticism can help us identify and fully appreciate these literary distinctives of the text.

Further, Scripture’s prose parts often rise above ordinary prose in their being more imaginative and artfully shaped. Literary devices appear with more frequency and to a higher degree than in regular writing. Geoffrey Nuttall (1978) singles out the “imaginative . . . quality” (p. 6) of the New Testament stories for especial praise in his study of Luke’s narrative technique. John Gottcent (1979) concurs: “The world of the Bible is a world of pictures and images” (p. 116). The notable Elizabethan critic Sir Philip Sidney in his Defence of Poesy (1595/1989) used David’s Psalms and Christ’s parables as his supreme examples of imaginative literature. Reading the Bible requires imaginative participation to an unusual degree, for the Bible engages our emotional as well as our intellectual energies. Its pages are replete with stories of betrayal and loss, of espionage and courageous conflict, of triumphant joy and quiet peace. It contains passages of exquisitely crafted and searingly beautiful poetry; its vibrant sermons grip our attention with their urgency; its pithy exhortations stun us with their force. “The Bible exemplifies to perfection—both in the deliberately aesthetic portions and as a whole—the qualities of beauty, truth, and moral goodness. These qualities of the Scriptures are reflections of the attributes of God” (Christian Teaching, 1979, p. 19). And the artistry of the Bible reinforces its themes, augmenting its spiritual impact on us.

Advantages of a Literary Approach

Literary criticism can be positively viewed as a complementary, rather than competing, approach to biblical interpretation. Mark Allan Powell (1992) laments: “The Scripture is still debated in theological circles, and the merit of the Bible as a work of literature is still questioned in literary ones” (p. xiii). Meir Sternberg (1985), a prominent Old Testament literary critic, states that the Bible’s “discourse remains indivisible” (p. 17), refuting attempts to separate its historical, theological, and literary aspects; consequently, “the question is how rather than whether the literary coexists with the social, the doctrinal, the philosophical” (p. 35). Literary criticism can contribute methodology and insights that supplement, not supplant, traditional biblical exegesis. As Powell (1991) puts it: “Literary criticism does not answer all the questions that people of faith ask of scripture. It does, however, answer some of those questions and, furthermore, does so in ways that other approaches cannot” (p. 107). Powell (1992) decries the implicit separation of the medium from the message in traditional “Bible as Literature” courses: “Many colleges and universities have offered classes on ‘The Bible as Literature,’ but such a title usually implies that the Bible is to be examined as literature instead of as scripture. Aesthetic evaluation is emphasized as distinct from theological interpretation” (p. 3). He applauds the recent trend toward a convergence of methods, which uses literary criticism as a means to the end of theological interpretation. In agreeing with Powell, we need not, of course, claim as much for the approach as Leonard Thompson (1978), who insists that literary criticism should serve as the authoritative basis for all Scriptural interpretation: “Literary criticism, with its focus upon the language of the Bible and the world created through that language, is the foundation upon which all historical and theological criticisms build. Literary criticism should be at the center of all biblical interpretation” (p. 9). A clue to the reason for Thompson’s more

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radical position lies perhaps in the subjectivism implied by his phrase “the world created through that language”; language, of course, does not in itself create reality.

Whatever rank we might assign literary criticism in the hermeneutical hierarchy, its importance in contemporary efforts toward biblical interpretation is now generally acknowledged by liberal critics as well as those of a more conservative bent. Alter and Kermode (1987a) celebrate what they view as a refreshing renaissance of interest in Scripture by literary critics: “Indeed, it seems we have reached a turning point in the history of criticism, for the Bible, under a new aspect, has reoccupied the literary culture” (p. 3). Wesley Kort (1988) agrees: “The religious meaning and significance of biblical material and its literary and textual form are inseparable” (p. xi). William Beardslee (1970) maintains the necessity of an approach that gives proper recognition to Scripture’s manner of expression:

In the first place, no account of faith is adequate which fails to reckon with faith’s expression in imagination and creativity. . . . Quite apart from how it interprets the specific content of these forms of faith, an adequate theology must find a place for faith, an adequate theology must find a place for aesthetic creativity. For such creativity is a central component not merely in the “human response” of faith, but also in the very structure which evokes faith and thereby enables men to respond to it. (p. 75)

To understand fully Go’s communication to us, we must be willing to use every tool that can contribute to that apprehension.

Traditional methods of biblical exegesis have tended either to lapse into disintegrationist source studies or to focus exclusively on the elucidation of theological concepts. Kenneth Gros Louis (1974b) states the difference between those methods and literary criticism thus:

Literary critics, in considering the Bible primarily and fundamentally as a literary document, believer in the creative power of language to affect our lives, and we deeply appreciate the Bible’s portrayal of human situations and characters. The questions literary critics ask differ from those asked by biblical scholars. (p. 14)

Gottcent (1986) even prefers the term “literary analysis” to “literary criticism” to differentiate his approach from form criticism; he finds it “a more neutral term” (p. ix). Part of the problem with traditional methods since the nineteenth century has been their corruption by so-called “higher” criticism, which purports to establish more accurate texts for examination while actually undercutting Scripture’s authenticity. The end of “higher” criticism ironically has been to lower in the world’s eyes the trustworthiness of the Bible as God’s inspired word; spurious postulates such as the JEDP theories and “Q” Gospel source have been the result. Fundamentalists as well as many secular literary critics of the Bible reject atomistic source theories. However, we do so because we maintain that these theories are at root wrong, whereas the literary critics merely assume a wrong focus or emphasis.

Form and source criticism evolved into the more recently popular redaction criticism, which seeks to explain how smaller units were put together to form larger ones.

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Redactionism has played a significant role in attempts to trace the formation of the Gospels. It is concerned with the interaction between an inherited tradition and a later interpretative point of view, and it explores questions about why specific items were modified. Although redactionists share with fundamentalists a belief in the literary unity of Scripture, their bases for that belief differ sharply from ours. Redactionists agree that traditional higher criticism moves against the impulses of literary criticism in not treating the text as a purposefully finished product. But they work on the assumption that the reason for the apparent unity is not divine authorship but simply careful editing of sources. For instance, Gottcent (1979) states: “The literary critic . . . assumes conscious artistry in the finished product of the Bible, no matter how many sources or redactors contributed to it. His approach is holistic” (p. xii). James Robinson (1986) writes that “redaction criticism has taught us to understand Matthean and Lucan theology as meanings superimposed secondarily upon their source materials” (p. 101). He worries about the possible differences between an oral Jesus and the written one. Thus redaction theory effectively destroys the literary intentions of the original creators with its suppositions of editorial interference, and it assumes that the agendas of these later editors were different from the authors’. It labels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in their present form the “canonical gospels” as opposed to the pre-redacted ones. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, hold that God inspired the biblical authors with His Word and that His original message has been divinely preserved. Critics such as Alter and Kermode (1987a) are not overly concerned with these philosophical distinctions; it is enough for them that the tide of criticism has turned. “What has happened now is that the interpretation of the texts as they actually exist has bee revalidated” (p. 4). Of course, Alter and Kermode’s definition of “interpretation” differs sharply from the fundamentalists’.

Most modern approaches to biblical criticism have a common basis of religious skepticism. The approaches collectively known as poststructuralism approaches attack not just the meaning of Scripture, but all meaning. Their philosophical credenda severely limit the value of any contribution they may attempt to make toward interpreting the design and message of Scripture; ultimately, these nescient philosophies prove antipodal to what fundamentalists know to be the very nature of Scripture. Commenting on the links between source criticism and poststructuralism, Northrop Frye (1982) observes:

Textual scholarship has never really developed the “higher” criticism that made such a noise in the nineteenth century. Instead of emerging from lower criticism, or textual study, most of it dug itself into a still lower, or sub-basement, criticism in which disintegrating the text became an end in itself. (p. xvii)

Stephen Moore (1989) argues condescendingly that, though the more familiar strands of biblical literary criticism are attractive for their clarity and simplicity, “if we are not to remain perpetual dilettantes in our literary criticism of the Bible, we must be prepared to read long and hard in critical theory” (p. 178), He speculates on the future benefits of deconstructive criticism of the Bible, even though he pronounces these efforts unappreciated by most. He does caution that deconstruction can open up potentially profitable meanings only if the method does not destroy them first.

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Hans Frei (1986) has traced the development of older hermeneutics through New Criticism and deconstructionism from a strictly humanistic perspective, and he pronounces all of these theories ultimately inadequate.

It is doubtful that any scheme for reading texts, and narrative texts in particular, and biblical narrative texts even more specifically, can serve globally and foundationally, so that the reading of biblical material would simply be a regional instance of the universal procedure. (p. 59)

Frei illustrates the unavoidable nihilism into which modern criticism must inevitably degenerate.

Traditional biblical exegesis as practiced by believers is much more compatible than poststructuralism with an essentially literary approach, and, indeed, the two methods frequently overlap. Ryken (1987a) remarks that “an expository sermon on a biblical passage has more in common with a literary approach to the Bible than with traditional [i.e., fragmenting] methods of biblical scholarship” (p. 11). Robert Tannehill (1986) even calls his book-length literary analysis of Luke “a new kind of commentary” (p. 8). Literary criticism can indeed add to our understanding of a particular passage’s meaning by identifying and emphasizing specifically literary features of a text and by examining their function within a larger framework. “Literary criticism can be a powerful aid to hermeneutic, because it calls attention to the structural factor that has to be taken into account in grasping the impact of a work” (Beardslee, 1970, p. 13). Of course, traditional exegesis can also be structural, but it tends to ignore explicitly literary features of design and concentrate on content. It often loses sight of the fact that the New Testament “is a book of the imagination in which religious truth is more often embodied in such literary forms as story, metaphor, and symbol than it is expressed in theological abstraction” (Ryken, 1987b, p. 165). Beardslee (1970) admits the value of a method that focuses solely on searching for meanings and ideas, which he says is that of standard commentaries. “Taken by itself, however, it reduces a literary work to a bare vehicle for ideas and overlooks its other functions” (p. 2). Wesley Kort (1988) believes that many Protestant theologians in general do not really respect Scripture itself; instead, he argues, they view it as a mere container of truths which derives its legitimacy exclusively from something outside it and from its function.

A concept of scripture built upon the characteristics of narrativity and textuality will not think it possible to begin with some non-narrative or nontextual ground, some set of ideas and beliefs or some reconstructed sequence of historical “facts.” It will not assume that the standing of biblical texts is derived from something else, the events behind them or a system of doctrine that they yield. (p. 142)

This is, of course, unfair to those Protestant theologians whose regard for the written Word of God is their regard for its divine Author. The Bible has value for them, and for us, precisely because God wrote it, so that in a very basic sense it does derive its worth from an exterior referent. This is all the more reason to pay close attention to all of its features as clues to and reinforcement of its meaning. Scripture has intrinsic value because it is inherently the Word of God.

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Ryken (1984b) deplores the unresponsiveness of professional students of Scripture to evidences of literary intention in the text: “Critics with literary intuitions overwhelmingly assume self-conscious artistry on the part of New Testament authors. Biblical scholars, by contrast, tend to assume an absence of self-conscious artistry and are not very excited by it when they find it” (p. 6). Ryken even sees literary critics and biblical scholars frequently working at cross purposes (and, unfortunately, in the process seems to give credibility to source scholarship):

Literary critics accept the New Testament as it stands; biblical scholars have constantly tried to get behind the text in an effort to trace stages in the development of the text back to its original form. Literary critics look for unified wholes; biblical scholars are more at home with fragments. Correspondingly, literary critics are interested in the self-contained “world” of a work as the key to its meaning; biblical scholars have focused on the relations between the New Testament text and historical reality. (p. 15)

Ryken’s statements require qualification. Clearly there is artistry in Scripture, and some seems self-conscious. But we should not assume every writer worked consciously at the patterns we find in order to raise his writing to artistic status. We also need to allow for the artistry of the Holy Spirit operating through the writer.

A person trained in the study of literature may be able to see the implications of a whole story better than someone whose occupation has been primarily theological. A broader perspective can yield insights that a narrower, more intense focus sometimes misses. “The text itself affirms a reality, one which is obscured when the text is divided into sources or when questions of historical validity are raised. The text is best understood when taken as a whole” (Gros Louis, 1974a, p. 13). Where God places an incident or observation can be an indication of what He is saying; a holistic literary approach can help the reader put a passage into its true context and thereby enhance the accuracy of his interpretation. Sternberg (1985) criticizes

the tendency to read biblical texts out of communicative context. . . . Elements thus get divorced from the very terms of reference that assign to them their role and meaning: parts from wholes, means from ends, forms from functions. Even the listing of so-called forms and devices and configurations—a fashionable practice, this, among aspirants to “literary criticism”—is no substitute for the proper business of reading. (p. 2)

Alter (1992), too, argues against this type of discrete criticism:

Unfortunately, scholarly attention, like other forms of human attention, has difficulty in focusing on more than one order of objects at a time, and the concentration on dissected elements has led to a relative neglect of the complex means used by the biblical writers to lock their texts together, to amplify their meanings by linking one text with another. (p. 109)

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In addition to the benefits a holistic approach can supply, literary criticism can also deliver the advantages of close reading.

Literary critics of all theoretical persuasions discuss such matters as plot, characterization, irony, symbolism, and so on—this is the stuff of undergraduate courses in literature analysis. Biblical scholars, however, sometimes discover that even these basic matters have gone unattended with regard to biblical literature. (Powell, 1992, p. 15)

Commentaries generally look at what a text says. In pursuit of what a text says, we must also consider how it says it. In his critical work on Luke, James Dawsey (1986) comments: “What is said in Luke is irrevocably intertwined with how it is said. The different voices not only embellish the story; they are the stuff of the story” (p. 13). Seymour Chatman’s Story and Discourse (1978), unabashedly structuralist, is a standard reference source for work on the Gospels and Acts. In his highly technical but very helpful system, Chatman “posit[s] a what and a way. The what of narrative I call its ‘story’; the way I call its ‘discourse’” (p. 9).

Critic after critic echoes Chatman in the insistence on painstakingly close analysis. From Alter (1992): “I am proposing, in sum, that the Bible requires from the critic both the most fine-tuned attentiveness to its formal articulations and a kind of intellectual humility: (p. 23). And again:

It is not possible in principle to separate metacritical or theoretical reflection from formal analysis. If you want to think about what kind of book, or collection of books, the Bible is; what submerged or explicit unities it might possess . . . you must begin by looking at the formal articulations of the literary texts. (p. xi)

In writing about the New Testament, G. Wilson Knight (1962) states:

We must see the whole book as an expression of a resplendent force and creative energy tapping new power, new life, for men. This life is embodied in a number of vivid life-impressions and to this mesh of pictorial language and pictorial event we must give close attention. (p. 122)

In its balance of the holistic and the analytical, literary criticism acknowledges the complexity of Scripture. Speaking of literary criticism in general, Alter (1989) states: “Most major critics have had too much respect for the elusiveness as well as for the complexity of the literary text to imagine that there could be anything like a definitive reading of a great work of fiction or poetry”: (p. 207). Biblical literary critics can appropriate his statement in their pioneering efforts. We do believe in definitive readings that get at the essential meaning and establish it, or recover it, as Luther did; Alter is not, though, lapsing into deconstructive or existential vagueness with all of the attendant despair of ever achieving absolute knowledge. Instead, he wishes to encourage a healthy regard for the layered intricacies of a text, and Scripture is preeminently rich in these. Christ commanded us to “search the scriptures” (John 5:39) and to study that we might become proficient in “rightly dividing the word of truth” (III Timothy 2:15); literary

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criticism can aid us in this pursuit of Scriptural truth. “Literary criticism can offer us much more than an awareness of what we already know. Analysis can unlock long-shut secrets and surprise us with an old understanding that is new to us” (Dawsey, 1986, p. 13).

A knowledge of literary criticism can help us understand God’s truth by sensitizing us to various rhetorical strategies employed by the writers of Scripture. George Kennedy (1984) defines rhetoric as “that quality in discourse by which a speaker or writer seeks to accomplish his purposes” (p. 3). All texts have designs on their readers, and an alertness to rhetorical devices can help us be certain that the message God is sending is the one we are receiving. Rhetorical criticism, a branch of literary criticism, specializes in analyzing persuasive strategies. Burton Mack (1989), for instance, suggests that “rhetorical criticism may be in fact the most promising form of literary criticism for the task of reconstructing Christian origins with social issues in view” (p. 17), a task with an admittedly liberal purpose but not without benefit for fundamentalists. Mack believes that rhetorical criticism is especially helpful in ascertaining the context of New Testament figures’ remarks. Kennedy sees its main value as helping us to determine how the Gospel texts would have been read by a first-century audience.

Finally, a literary approach enhances our enjoyment of Scripture. C. S. Lewis once observed that the Bible “has been read for almost every purpose more diligently than for literary pleasure” (1969, p. 127). The dimension of the aesthetic is in itself a valid objective of Scriptural exploration. A familiarity with figurative language equips us to respond both intellectually and emotionally to the forceful beauty of biblical writing.

Further, awareness of the meticulous craftsmanship increases the impact of the communication. “Literary study provides a way of taking the Bible to heart. . . . Literary study invites us to wrestle with the text, to analyze the experience of reading it, and to grow from the process” (Gottcent, 1986, p. xxvii). In sum, literary criticism helps to create an intimacy with the text otherwise inaccessible. It can help to bring us closer to the heart and mind of God as revealed in Scripture.

The Authorized Version

The Authorized (King James) Version beautifully supports a literary exploration of the Bible’s treasures.

Through its transparency the reader of the Authorized Version not only sees the original but also learns how to read it. Patterns of repetition, the way one clause is linked to another, the effect of unexpected inversions of word order, the readiness of biblical writers to vary tone and register from the highly formal to the scatological, and the different kinds and uses of imagery are all, like so much else, open to any readers of the Renaissance versions, and best open to them in the Authorized Version. (Hammond, 1987, pp. 664-665)

While it is true that the archaisms may lend an artificially literary quality, the impact of this translation’s elegance by no means depends on them—on its four-centuries’ distance from us.

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The language of the Bible—from the Old Testament poets and storytellers to their New Testament counterparts—is concrete, and this concreteness is splendidly captured by the Authorized Version, which conveys the flavor and expression of the ancient texts. Since the essence of figurative language is concreteness, the poetic style of the Authorized Version is remarkably suited to convey the flavor and expression of the ancient texts. “The infusing of the words of the translation with the spirit, which gave it its place as the crowning monument of English literature, could be better accomplished in the sixteenth century than at any time before or since in English history” (Gardiner, 1906, pp. 356-357). In his comments on the vivid language of the Old Testament writers, Gardiner (1906) observes: “This picturesqueness of the Hebrew fitted in well with constant figurativeness of English in the sixteenth century” (p. 365). Latinate “inkhorn” terms were not universally current in the sixteenth century, so the translators of the Authorized Version generally used a simpler vocabulary that was understandable to a wide-virtually universal—audience.

This translation has other affinities with its original. C. S. Lewis (1969) believes that the King James translation exposes the unity of the biblical text. After stating that the Bible is perhaps too heterogeneous to be unqualifiedly labeled a single book, he admits that a distinctive translation can impose an overall unity in its reflection of a particular era. The sheer beauty of the Authorized Version is unsurpassed in English literature. The powerful translation pulls us into the world of the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets as well as the milieu of Christ and His apostles, bringing home to us with exhilarating freshness at each reading a sense of sharing in their personal reactions to their circumstances.

This intensity of feeling is reflected in the vigorous rhythm and strong coloring of our English Bible. The weakness of all modern translations, in spite of their many advantages in the way of scholarship, is that they lack this intensity of feeling which is the life of the Authorised Version (Gardiner, 1906, p. 363)

Nuttall (1978) recognizes this special quality in his explanation of the Authorized Version’s narrative superiority: “I have used the Authorized Version also because in that earlier age men lived—more than do today’s translators, I think—in an atmosphere in which story-telling was still an acceptable part of current practice” (p. 15).

A literary analysis of a work in translation is, of course, limited by the nature of its secondhandedness. The King James Version, however, mitigates many of these limitations by virtue of its prestige, universality, and accuracy. Its status as a monument of the English Renaissance is unparalleled; the exquisite craftsmanship evident in every line testifies to its perfection. It is the version best known to the literate world and the translation still preferred by most fundamentalists. Its pervasive influence throughout the last several hundred years of English literary production—both religious and secular—witnesses to its indisputable prominence. In defending their own and their contributors’ use of the Authorized Version in The Literary Guide to the Bible, editors Robert Alter and Frank Kermode (1987a) explain their choice thus:

We have as a rule used the King James Version in translations, and our reasons for doing so must be obvious: it is the version most English readers associate

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with the literary qualities of the Bible, and it is still arguably the version that best preserves the literary effects of the original languages. (p. 7)

More than most translations, the Authorized Version preserves the ambiguities of the original texts. Whereas a modern translation might choose one definitive meaning from several suggested by a word or combination of words, the Authorized Version in such instances deliberately prefers authenticity over clarity. In that sense, it is not an interpretive translation. Gerald Hammond (1987) does state that “translation is one of the most influential forms of literary criticism, for it both interprets and recreates the text it addresses” (p. 649); he modifies this assertion, however, with regard to the Authorized Version:

At its best, which means often, the Authorized Version has the kind of transparency which makes it possible for the reader to see the original clearly. It lacks the narrow interpretative bias of modern versions, and is the stronger for it. (p. 664)

Hammond credits the King James translators’ reliance on parataxis with their version’s conveyance of multiple meanings in an authentically primitive tone:

By heavy use of coordinating clauses the Authorized Version leaves its narrative structures open to the widest possible range of meanings, for such coordination imposes upon events only a relatively weak impression of sequentiality. More sophisticated syntactic structures, using all kinds of subordination, are more interpretative. (p. 660)

So the Authorized Version resists attempts to pin down one exclusive meaning where God in His wisdom has allowed for more than one way of looking at a particular phrase or clause. “This openness to a range of meanings is one of the Authorized Version’s great merits as a translation and extends far beyond the use of a heavily paratactic syntax” (Hammond, 1987, p. 661).

Finally, fundamentalists can confidently use a translation for literary analysis in the knowledge that God has preserved the accuracy of His Word through many generations and cultures and in many different languages and conscientious translations: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matthew 24:35). It is also true that the larger features with which literary criticism is usually concerned are not affected by translation. The beauty and truth of Scripture transcend linguistic and temporal confines.

Fundamentalist Distinctives

A Christian philosophy of literary criticism differs from its secular counterparts in some very basic assumptions, and these differences become all the more magnified when applied to literary criticism of the Bible. For one thing, Christians do not approach Scripture with the same attitude with which they would approach any other work of literature. To us, Scripture occupies a unique status as the direct expression of God’s

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mind. It is a Book which judges us rather than one which invites us to judge it. While Christians may certainly borrow profitably—albeit very selectively—from secular critical theories and practices, we do not unexaminedly jump on the bandwagon of every fashionable literary critical theory of the moment, even if our rejection of a theory should make us appear less intellectually respectable. Our conservative suspicion of most modern methods of criticism is not simplistic or arbitrary; on the contrary, it is based on considered religious and philosophical conviction.

“The goal of Christian literary criticism is to see the work as it appears in the view of God” (Christian Teaching, 1979, p. 19). Traditional types of criticism are more compatible than contemporary ones with a God-centered approach to criticism. For example, mimetic, pragmatic, and expressive criticism as defined by Abrams (1993) all contain elements useful to a Christian approach. Mimetic criticism emphasizes a work’s faithfulness to reality. Pragmatic criticism considers how a work “is constructed in order to achieve certain effects on the audience (effects such as aesthetic pleasure, instruction, or kinds of emotion)” (Abrams, 1993, p. 41). And expressive criticism “treats a literary work primarily in relation to its author” (p. 41). A fundamentalist Christian approach to literary criticism incorporates all these considerations of mimeticism, audience effect, and authorial intention, but it also limits their applicability when it comes to biblical criticism: we dare not use these criteria to set ourselves up as judges of how well biblical narrative portrays reality, or how effectively biblical poetry moves its audience, or how well God has managed to communicate His message. When we evaluate other works of literature, we do so by biblical standards. We do not judge the Standard itself.

Most modern literary studies of the Bible view the texts as productions of human authors who have created the literature in their own image. The texts are therefore presumed to have been shaped by personal idiosyncrasy and been subject to human fallibility. To these critics, the spiritual dimension is of secondary interest, if any, and at best it is seen as extraneous to the text. During the past several decades, almost all of the work in the field of biblical literary criticism has been done by critics who are operating from obviously humanistic premises. Even the few nominal Christians who have made a name for themselves in the discipline, such as Ryken and Tannehill, come disappointingly short of an overtly expressed and consistently practiced comprehensive system of Christian literary criticism.

A truly Christian approach is radically different from others in its assumptions and expression. It presupposes a supernatural Author and, consequently, a perfectly unified and trustworthy Book. These assumptions inform every facet of a Christian’s criticism, and the fundamentalist holds to them distinctively and unashamedly.

Divine authorship

Foundational to a Christian literary interpretation of the Bible is the belief in God as its real Author. C. S. Lewis (1969) asserts that “a belief in strictly verbal inspiration will indeed make all Scripture a book by a single Author” (p. 127). This basic doctrine of inspiration is essential to every distinctively Christian conviction about the nature and expression of Scripture. The Bible is the product of a dual divine-human authorship controlled by God. The exact nature of its production remains as humanly inexplicable as the combination of God and man in Jesus Christ. As Scripture is God’s written Word

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to us to point the way toward fellowship with Him, so Christ was His Incarnate Word, the Logos, God Himself whose death and resurrection provided the means for that reconciliation. We accept both on faith. And the implications of this confidence are many.

First, we believe that Scripture is the voice of God mediated through human authors with nothing being lost in the translation. Throughout history God has voluntarily limited Himself in using imperfect human beings to carry out His work on earth, and His will is constantly filtered through our ignorant and perverse responses. The process of special inspiration, however, made the writing of Scripture different. The Bible not only contains God’s Word: it is God’s Word, and as we read it we do not have to be on the alert for intrusions of human imperfection. As Christ was completely God at the same time that He was fully human, so is Scripture totally trustworthy as God’s exact communication to us through human instruments. An additional benefit of this belief is that problems posed by authorial anonymity—and even those have largely been manufactured by redactionists—do not have ultimate significance.

Naturally, in a sense God’s communication to us is limited by our human capacity to receive it (I Corinthians 13: 9, 12). Nevertheless, God expressly assures us that we can know Him through His Word. We do not go so far as Alter, who warns that “the repeated point of the biblical writers is that we cannot make sense of God in human terms” (1992, pp. 22-23). We do not have to worry about the possibility of never being able to achieve absolute knowledge of God or His intentions for us simply because we cannot trust mere words with evolving meanings to convey these truths accurately. In the Logos “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3); through knowledge of the “holy scriptures” we are made “wise unto salvation through faith” (II Timothy 3:15).

Because God is behind the words of the human authors of Scripture, we always assume omniscience in the text’s point of view. Critics for whom God’s role in the authorship is not even an issue worth seriously discussing always carefully differentiate author from narrator-assuming, of course, that the author under consideration is a human one. “That it is essential not to confuse author and narrator has become a commonplace of literary theory” (Chatman, 1978, p. 147). Critics such as Chatman then distinguish among perceptual, conceptual, and interest points of view, and they further separate these from voice, which is the expression of them.

Perception, conception, and interest points of view are quite independent of the manner in which they are expressed. When we speak of “expression,” we pass from point of view, which is only a perspective or stance, to the province of narrative voice, the medium through which perception, conception, and everything else are communicated. Thus point of view is in the story (when it is the character’s), but voice is always outside, in the discourse. (Chatman, 1979, p. 154)

Parsons and Pervo (1993) phrase their concerns thus: “The question is: can the same author produce two narratives which are distinct at the level of discourse? Or, in more carefully nuanced literary terms: can the same real author produce two distinct narrators or perhaps even two implied authors?” (p. 47).

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To Christians who read God’s Word as a direct message from God, these distinctions are not relevant; His message is not diffused through contradiction and obfuscating levels of discourse. Gros Louis (1982) means to be critical in this charge that belief in inspiration destroys certain assumptions which those of his mindset hold as self-evidently basic: “One result of this view is that there is no room for the literary notion of the persona in biblical criticism” (pp. 16-17). The only respect in which Christians might find some use for these distinctions is in exploring how God communicates His unified message variously through a story’s characters as well as through the storyteller himself. Alter (1989) clarifies this possible use:

Most readers’ impression of biblical narrative is that everything is told from the perspective of an impassive authoritative narrator. However, several recent literary studies of biblical narrative have persuasively argued that in fact the point of view frequently switches at strategic moments to one of the characters. (p. 176)

Sternberg (1985) approaches more closely a Christian reading of the text in this respect, but he accepts inspiration mainly as a convention: “Inspiration is primarily nothing but a rule that governs the communication between writer and reader, licensing the access to privileged material (e.g., thoughts) that would otherwise remain out of bounds and giving all material the stamp of authority” (p. 33). He goes on to explain: “Omniscience in modern narrative attends and signals fictionality, while in the ancient tradition it not only accommodates but also guarantees authenticity” (p. 34). And further: “With God postulated as double author, the biblical narrator can enjoy the privileges of art without renouncing his historical titles” (p. 82). Christians believe in inspiration as a fact, not a convention. We are not always sure to what extent a biblical author was aware of his possession of God’s omniscience, but we do know that it was always available to him through supernatural inspiration. In fact, the presence of God’s omniscience gives special meaning to the term “omniscient narrator.” “Given the biblical narrator’s access to privileged knowledge—the distant past, private scenes, the thoughts of the dramatis personae, from God down—he must speak from an omniscient position” (Sternberg, 1985, p. 12). The writer of Judges can tell us exactly what was going on in Samson’s mind at a particular moment. Similarly, we are privy to intimate conversations between Jezebel and Ahab. God lets us in on secrets when it suits a narrative’s purpose.

Critics often make a point of distinguishing between naïve and reliable narrators. They do so partly because the extent to which a narrator is aware of all his text’s implications colors his methodology and also because the reader may need to extrapolate to another level beyond the text to grasp its full significance. With regard to Scripture’s reliability, though, we do not need to concern ourselves with the differences between extradiegetic and intradiegetic, heterodiegetic and homodiegetic narrators, and we do not need to worry—as do the critics—about the potential discursive disunity. Chatman (1978) tries to imply that interpretive and evaluative speech by a narrator is more reflective of his personal opinions than mere narration: “Speech acts by a narrator that go beyond narrating, describing, or identifying . . . are best labeled comments. . . .l Commentary, since it is gratuitous, conveys the overt narrator’s voice more distinctly than any feature short of explicit self-mention” (p. 228). Christians know, of course, that

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there is nothing “gratuitous” in the Bible. Further, we can hear God’s voice so clearly through every word of Scripture that we find no one element of narrative strategy more inherently trustworthy than another. “The Bible always tells the truth in that its narrator is absolutely and straightforwardly reliable” (Sternberg, 1985, p. 51). Every narrator in Scripture is trustworthy, and this trustworthiness is not just a convention.

Sadly, almost all published critics in the field of biblical literary criticism disregard the divine authorship of Scripture. Many of them studiously ignore any mention of God except as a construct of the writer. Some pay lip service to what they see as a mysterious Presence behind the text, but they phrase their analyses so that they can be acceptably read by totally secular minds. Unfortunately, at times Christian critics appear to have succumbed to this desire for academic respectability and have downplayed interpretations that depend on divine omniscience.

A fundamentalist literary philosophy asseveratively denounces any biblical criticism which concentrates on reflections of human authorship at the expense of the divine. That Scripture was written by men is only a half-truth, which amounts to no truth at all when it comes to deciphering meaning. Ignoring God’s authorship is really tantamount to subjecting interpretation to the flaws of objective criticism, which views a text in virtual isolation from outside influences; likewise, it skews any conclusions concerning authorial intention. We need to be bold in proclaiming God’s authority as the Author and focus of Scripture. Our respect for Him will translate into reverence for the text.

Audience

The message of the transcendent Author of Scripture transcends all temporal, geographical, and cultural boundaries. Its audience is universal, because the invitation to salvation, which is the primary aim of the message, is not localized to a privileged few (II Peter 3:9). It is, of course, true that the individual books of the Bible bear the stamp of the eras in which they were composed and that they were originally addressed to contemporary readers or auditors. Matthew, for instance, is directed primarily to a Jewish audience, Mark to a Roman one, and Luke to a Gentile one. But these smaller targeted audiences blend into the larger audience that comprises all humankind. It is not just that the truths addressed to a first-century audience are applicable to and may profitably be appropriated by all people. God intended the message for everyone, and He speaks through His Word individually to every human heart.

Literary criticism, accordingly, enlightens us with regard to the “message” and “receiver” components of the paradigm, concerning, for instance, the effect that the biblical writings have on people who read them today. . . . By reading biblical stories as stories and biblical poetry as poetry, literary criticism unleashes the inherent power of these stories and poems for personal and social transformation. (Powell, 1992, p. 18)

Historical-critical techniques of biblical scholarship tend to reinforce the separation of modern readers from the ancient texts, whereas a literary critical approach, with its emphasis on the universally literary features of a text, goes hand-in-hand with the

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fundamentalist belief in a universal audience. Literary criticism can explain the dual function of rhetorical devices such as the prefaces in Luke and Acts (Luke 1:1-4; Acts 1:1-5); they suggest that the treatises are written to one person, Theophilus, but they are in the mode of the formal address, which implies that the books are also meant for a wider audience. Literary criticism can also attempt in this respect to synthesize rhetorical analysis—which examines the text’s effect on the originally targeted, contemporary audience—with narrative analysis—which assumes a more universal audience.

That divine authorship intended a universal audience means the Bible is a popular as well as literary work. Without meaning to imply that the Gospels are a mere development from oral tradition, Ryken (1987b) does note that “the oral roots of New Testament literature help to explain another literary feature—the fact that the New Testament is popular or folk literature” (Ryken, 1987b, p. 26). Its popularity, though, does not detract from its fine literary qualities or its deep theological riches. It merely guarantees the Bible’s accessibility to all true seekers of life. Gardiner (1906) praises biblical narrative as possessing “a simplicity and a limpid and vivid clearness which make it appeal to all sorts and conditions of men” (p. 34). Scripture is not a repository of recondite knowledge for the clerisy. At the same time, its simplicity does not preclude its profundity. Scripture appeals on many levels.

Because the Bible is a guidebook for Christian living, much of its wisdom is closed to the unbeliever (I Corinthians 2:14). Without the aid of the Holy Spirit, truth is unavailable to many professional students of Scripture. Although God intends the salvation message for a universal audience, it requires of that audience a properly receptive attitude in order to achieve full understanding. “When one speaks about the reader’s point of view, perceptual or conceptual, one really means the narratee’s point of view, for the biblical text assumes a certain conceptual point of view on the part of the narratee” (Berlin, 1983, p. 53). Further, in the pages of His Word God operates on another level entirely in His intimate communication with His children; in a sense, we enjoy a private audience with Him. Outsiders exclude themselves by their unbelief.

Since the Bible combines historical record with artful narrative, its stories impress on us a doubly powerful sense of immediacy: we are drawn by the strength of the literary form and embellishments into re-experiencing imaginatively actual events with actual persons. When interpreting Scripture, secular critics needlessly occupy themselves with the differences among (1) a reader who was a contemporary of the author, (2) one who is a first-time reader in any century, (3) a person whom they term the “ideal reader,” and (4) the critical reader who has examined the work several times over. They use this classification primarily as a means of evaluating the work’s varying degrees of success in the eyes of each type of reader: in essence, to determine how much of the work’s total picture is available to each type. The fundamentalist assumption of a divine Author who has intended a universal audience significantly lessens the importance of the distinctions between these groups, since God addresses them all with equal effectiveness. Fundamentalists, though, may distinguish among these categories for the purpose of examining how each group uniquely receives the Word and to share in facets of the various responses. For instance, literary analysis can help us to read a Bible story without remembering how it is going to end, infusing us with a fresh wonder at the marvelous designs of God. But the modern obsession with reader-response theories may vitiate the important overlap between encounter and reflection in our understanding

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Scriptural communication. It is true that our impressions on and reactions to an initial reading of a story differ from those of a second and third reading; it is especially true in the case of Scripture that the reactions may continue to evolve endlessly, since Scripture’s riches reflect the infinite mind of their Creator in their inexhaustible revelations. And our own processes of spiritual maturation may open our eyes to progressively deeper meanings. Yet initial impressions may be retained in subsequent ones, enriching them. Children who clamor to hear the same story told many times over apparently re-experience each time their original delight in the telling. With the tools of literary criticism available to aid us in recapturing our first love of God and His Word, Christians need never tire of reading the Scriptural story.

Unity

Traditional critics generally extend as a matter of courtesy to the author an assumption of a work’s unity. The modern imperative to deconstruct texts, to relentlessly pick them apart so that only undecipherable shreds of no determinable pattern remain, flies in the face of any belief in an inherent universal order. Poststructural methodology thus offers little assistancein formulating a coherent theology derived from a literary approach to the Bible. Even Parsons and Pervo (1993), in their treatment of two New Testament books which have traditionally been accorded single authorship, argue against assuming their unity:

At a time when the unity of Luke and Acts is being stressed from many different quarters in the biblical guild, we hold that when scholars examine a broad range of generic, literary, and theological issues in Luke and Acts, they should do so without assuming unity as prima facie true. (p. vi)

In fact, Parsons and Pervo warn that “those who date the documents years or even decades apart and thus argue for separate occasions while at the same time arguing for theological unity between the documents, are at cross-purposes” (p. 18). The doctrine of inspiration overrides such objections.

Fundamentalists know that because its Author is perfect, Scripture demonstrates perfect textual unity. We do not have to rely on a mere hopefulness that the text will bear out our presuppositions of unity. We can be assured that any difficulty we may experience in perceiving the unity stems from our own limitations, not the Author’s. In fact, this confidence can spur us to more extended and sustained examinations of troublesome passages to find the unity that we know is there.

Because the Bible was written by a single Author, we can assume unity not just within narratives or even entire books, but within the complete biblical unity. Thompson (1978) points out that “the stories combine to form larger narrative structures. In biblical narrative originally independent stories lose their autonomy and become subordinated and integrated into a larger coherent whole” (p. 42). Alter (1992) disavows a fundamentalist literary criticism that assumes inherent unity:

One occasionally hears the accusation that the new literary criticism of the Bible represents, not creedally but methodologically, a new fundamentalism: every

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element of the text is assumed to be integrally linked with every other, and artistically justified. I can think of no contemporary literary critic of the Bible whose work conforms to this description as a matter of principle. (p. 4)

Yet a Christian philosophy operates precisely on that principle. Redaction is not our automatic explanation for a text’s unity. Further, we hold that unity results from a canonicity directed by God.

Modern Jewish critics treat the Hebrew Bible as complete and look for explanations of its unity within the Jewish tradition. Alter, for instance, credits a strong sense of nationalism with having shaped and preserved Old Testament unity. Christians allow such arguments as subsidiary supports for the Bible’s preservation, but for us the overarching purpose of God’s communicating His love through the Messiah supersedes those more naturalistic reasons. Referring to Scripture’s comprehensive theme of God’s saving purpose, Tannehill (1986) writes:

These events represent either the progressive realization of God’s purpose of salvation for both Jews and Gentiles or show human resistance to this purpose. In either case the individual events are meaningful parts of a single story because they relate to this overarching purpose behind the whole. (p. 7)

Christians know that claims of biblical unity in this respect stand on the completion of the Old Testament by the New.

Recently an encouraging emphasis on the Gospels as narratives rather than mere collections of sayings and anecdotes has promoted among critics presumptions of unity. Joseph Tyson (1986) explains the trend:

One principle has already been mentioned. It is that we should respect the integrity of the text under examination. Holistic interpretation is a fundamental aspect of literary criticism, but it has not had a long history in gospel studies. Form criticism tends to focus attention on the small units of tradition. Source criticism calls upon us to look for the strata underlying the gospels, rather than at the gospels themselves. Redaction criticism frequently concentrates on the seams and other editorial sections. Literary criticism now asks us to look at a gospel holistically, as the product of an author who consciously brought it into being. (p. 17)

If one does not assume unity, then the discovery of slight discrepancies within different accounts of the same incident can promote an assumption of disunity. It is true that within biblical narrative, more than one thing at a time is going on, and the multiple levels simultaneously in operation may discourage our search for a tight unity. Speaking of analyzing literature in general, Alter (1989) states:

A work of literature . . . consists of too many disparate elements engaged in constant, shifting interplay for reading ever to be a linear assemblage of parts by even the most patient analyst. Most literary works, moreover, turn on an experiential dimension that is not finally reducible to the formal vehicles through which it is conveyed. (p. 206)

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With Scripture in particular, we need to keep in mind that everything is happening within a frame and that impressions of disunity may be due to the fact that sometimes a passage’s unity is anchored elsewhere in the Bible. A Christian literary critic has faith that any inconsistencies can be reconciled or explained, if not by him, then by other believing Bible scholars. We enjoy supreme confidence in Scripture’s ultimate unity on the basis of its abolute trustworthiness as the Word of God.

Truth

Literary critics often pretend that they do not care whether the Bible is actually true; they insist that their analyses depend only on their treating it as if it has its own internal truth. But assumptions about the nature of biblical truth crucially affect one’s total interpretation of Scripture. Either a critic presumes that the Bible is eternally, infallibly, and immutably true, or he devalues the concept of truth to the point of meaninglessness.

As the incarnate Logos claims to be “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), so is the written Word indefeasible truth (John 17:17). For example, when Luke sets out to tell his story of Jesus, he declares his motive to be assuring Theophilus of “the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed” (Luke 1:4). The connotation of this phrasing is that he will combat rumor and ignorance with his “perfect understanding of all things from the very first,” i.e., “from above” (1:3). God’s stamp of authenticity rests on the pages of the humanly penned manuscript; the Gospel of Luke comprises not merely his opinions and perspective, but God’s. And they are absolute.

When biblical critics speak of “truth,” they often distinguish it from “meaning”; many make a further distinction between “factuality” and “reality.” Most critics quite openly reject any notion of the Bible’s factual truth. Richard Pervo (1987), in his analysis of Luke as a “historical novelist,” charges him with

Triumphalism, grandiosity, and the excitement of unrealistic expectations. . . . He was engaged in activity at least partly frivolous and he did not always tell the truth. In his defense I mention Jesus, who was also sometimes frivolous and who told parables, fictional, sometimes entertaining, stories that crystallized the essence of his message. (pp. 137-138)

To a critic like Erich Auerbach (1953), whether the events recorded in Scripture actually occurred has no bearing on their value for us. He believes that if we read the stories by the rules of narrative, their “truth” will automatically emerge through the carefully crafted realism regardless of any factual basis in history. In a famous passage from his Mimesis, Auerbach compares the “foreground” nature of Homer’s epics, which do not explore psychologically and philosophically below the surface, to what he sees as the Bible’s superior “background” treatment of its subject:

The stories are not, like Homer’s, simply narrated “reality.” Doctrine and promise are incarnate in them and inseparable from them; for that very reason they are fraught with “background” and mysterious, containing a second,

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concealed meaning. . . . Far from seeking, like Homer, merely to make us forget our own reality for a few hours, it [biblical narrative] seeks to overcome our reality: we are to fit our own life into its world, feel ourselves to be elements in its structure of universal history. (p. 15)

Auerbach asserts that the “religious intent” of the stories “involves an absolute claim to historical truth” (p. 14). But he maintains that our deriving meaning from the stories does not necessitate that we accept their historicity.

Gros Louis (1982) demonstrates a totally secular approach to biblical literary criticism when he overtly dismisses concerns about factual truth: “The text to us is not sacred, and whether the events it describes are historical is not relevant to our purposes” (p. 14). Instead, he suggests, we should be asking whether the text is true “not in the real world but within the fictive world that has been created by the narrative” (p. 14). Later he waffles on his adamant rejection of Scripture’s truth; speaking of Mark, he writes: “The Gospel, from a literary point of view, is creating a fictional world—but the word fictional is not meant to connote that the world may not be a true one” (p. 21). Kort (1988) agrees with this dismissal of accuracy. Indeed, he concludes that his doctrine of scripture has absolutely no final interest in determining whether the Bible is actually God’s Word. Along these lines he indicates his preference for the term “scripture” over “canon,” “since it has the more open quality” (p. 146).

Some critics advocate the abandoning of one’s religious and philosophical presuppositions to achieve a truly valid literary approach to Scripture. The objetive of gaining ultimate truth from God’s Word does not occur to these critics because they do not recognize the existence of objective truth. Thayer Warshaw (1974) naively recommends a sort of willing suspension of disbelief: “I suggest that when students who are believers enter the literary world of the Bible, they should lay aside their beliefs just as deliberately, if not as willingly, as nonbelievers suspend their disbelief” (p. 27). Warshaw betrays the shallow basis of his advice in this statement evidencing his lack of interest in divine truth:

In approaching the Bible as an object of literary analysis, that is, nonbelievers avoid the question of whether the stories and teachings are about a God, and from a God, who actually exists. For students of literature, any text is a given, to be taken on its own terms. (pp. 25-26)

Sternberg (1985) also prefers this stance:

As long as we adhere to the text’s self-definition as religious literature with such and such singularities, we need not even submit to the dictate of identifying ourselves as religious or secular readers. Those who play by the Bible’s rules of communication to the best of their ability can keep their opinions to themselves. (p. 37)

Alter (1992), too, disdains the issue of supernatural inerrancy: “Literary appreciation does not automatically contradict belief in the inspired character of the text, but it can manage quite comfortably without reference to such belief” (p. 203).

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Similarly, Chatman (1978) remains undisturbed by this agnosticism—by the lack of what amounts to an objective reference point for meaningful criticism. After distinguishing between what he identifies as narrates, implied readers (e.g., Luke’s Theophilus), and real readers (e.g., us), he enthusiastically embraces the notion that we can profitably and at will participate in all of these viewpoints:

Of course, the real reader may refuse his projected role at some ultimate level—nonbelievers do not become Christians just to read The Inferno or Paradise Lost. But such refusal does not contradict the imaginative or “as if” acceptance of implied readership necessary to the elementary comprehension of the narrative. (p. 150)

Perhaps, but it does preclude the possibility of one’s deriving any ultimate significance and value from the narratives.

Critics in general insist on a respect for the text without a corresponding respect for the God whose authorship is demanded by the text. Tyson (1986) perfectly illustrates this folly:

Respecting the world of the text also means that the interpretation of character is limited by the text. In reading Luke-Acts, for example, Jesus is to be understood as a character to whom we have access only in this text. To be sure, there is also a Jesus who is available in the other gospels and perhaps through the application of certain historical-critical methods, but these other Jesuses are not primary concerns in literary criticism. (p. 17)

The Jesus of the text, however, is the Christ who is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8).

Adele Berlin (1983) predicates her entire methodology on the fine separation she draws between actuality and its representation. She does not believe that every biblical narrative is factually true, nor that it necessarily replicates reality accurately. “To the extent that we understand the medium of the biblical artist—his language and how he uses it, his literary techniques and how he manipulates them—we will be able to see what he represented” (p. 139). Berlin’s assumption limits the significance of her critical method. “Poetics, the science of literature, is not an interpretive effort—it does not aim to elicit meaning from a text” (p. 15). Here she applies that philosophy to Genesis:

Abraham in Genesis is not a real person any more than a painting of an apple is a real fruit. This is not a judgment on the existence of a historical Abraham any more than it is a statement about the existence of apples. It is just that we should not confuse a historical individual with his narrative representation. (p. 13)

Her statements are simply unacceptable. How God sees and wants us to see a person in His Word is the essential truth of that person.

Likewise, Robert Funk (1988) provides for freeing narrative representation from its truth claims. He sees poetics as a kind of comprehensive grammar of narrative:

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“Narrative discourse may be diagrammed much like sentences in traditional grammar” (p. ix). He is careful to distinguish between “narrative as discourse, narrative as story, and narrative as narration. To substitute another set of terms, narrative as discourse is the tale itself, narrative as story is what is told, and narrative as narrative is the telling” (p. 3). To Funk, these distinctions are important because what exists in the story—the subject—does not necessarily exist in the text—the medium; the narrator is responsible for the existence of both in the act of telling.

Powell (1991) commits the same error as Berlin in his approach to Acts: “Reading Acts as literature means being satisfied with the book for its own sake, rather than treating it as a means to some other end” (p. 106). But of what value is interpretation isolated from the search for truth?

Amos Wilder (1983) takes an interesting tack in his argument that critics may not always be the best judges of what constitutes realism:

What we take to be true to life may be very shallow and distorted. We may like a story or a history just because it is true to life as we see it, but that story or history may be far from telling the whole story. A story may be all the better precisely because it is not true to life as commonly recognized. (p. 362)

Ryken (1984a) is in accord: “The supernatural slant of the Bible . . . produces a sense of mystery and wonder. By refusing to allow reality to be conceived solely in terms of known, observable reality, biblical literature continually transforms the mundane into something with sacred significance” (p. 181). God’s view of reality does not always conform to our expectations; instead, it revises them.

Christians, too, distinguish between historical reality and the universal truths of human experience. We know that fiction can convey truth more comprehensively and consistently than history if it faithfully imitates reality and accurately communicates edifying principles. Sir Philip Sidney argues that imaginative literature surpasses history in inculcating virtue: history is limited to relating actual events that do not always reflect biblical patterns of retribution and reward, whereas fiction can elevate consistently moral models for our emulation.

The historian, wanting the precept, is so tied, not to what should be but to what is, to the particular truth of things and not to the general reason of things, that his example draweth no necessary consequence, and therefore a less fruitful doctrine. (Sidney, 1595/1989, p. 221)

Signey goes on to relate the incident of Nathan’s rebuke to David by means of a story, “the application most divinely true, but the discourse itself feigned”; and he concludes “that the poet, with that same hand of delight [as the historian], doth draw the mind more effectually than any other art doth” (p. 228). The Bible exemplifies superior literature because it artfully tells things as they are and were and as they ought to be.

New Critical theory nudged literary criticism in the right direction when, in reaction to Romantic theory’s subjectivism, it insisted on paying scrupulous attention to what a text actually says rather than to what it variously signifies to each reader. This objective emphasis is perfectly consonant with the Christian’s belief in the objective,

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ineluctable truth of Scripture. Although the Bible’s significance—that is, “the relation of its verbal meaning to other matters, such as the personal situation, beliefs, and responses of the individual reader, or the prevailing cultural milieu of the reader’s own era, or a particular set of concepts or values”—may vary among individual readers and hearers, its meaning as established by God remains “determinate and stable” (Abrams, 1993, p.92). The honest reader of Scripture rejects a relativistic approach to the text and refuses to force the text to align with contemporary ideas of relevance.

The honest reader also does not impose on Scripture his ideas of artistic integrity. Typical modern sensibility recoils from neat correspondence and symmetrical design as aesthetically distasteful—even intellectually dishonest. Christians, however, realize that truth is not messy. We do not share in the secular critic’s suspicion of tidy endings as artificially engineered, since we believe them consonant with a providential view of life. The Bible’s truths are perfectly laid out for us in a balanced framework of positive and negative examples punctuated throughout with divine commentary. Because God is the Controller of history as well as the Author of Scripture, we reasonably conclude that neat patterns do not preclude historical truth.

Finally, the Christian reader does not dissociate the aesthetic from the didactic in Scripture. Although the Bible is indeed literature, its intention is much more than literary. We are concerned with the nature and excellence of its communicating truth; we cannot celebrate the manner and mode of that communication divorced from the message. An acknowledgment of how God chooses to communicate truth may be critically significant to our complete understanding of the truth. Again, literary criticism can prove invaluable as we explore the truth of God’s Word.

Potential hazards

It is true that literary criticism used in isolation from any defining philosophical framework can result in the secularizing of Scripture. The tools and criteria of literary analysis are in a large part humanly devised, or at least humanly discovered, and many critics do not hesitate to apply them to what they view as humanly produced texts. Gros Louis’s (1982) cavalier approach illustrates this dangerous attitude:

It may also be, of course, that by making the Bible more accessible, by teaching it like any other literary text, we may indeed be demystifuing it in a way that will permanently damage its authority as Scripture. My own opinion is that this risk—if it exists at all—is worth taking. (p. 17)

Fundamentalists must view literary criticism as a gift from God, capable of corruption as well as proper usage. Any of God’s gifts may be dedicated to His glory or perverted to the glory of man. We engage in biblical literary criticism to increase not our own stature but that of Scripture.

The fundamentalist literary critic must walk as carefully as any other Bible commentator or theologian through the field of biblical criticism, realizing that he is dealing with Holy Writ. Secular critics may rush in where we fear to tread, confident in their capabilities to master the material, unaware of the delicate, mysterious, and supernatural nature of the text they are handling. Warshaw (1974), for instance, tells

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literary critics that in order “to appreciate its [the Bible’s] craftsmanship, they must examine its ideas so that they can judge the appropriateness of form to content” (p. 33). The Christian posture is one of humility, cognizant of the fact that although evaluation is normally a valid critical objective, it remains in the case of Scripture’s “great and precious promises” firmly off-limits to the believer (II Peter 1:4). Further, interpretation must be conducted within certain absolute constraints.

The Bible is in many respects above conventional literary criticism. Christians know that there is something ineffable about the text: we can never control it fully with our insights and explanations. Instead, it exerts a control on us. “Ultimately, as we should expect, the Bible evades all literary criteria” (Frye, 1982, p. xvi).

God’s Word has more holding it together than we can schematize. That complexity frequently complicates our analysis, confounding our efforts to lay out a scheme with absolute consistency. Christian literary critics need to be careful not to force Scripture into analytical patterns that conform to their own ideas of strict logic, however difficult it may be to resist the all-too-human impulse to try to explain even those things we do not totally understand. We do not want to evoke God’s condemnation of Eliphaz, who presumed without His inspiration and blessing to speak for God: “My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right” (Job 42:7). We cannot limit Scripture to the level of our human competence; Scripture limits us.

Finally, Christians must temper an enthusiasm for the aesthetic when it is in danger of overshadowing the didactic. Without careful consideration, it would be easy to exalt one stylistically remarkable passage over another; that would be insulting to God, since all Scripture bears the marks of God’s authorship (II Timothy 3:16). “It is . . . not merely a sacred book but a book so remorselessly and continuously sacred that it does not invite, it excludes or repels, the merely aesthetic approach” (Lewis, 1969, p. 144). Unbelievers can value only the aesthetic dimension of Scripture because their eyes are blind to its essential truths, and even their aesthetic appreciation, divorced from the didactic context, is concomitantly dimmed. C. S. Lewis (1969) states that Scripture “demands incessantly to be taken on its own terms: it will not continue to give literary delight very long except to those who go to it for something quite different” (p. 144).

God censures those who evidence mere aesthetic enjoyment of His Word without the desire to put that Word into practice: “And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not” (Ezekiel 33:32). Likewise, Paul’s admonition in Philippians 4:8 to think on things that are lovely and edifying is immediately followed by this exhortation: “Those things . . . do” (4:9). The contemplative and active virtues are complementary. Passive contemplation of truth and beauty is not enough for the Christian; it must be assimilated into active service of the God who is Himself truth and beauty.

Narrative

The literary genres of the Bible are traditionally divided into song, saying, and story (Thompson, 1978). To a large extent, “narrative is the organizing framework within which the sayings and discourses are arranged” (Ryken, 1987b, p. 31). Ryken

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(1987a) calls narrative “the dominant form of the Bible” (p. 35). To the casual reader, narratives have always constituted the most attractive segments of the Bible. Berlin (1983) notes that the stories’ “power comes not only from the authority of scripture, but from the inner dynamics of the stories themselves” (p. 11). Even to the believer who is well acquainted with Scripture, the Bible’s stories have an automatic attraction with their colorful characters and fast-paced, suspenseful action. These stories have served as an introduction to Scriptural truth for countless generations of Christians, children and adults alike, and constitute a large part of the Bible’s universal appeal.

Frei (1986) writes that “the association of narrative with religion generally and Christianity in particular has always been close, although the self-consciously systematic use of the concept ‘narrative’ in Christian theology is a modern invention” (p. 37). Much of the work in recent biblical literary criticism, though, has been done in the field of Old Testament narrative. It is a natural focus for those critics who have a special interest in the Hebrew Bible, such as Alter, Sternberg, and Berlin, and for them the stories of Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Elijah, and David have an intrinsic fascination. Some of these critics have contributed greatly to our appreciation of the narratives’ complex interplay of character, plot, and theme. Regrettably, however, narratology—which attempts to analyze systematically the formal relations and functions of narratives—has in the past few decades been co-opted by votaries of avant-garde literary theory, until today the poststructuralists treat it as their special province. Modern narratology combines the formalist view of literature as a language unto itself, replete with self-referential irony, with deconstructive suspicion of the text as self-undermining. Whereas traditional narrative theory has analyzed stories to determine what meaning is being communicated by the author, modern narratology’s goal is not clarification, not even obfuscation, but destruction. This end is only to be expected, for the solution of the unregenerate to every problem or challenge, whether political, social, or intellectual, is death. Critics have seized what has always been a universally accessible literary form and have dragged it into the elitist sphere of esoteric nihilism, condescendingly playing intellectual games with it that eventually annihilate any semblance of meaning.

Christians view the treatment of biblical narrative in this fashion as an egregious offense. Bible stories are not intellectually privileged territory; narrative does not constitute its own language, decipherable only by intricatelinguistic analysis, simply because it is composed of words. The Christian reads biblical narratives not with suspicion but with faith, open to God’s communication through their special features. Scripture does not try to be clever at the reader’s expense. When the Psalmist prays “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law” (Psalm 119:18), he knows that God will not sabotage his effort. When the risen Christ met with His disciples prior to His ascension, “then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures” (Luke 24:45). Biblical narrative especially displays the clarity of truth and beauty.

Stories, nevertheless, carry their own burden of interpretative difficulty. “Narrative itself, because of its complex form, attracts interpretations and theoretical reflection that primarily address one or another of its various aspects” (Kort, 1988, p. x). That biblical narrative is clear does not mean that it is in every respect transparent to the unobservant, unperceptive reader. Stories are obviously less direct than sayings in communicating a message, and thus they require more discernment on our part to catch

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every nuance. The fundamentalist presumption of Scripture’s universal audience means that everyone can gain from a Bible story what is necessary for a rudimentary understanding of the basic import; it does not mean that everyone is automatically aware of all the implications. Readers are not equal in mental acumen and academic training any more than they are equal in spiritual maturity and sensitivity. But the Christian imperative of Christlikeness extends to intellectual efforts toward excellence. Serious students of Scripture can appropriate the more sophisticated methods of literary criticism which enhance our understanding and appreciation of fictional short stories toward the same ends with regard to biblical narrative.

New Testament narrative is concentrated in the Gospels and Acts. Not as much work has been done on these stories (with the possible exception of the parables) as on the Old Testament counterparts. One of the reasons is that the biblical literary critics who have done such extensive work on the Old Testament do not hold the New in as high regard. Many of the most important critics are Jewish, to whom the Bible is only the Old Testament. “The New Testament has always been felt to be less literary in nature than the Old Testament, with its gallery of vivid characters and colorful stories and abundance of poetry” (Ryken, 1984b, p. 2). Another is that critical attention has been largely focused on genre considerations. Critics debate whether the Gospels are essentially biography, history, or a totally new genre; they argue whether Acts is a history, romance, or primitive novel. Gabel and Wheeler (1986), for instance, protest (with rather naïve expectations of modern history, it seems) that

Acts is no more history than the gospels are history. It is not an impartial record of events, such as we now expect history books to be, but a deliberately constructed narrative designed, even to the smallest detail, for the sake of making certain didactic points. (p. 204)

A Gospel is not, of course, biography in the modern sense of the word, since the term “now connotes a relatively full account of a person’s life, involving the attempt to set forth character, temperament, and milieu, as well as the facts of the subject’s activities and experiences” (Abrams, 1993, p. 14). But Charles Talbert (1982) states that “Luke-Acts belongs to the ancient biographical tradition” (p. 2). He sees the two books as a unit in the tradition of cultic biography, which relates “the life of the founder of a religious community followed by a narrative about his successors and selected other disciples—both in one work” (p. 3). In his work What Is a Gospel? (1977), Talbert defines ancient biography as “prose narration about a person’s life, presenting supposedly historical facts which are selected to reveal the character or essence of the individual, often with the purpose of affecting the behavior of the reader” (p. 17). He is satisfied that this definition applies to the Gospels. Ryken (1987b), however, is convinced that the Gospels are “encyclopedic forms,” not to be confined to neat categories (p. 29).

In their discussions of genre, both Talbert and Ryken emphasize the narrativity of the Gospels, as does Edwards (1981):

A gospel is written to tell the story of Jesus in a way that will bring the reader to a conclusion about Jesus, a conclusion upon which the reader will act. . . . the

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gospels communicate theology through narrative rather than through abstract reasoning. (p. 11)

Nuttall (1978) agrees. Writing about Luke’s Gospel, he states: “We forget so soon that the gospel itself is a story. Luke, it seems, did not” (p. 9).

Part of the critical discomfort with New Testament narratives surely stems from their polemical presentation of the Man Who declares Himself to be God, the I AM, “the resurrection, and the life” (John 11:25). Here at last is the Messiah who was prophesied, anticipated, and longed for in the Old Testament. The New Testament stories do not possess the same aura of lustrous myth and legend as the Old Testament stories: they are too historically recent and too psychologically immediate. Christ’s identity as God so permeates them with a challenge to accept Him that if one does not regard the narratives as historically true, it is difficult to disregard those claims while pursuing exclusively literary avenues of interest.

For this reason, too, the parables—considered fiction even by Christians—tend to generate more critical interest. The parables are also easier to handle as neatly compacted units with their own internal unity. Virtually all of them fit under the same rubric of exemplum: they serve as illustrations of some doctrinal or ethical point that Christ makes in His teaching. Christ, though, is also capable of using narrative as an argumentative weapon. In Luke 10, Christ defeats a lawyer—an expert in his profession—with the simple method of telling a story (vv. 25-37). There is tremendous power in narrative.

New Testament narrative possesses all of the traditional elements of narrative technique. “There should be no doubt that the storytellers of the Bible were interested in narrative technique. Their stories are not randomly composed. They are small masterpieces, and analysis is capable of showing this” (Ryken, 1987a, p. 41). Berlin (1983) tells us that “if we want to understand a biblical story, we must first take seriously the effort to learn how stories are told, specifically how biblical stories are told” (p. 21). Kort (1988) emphasizes this interdependence of literary form and meaning.

Literary interests, therefore, do not impose themselves on the religious meaning or theological standing of biblical material. Rather, if there are religious and theological meanings and force in biblical narratives, they derive from and can be traced to the characteristics of narrativity and textuality. (p. 3)

Fundamentalists would stipulate that the force stems not just from the form of the work, but from the Holy Spirit.

When we consider the stories analytically, we ask questions about how they are structured and how they achieve their effets. We want to identify, for instance, the phases of the plot. How do we enter the story? How does it generate interest? Does the story begin in stasis or with a problem? Is there a reason for the story’s being segmented the way it is, or for the number of segments that occur in it? Is there any significance to the juxtaposition of certain incidents? What is the proportion of narration to speech? How is the story paced? What is time’s movement within the story? Does the story end in calm or confusion?

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Another area to examine is characterization. Biblical characterization is generally very simple, but we still want to explore exactly how the characters are described. Is physical description significant? In what context do the characters function with regard to familial or societal position? Do the characters serve as types? Is the focus of the story on different characters at different points? The answers to these questions affect our interpretation of the story. We also need to look at how the characters exemplify conflicts in the narrative. The underlying conflict in Scripture is good versus evil, God versus Satan. Characters serve one or the other. In speaking of characters we are, of course, using the term in a technical sense, not derogating from their historical status as actual human beings. The term is a critical convenience.

An outstanding feature of biblical narrative is its economy. The style is clean and sparse. Generally, “in biblical narrative, description plays a subordinate role to narration” (Thompson, 1978, p. 32). Since theoretically there are countless possible ways to tell a story, readers must pay close attention to how an author has chosen to tell his: the selectivity of every detail is artfully significant. “As the necessary intersection of the narrative transaction, the text is the net that permits certain things to pass through while restricting others” (Funk, 1988, p. 5). Alter (1981) affirms the importance of this selectivity:

What role does literary art play in the shaping of biblical narrative? A crucial one, I shall argue, finely modulated from moment to moment, determining in most cases the minute choice of words and reported details, the pace of narration, the small movements of dialogue, and a whole network of ramified interconnections in the text. (p. 3)

When stories avoid prolixity as conscientiously as biblical narratives do, the very scarcity of details makes those we have more memorable.

The Gospels are an even more famous example of how a biblical storyteller’s very selection of material results in an interpretation of the character and events that make up the story. . . . Luke, for example, included a number of distinctive incidents and teachings of Jesus that involve the poor, women, and non-Jewish people (especially Samaritans) that are absent from the other Gospels. This selectivity reflects an interpretation of the person and mission of Jesus. (Ryken, 1984a, p. 64)

What a narrative does not include can be as important as what it does. “All narratives have gaps in the telling of a story, and what a narrator decides not to say is sometimes as important as what is said” (Parsons, 1990, p. 407). The Christian literary critic has faith that God’s narrative omissions are deliberate and that everything necessary for our edification has been included. Modern critics tend to make much of what they term “narrative gaps,” speculating about the motivation for and missing content of these white spaces. Christians need to be wary of the relativism that this speculation invites and resist the temptation to participate in the authorship of inspired Scripture.

Narratives have definite designs on their readers, and realizing their didactic and aesthetic intentions can sensitize readers to the importance of point of view.

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Critics who center on the action-linked features of written narrative—those features it shares with theatrical and televised drama and film—tend, consciously or unconsciously, to pay little attention to the special features of the written medium, most notably, point of view. (Moore, 1989, p. 39)

Many critics have noticed that biblical narrative resembles the medium of film more than theater in that audience perspective is more controlled. God’s overall point of view in Scripture is determinative, although God does allow other points of view to intrude at selected moments into the narrative as foils for His. Verbal, situational, and dramatic irony enhance the impact of the various points of view, as well as the atmosphere and tone. Further, the manner in which the narrative manipulates suspense and surprise can dictate the story’s emotional effect on the reader.

Like all social discourse, biblical narrative is oriented to an addressee and regulated by a purpose or a set of purposes involving the addressee. Hence our primary business as readers is to make purposive sense of it, so as to explain the what’s and the how’s in terms of the why’s of communication. (Sternberg, 1985, p. 1)

Christian critics, of course, must rely on the Holy Spirit for guidance in correct interpretation (John 16:13).

Literary critics also should be alert to stylistic devices of diction and syntax. Whether the sentences of a story are phrased declaratively, interrogatively, or imperatively influences their connotation. The proportion of verbs to other parts of speech and even the types of verbs chosen modify readers’ reactions to the story. The degree and frequency of repetition can indicate especially important statements and incidents.

Finally, literary critics are interested in assessing the contributions of images and motifs to a story’s themes. Images can support stereotypical conceptions about the characters (e.g., grieving widows, bold beggars) or else suggest fresh ways of perceiving them. An author may use a motif to unify a single so try or to stretch the unity to encompass other stories. Critics also try to identify allusions which may evoke images from other works to serve as implicit commentary on a story’s themes.

New Testament narrative provides rich territory for literary exploration. The narrative mode possesses the

Ability to express the passage of life through a moment of tension to a resolution. . . . By creating its own ordered world, wherein, through struggle and action, an end is achieved, the story expresses faith in the ultimate reality of order and life. (Beardslee, 1970, p. 17)

The stories of the Gospels and Acts reflect their Author in their beauty, order, and depth.

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The Transformation Stories

The New Testament narratives are independently coherent stories that function withi8n the comprehensive frame of a controlling theme: the identi8ty of Christ and the nature of the O(ne whom He is revealing through His life, teaching, and Crucifixion. It is the story of the Incarnation of God. An overarching irony governs the whole: what initially and superficially appear to be successive and accumulating defeats that culminate in a climactic defeat, that is, the Crucifixion, actually coincide with climactic victory, that is, redemption and Resurrection.

The miracle of Christ’s Incarnation is reinforced by the many miracle narratives in the Gospels and Acts. It is extremely difficult, in fact, to separate for discussion purposes the individual miracle narratives from the Gospel narrative as a whole, because the very act of God’s divesting Himself of His divine glory to don human flesh and walk among us is itself so overwhelmingly miraculous. By that standard, Scripture, too, as the direct revelation of a supra-dimensional Deity to finite man, is a miracle.

In his book Miracles (1947), C. S. Lewis defines a miracle as “an interference with Nature by supernatural power” (p. 10). That a supernatural God condescended to project Himself into the natural processes of His creation and subject Himself to those natural laws for the express purpose of redeeming that creation inspires profound wonder. This Great Miracle of God’s transformation into the God-Man is reflected in the miracles that the Man Jesus performed as courses of nature and reversed the natural degenerations of disease and death in those He healed. A miracle story “is not for the author extraneous intercalation, or special pleading that he has forcibly introduced, but is an inherent and natural part of his work” (Cadbury, 1961, p. 339). The miracle accounts complement the direct claims of Christ in the “saying” passages of the Gospels. Roughly one third of the Gospel narrative is devoted to the Passion story, and the miracle stories also prepare us for that account of Redemption’s transforming miracle.

The Gospel writers recount thirty-five specific miracles that Jesus Christ performed during His three-year earthly ministry. Nine of these can be classified as nature miracles, temporary disruptions of the normal limitations and progression of physical laws. Six others relate mental and physical purifications from demon possession. The remaining twenty—by far the largest group—focus on physical healings that range from the restoration of a single body part to the restoration of an entire life. Each author chooses his incidents and develops slightly different details in them to enhance his particular overall theme: further, each demonstrates conscious artistry in the placement of these accounts within the framework of his book.

In Acts, the miracles performed by the disciples during the establishment and growth of the church are extensions of Christ’s, executed by His authority and through His power. They testify to the continuing dominion of Christ over creation. In the wake of Peter and John’s healing of the lame man, the Christians ask God to continue to work through them all, “that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus” (Acts 4:30).

The miracles of the New Testament produce physical change in nature and humans; even when Christ resurrects a person, it is his physical life that He restores. Nevertheless, the effect of the physical change extends to include other transformations, primarily the altered attitudes of those who witness or are immediate beneficiaries of the

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miracles. Since the purpose of miracles is to testify of Christ’s deity, their ultimate aim is conversion, which is itself a miraculous transformation.

This paper is intended as a literary examination of the transformation narratives of the New Testament. Its scope will be limited to those included in the Gospel of Luke and Acts. The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to explore the progression in the transformations from the natural to the spiritual; and second, to determine the bases of the overall narrative unity of these miracle and conversion stories. There would appear to be a logical, narrative continuation seriatim from changes that are confined to the material world (the nature miracles) to those that are more humanly focused but still primarily physical (the healing miracles); then further to those that involve more an inner change, mental and spiritual (the exorcisms), to the ultimate and intensely personal change of soul conversion. The metamorphoses progress from those with a temporal focus to those that have eternal consequence. The transformations involve a restoration of wholeness, and salvation completes what the physical miracles anticipate: the final physical, mental, and spiritual redemption of man.

Luke and Acts are the only books in Scripture known to have been written by someone not a Jew. Fundamentalists conservatively date the books at A.D. 58 and 61. Luke announces his reason for having written his Gospel in the literary preface: “It seemed good to me . . . to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed” (1:3-4). Kennedy’s (1984) list of a speaker’s potential rhetorical problems, especially when presenting a story that strains normal credulity, helps us to understand Luke’s approach in the opening verses of his books:

His audience is perhaps already prejudiced against him and not disposed to listen to anything he may say; or the audience may not perceive him as having the authority to advance the claims he wishes to make; or what he wishes to say is very complicated and thus hard to follow, or so totally different from what the audience expects that they will not immediately entertain the possibility of its truth. (p. 36)

Luke underscores the authority of his writing with an appeal to divine inspiration (Luke 1:3). There is consonantly an emphatic insistence in both books on proof and certainty: Luke states that he is writing “a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us” (Luke 1:1); he asserts that he is relating the “infallible proofs” of the Resurrection and its implications (Acts 1:3). These assurances of reliability are necessary in light of what he is about to discuss: a series of miracles that threaten disbelief on the reader’s part. In fact, Luke seems almost to challenge the reader’s willingness to accept the truth of his account by his placing angelic appearances immediately after both prefaces. Of course, the presence of angels serves to heighten our anticipation and sense of wonder, preparing us for the miraculous transformation stories. In discussing the epiphany story at the beginning of Acts, Davis (1982) observes: “The narrative focuses upon the incursion of the divine into time and space for the accomplishment of creative or original acts” (p. 215).

Luke’s method is from the beginning decidedly literary. Luke acknowledges that other writers have attempted what he proposes to do (Luke 1:1-2), but he states, “It

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seemed good to me also” to pursue the effort (1:3). “Luke is not saying that other gospels are not true, only that he will follow a more rigorous narrative method and be more specific” (p. 107). Cadbury (1961) compares Luke’s Gospel to Matthew’s and concludes: “Luke’s work bears more of the evidence of a literary self-consciousness” (p. 344). Luke particularly emphasizes the “order” (1:3) of his approach.

It is the churchly situation which motivates the Lucan author to write and it is from a theological perspective that he exercises his pastoral concern. In writing, however, it is apparently the accepted literary procedure of the day which he follows. This means that there are both theological and aesthetic influences at work on the Evangelist. (pp. 141-142)

Parsons (1990) mentions that the preface to Acts “is itself a literary beginning to a wonderfully complex narrative” (p. 403). It needs to be clearly stated once again that the references in this paper to Luke as the agent of the literary features and effects described do not imply a position on the degrees of human and divine agency in these matters. It appears that we can assume a considerable degree of self-conscious arrangement, but the use of “Luke” is primarily a critical convenience. Behind Luke’s efforts, conscious or unconscious, is the divine Author.

Although Acts is “the only narrative presentation of early church history to find a place within the canon” (Pervo, 1987, p. 1), its value to us is much more than historical. Beverly Roberts Gaventa (1988) urges an appreciation of the literary qualities of its narrativity for the sake of its theology: “The narrative of Acts is not to be reduced to propositional statements or systematic affirmations. . . . one of the characteristics of Acts is its narrative complexity” (p. 157). Gaventa recognizes the complementariness of literary and theological interpretation: “Lukan theology is intricately and irreversibly bound up with the story he tells and cannot be separated from it. An attempt to do justice to the theology of Acts must struggle to reclaim the character of Acts as a narrative” (p. 150).

Ever since Henry Cadbury’s (1961) groundbreaking work on the unity of Luke and Acts, it has been customary in literary critical circles to speak of the books as a unit: Luke-Acts. Writing from a secular viewpoint, Parsons and Pervo (1993) state that although Acts previously suffered comparative literary critical neglect, “much of the [recent] popularity is due to the linking of Acts with its ‘better half,’ the Gospel of Luke” (p. 2). Talbert has done extensive work in identifying for us Luke’s fondness for parallels. He points out one of Luke’s methods in proving Christ’s claims to divinity from His birth to His ascension: “The Lucan response involved an attempt to link the parts of the Christ event together in an inseparable unity. This theological tendency would utilize the literary proclivity for correspondences in the parts of a balanced whole” (p. 142). Powell (1991), building on Talbert, notes that a belief in the correspondences assumes intentional unity on the author’s part:

In any case, the parallels would only make sense if both the gospel and Acts were read together as a single work. They are evidence that Luke constructed his two-volume work with meticulous intentionality and forethought, and that he did so under the assumption that the two parts would be compared to each other. (p. 8)

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The fundamentalist literary critic believes that God superintended this strict unity.Some modern critics now dispute the unity of Luke and Acts on the ground that

they are two different types of works: for these critics, the single authorship of the books—and even that is disputed by some skeptics—is not basis enough to assume their essential unity. Parsons and Pervo (1993) ask dubiously: “If Luke and Acts tell the story differently, do they tell different stories? Or, can the narrative, in Chatman’s categories, be distinct at the discourse level and an essential unity at the story level?” (p. 82). This objection to the books’ unity is partially based on a misconception:

Acts does not continue the story of Jesus, whose departure makes its story possible. It is thus best understood as a sequel rather than a second chapter or simple continuation. Luke does not leave the reader frustrated or in suspense, for it concludes where it began and with the earthly career of Jesus finished. (Parsons and Pervo, 1993, p. 123)

To the contrary, Luke implies quite clearly that he is continuing his story of Jesus. He states that his gospel relates only what “Jesus began both to do and teach” (Acts 1:1), thereby intimating that Christ continues to act and instruct through His apostles and the Holy Spirit throughout the book of Acts (1:2). In the second chapter of Acts, Pentecost begins Christ’s new method.

“Luke-Acts has perhaps the most positive attitude toward miracle among the gospels” (Talbert, 1982, pp. 245-246). In an orderly fashion, Luke tells the story of a world turned upside down. The atmosphere of the narrative is realistic despite the fantastic nature of the events it relates, because Luke is communicating historical fact. He selects and arranges all of his stories to convince his readers of the major miracle of the Incarnation: “the evangelist believes miracle has an evangelistic function. Faith” (Talbert, 1982, p. 246). Of course, Luke “knows miracle is no proof that compels conversion (cf. 6:6-11; 8:26-39; 11:14ff; Acts 4:16-21; 14:8-18; 16:16ff.). . . . to have experienced a miracle, Luke believes, is not the same thing as having faith, being healed is not the same as being saved (Luke 17:11-19)” (Talbert, 1982, p. 246).

Nevertheless, Luke writes in Acts 1:1-2 that he has given in his Gospel an account of “all” that Jesus did and taught on earth “until the day in which he was taken up.” His use of the word “all” indicates that Luke exercised literary artfulness in having chosen not only all the material necessary to support his major thesis, but also all that is necessary for us to know in order to share in the experience of those first converts to Christianity. In sum, Luke’s transformation narratives reflect the entire divine comedy of restoration initiated in the Crucifixion and fulfilled in the last events of Revelation.

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Chapter II

THE MIRACLES

One cannot read very far in criticism and exposition of the Gospel miracles without encountering the inevitable discussions about their genuineness. Critics seriously debate issues of possibility and probability, frequently concluding that the questionable authenticity of a particular miracle or even of miracles in general does not negate the value of their contribution to the Gospel writers’ literary and theological purposes. When Alan Richardson (1941) considers the reasons for the uniqueness of four Lucan miracle stories, he decides that the best explanation for those four narratives’ not appearing in the other Gospels is that Luke simply fabricated them.

It is hard to escape the conclusion, especially if we have regard to some of the miracle-stories of Acts, that St. Luke did not hesitate to construct such stories, in harmony alike with the main purpose and general content of the Church’s tradition, in order the better to illustrate the significance of the work of Jesus or the preaching of the Apostles by means of teaching conveyed in story form. The stories would thus represent the truth of the Gospel, the truth about Jesus and the Apostles, as the Church understood it, even though they are not to be regarded as necessarily accurate recordings of specific historical happenings. (p. 111)

Reginald Fuller (1963) agrees that Luke is not above adjusting historical fact to accommodate his thesis:

Luke places his art at the service of his theology. His interest is always in the deeds of Jesus as a fulfillment of prophecy. . . . The healings, exorcisms and raising from the dead are all signs that Jesus is the prophet-Messiah sent from God: in him the salvation of God is present in history. (pp. 85-86)

Fuller complains that the fundamentalist belief in the literal truth of miracles is religiously divisive and intellectually dishonest. He exhibits a Kierkegaardian disdain for evidential truth. To him, the matter of the miracle stories’ basis in fact is trivial, irrelevant to the real issue at stake: faith.

Faith is not believing that such things as the miraculous draft of fishes really happened. It is believing in Jesus Christ as my Saviour, as the one in whom God has acted finally for my salvation. To such a faith, the historicity of this or that miracle in the gospel tradition is “comparatively irrelevant.” (1963, pp. 121-122)

Much of the problem that these critics have with miracles stems from a general disbelief in the supernatural. Tennant (1925) correctly observes that “a miracle, in order to be distinguished in thought from Nature, from the settled order which is its necessary background, must therefore be defined not only as an exception to law, but as due to supernatural causation” (p. 48). Unbelieving critics condescend to what they perceive as the Gospel writers’ first-century undiscriminating credulity: “The miraculous formed and

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dominated the general conception of the world. We may call this conception primitive since it includes the typical features of a popular view of reality” (Fridrichsen, 1925/1972, p. 59). Ironically, these very critics demonstrate a childlike, absolutist faith in naturalism and thus a priori reject the possibility of supernatural intervention in the natural order, begging the question of whether the Gospel miracles could have happened. In fact, Tennant’s argument that the occurrence of a miracle “can never be asserted so long as our scientific knowledge of Nature is inexhaustive” (1925, p. 67) precludes the possibility of our ever being able to believe definitively in the existence of miracles: the next scientific discovery is always lurking around the corner, ready to disprove another instance of the miraculous.

Luke’s stance toward the miraculous directly contravenes this viewpoint. His Gospel presents Christ’s healings, exorcisms, and subduings of nature as evidences of God’s working directly through His Son in a unique, extraordinary manner unreproducible by humans. The implication of Scripture is that only God can perform these acts. Science will never be able instantaneously to calm the wind or heal the blind by the mere word of a man. Luke does stress the awe-stricken reactions of witnesses to the miracles, but never to the exclusion of an emphasis on the fact of the miracle itself. “Miracle stories in the New Testament are self-contained narratives centering upon the miracle itself” (Thompson, 1978, p. 237).

Whatever various critics may believe about the factuality of the miracles Luke relates, they do agree that Luke artfully organizes them. Fridrichsen (1925/1972) patronizes Luke with a left-handed compliment in ranking his artistry above Matthew’s and Mark’s:

But in details Luke does not surpass the naiveté of the synoptic species. Thanks to his literary tastes he handles the Greek with a bit more finesse than the others and composes with greater boldness than Mark and Matthew. Withy insufficient and incoherent data, he knows how to compose a narrative where everything holds together and in sequence. (p. 54)

Indeed, most critics attribute to Luke a more sophisticated design. They concur that Luke arranges the miracle accounts climactically toward their culmination in the Passion story. Fuller (1963) sees the literary outline of Luke in Christ’s own words on the way to Jerusalem: “Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following” (13:33). The “to day” is the Galilean ministry of 4:14-9:50; “to morrow” signifies the journey to Jerusalem in 9:51-18:34. Miracles abound within these two sections, but they are almost entirely absent in the “day following” section of 18:35-24:53, which centers on the Passion. “The miracles of Jesus are preliminary rounds in the final conflict with the powers of evil, or the preliminary manifestations of the final revelation of the glory of God finally revealed in the cross” (Fuller, 1963, p. 10). Richardson (1941) affirms the importance of the miracle narratives as preparatory to the Passion account:

Apart from the miracles of Jesus, the story of the crucifixion as a historical narrative is unintelligible, and the religious significance of man’s rejection of God’s demonstrated salvation becomes an anaemic moralism. The miracles of the Gospel are not the figments of a legend-loving Christian community; they are the

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hard facts which underline man’s rejection of God’s salvation and which bring history to a climax and the purpose of God to its fulfillment. (p. 135)

Talbert (1982) states that for the pagan of Luke’s time, “miracle had the power to prove deity” (p. 241). The attitude of the Jews was that miracle signified “the divine legitimation of a position, a person, or of God himself” (p. 242). Talbert believes that Luke included the many miracles in Luke and Acts as a means of winning converts. “There are at least three major themes running through Luke-Acts that would contribute to this legitimation [of Christ as Messiah-God]: the fulfillment of prophecy, the occurrence of miracles, and the martyrdom of the hero” (p. 4).

Ultimately, “miracles are not proofs, but challenges to faith. They place us before an either/or: either they are acts of God, or, as Jesus’ enemies held, they are black magic (Mark 3.22)” (Fuller, 1963, p. 12). Tennant (1925) points out that our “credence . . . may be reasonable and even logically rational, or may be but superstitious credulity” (p. 69). Christianity is, in fact, a reasonable faith; for if one assumes a supernatural, omnipotent God, a belief that the spiritual realm may obtrude on the material at God’s pleasure follows perfectly naturally. “There are preformed potencies and tendencies intrinsic to Nature. When these are not modified by fresh creative activity, Nature is wholly natural” (Tennant, 1925, p. 47). But when “fresh creative activity” does occur, the only explanation is supernaturalism. When God chooses to circumvent His natural timetable of growth in the seasonal cycles and stages of development, and instead “grows” and multiplies bread instantaneously to feed a crowd of hungry people, He is demonstrating “fresh creative activity.” As C. S. Lewis (1947) puts it, He “short circuits the [normal] process” (p. 141). When God bypasses the generational accumulations of genetic material and biological processes that reproduction normally involves, and instead replicates in the conception of Christ the direct, personal creation of the first man, He is performing “fresh creative activity.”

Once the great glove of Nature was taken off His hand. His naked hand touched her. There was of course an unique reason for it. That time He was creating not simply a man but the Man who was to be Himself: was creating Man anew: was beginning, at this divine and human point, the New Creation of all things. (Lewis, 1947, p. 144)

Milton understood this principle. In Paradise Lost, after Satan and his band of rebellious angels have damaged as much as they can the landscape of heaven, Christ’s first act of retaliation—before He finally drives the damned crew to hell—is re-creation, to repair the ravages of Satan and sin. In effect, that is how Luke has constructed his narrative: Christ circumvents the limitations that sin has placed on this world and He removes the visible effects of sin on suffering humans, all as anticipatory of the ultimate contravening o9f Satan’s power at the Cross and empty tomb.

Christians thrill to these stories not as evidences of Luke’s literary powers: the pleasure we derive from them in that respect is only complementary to the reverential wonder that we experience in the knowledge that these stories are true. Fuller’s (1963) suggestion that the draft of fish was not all that miraculous, that “for the evangelist, the real miracle was not the draught of the fishes, but the call of Peter to the apostleship and

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his apostolic ministry” (pp. 122-123), misses the whole point of the story, debasing it. Limiting ourselves to participating in the miracle stories vicariously through an act of the imagination, all the while disbelieving their veracity, vitiates their power. The only proper way to read the stories is the way Luke intended us to read them, because it is God’s way.

Miracles by themselves do not compel belief. Christ proclaims at the conclusion of his parable of the rich man and Lazarus, foreshadowing the miracle of His own Resurrection, “neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Luke 16:31). John laments in his own Gospel that “though he had done so many miracles before then, yet they believed not on him” (12:37). The responsibility for a proper apprehension of the miracle narratives—absolute belief in response to absolute truth—rests with the reader.

The Nature Miracles

Luke records three miracles that Christ performed on nature: the draft of fish (5:1-11), the calming of the storm (8:22-25), and the feeding of the five thousand (9:12-17). They are clustered near the beginning of the book, interwoven with the early healing miracles. It might be useful, therefore, to view them as a kind of prologue to Christ’s more public ministry in which He gradually captures the attention of an increasingly large audience. That the disciples are the primary—sometimes the only—witnesses to the miracles seems to underscore their introductory nature, although these miracles are certainly no less spectacular than any of the others. Luke introduces elements in the narratives that anticipate those in the later healing stories, where they are magnified and translated into a more personal dimension. Concerning these elements, Tannehill remarks, “Disclosures of the nature of God’s purpose are highlighted at key points in the narrative as guides in interpreting the story. The disclosures at the beginning of Luke are especially important in suggesting ultimate expectations” (1986, p. xiii).

The story of the miraculous draft of fish is unique to Luke’s Gospel. Luke includes it and places it first in the series of nature miracles perhaps because its lessons on evangelism and faith are expanded in the other two nature episodes. Further, the first and last story constitute a neat envelope structure on the subject of fishing, literal and metaphorical.

At the beginning of the story, Luke pictures Christ standing at the shore of a lake, where He is driven by the eager multitude almost into the water. In verse 2 He notices—apparently by chance—two ships standing idle, and in the following verse He commandeers—again seemingly at random—one of them from which to teach the people. But in the very next verse the reader realizes with a start that Christ’s selection of Peter’s boat was deliberate. Commanding a further remove from land, Jesus utters a phrase that the King James translation has immortalized as an expression characterizing daring enterprise of uncertain success: “Launch out into the deep.” The reader’s breath of relief at Christ’s release from the claustrophobic press of the crowd suddenly converts to a sharp rush of anticipation concerning the outcome of this bold imperative and its corollary, “let down your nets.”

Peter protests. His objection is, at base, arrogant: he thinks he has more experience than Jesus and therefore knows that the attempt will prove profitless. Thus,

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his letting down just one net is an act not of obedience but of unbelief. But he has a surprise in store. “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep” (Psalm 107:23-24). When the net captures so many fish that it actually breaks, Peter recognizes his grievous sin in having doubted Jesus’s wisdom and obeying Him only half-heartedly: “he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (v. 8). Christ’s response is typically gracious. He does not react defensively to Peter’s expressed lack of faith, nor does He evidence a smug “I-told-you-so” attitude when the ships begin to sink under their abundant catch. Instead, He drives home the lesson of faith with a positive exhortation to “Fear not” and an assurance that “from henceforth thou shalt catch men”—a response that encourages Peter, James, and John to forsake all and follow him (vv. 10-11). Christ is taking advantage of a teachable moment.

Luke sets up this episode as an object lesson in evangelism. Peter and his crew have to summon help from “their partners” (v. 7); James and John consequently share in the astonishment at the miraculous catch (v. 10). Peter, then, is unwittingly anticipating his function as a fisher of men. Christ is already engaged in His own catching. “The great catch is a symbolic portrayal of t6he expanding mission in which Jesus is already engaged in 5:1-3” (Tannehill, 1986, p. 204). These three disciples will develop into Christ’s special intimates, the so-called “inner circle.”

A dominating motif of this story is profusion. The catch is so plentiful that the net breaks; even when the other ship assists, there are still so many fish that both boats begin to sink. Peter’s response is not to hang his head in shame or to bend his knee in humility, but to fling himself down in an act of profuse self-abnegation. This story provides a good introduction to the extravagantly reckless personality of the fisherman who often expressed himself crudely and acted without forethought. Christ singles out Peter as destined for a position of special leadership and addresses Peter’s spiritual potential rather than his exterior cowardice, bravado, and uncouthness. He never gives up on Peter despite his repeated failures. Peter’s potential for leadership is fulfilled in Acts after his Teacher has passed from the scene. With the power of the Holy Spirit after the transformation at Pentecost, Peter becomes a fearless fisher of men. “As the fishermen caught fish abundantly at this stage of the story, so the fishers of men will convert people in Acts” (Edwards, 1981, p. 37). Peter’s outspokenness and impulsiveness are refined into a godly boldness that serves the infant church well.

The last verse of the story supplies the final detail of profusion. When the men return to land after their lesson at sea, they abandon their vocation for the new one of committed discipleship, forsaking all to follow Christ. The copiousness of the catch elicits equally abundant devotion. As the story begins on land, so Luke brings the erstwhile fishermen back to land at the conclusion, symbolizing their renunciation of what they now realize as a less profitable course of life.

In the middle nature narrative, Christ once again performs a miracle on board a ship. He has demonstrated control over things under the sea; now He proves His dominion over the sky as well. Luke tells us that Christ “rebuked the wind and the raging of the water: and they ceased” (v. 24). The wind and waves appear to us personified: Christ speaks to nature and it responds.

The entire episode is related in only four verses. “Biblical storytellers show a remarkable preference for the brief unit” (Ryken, 1987a, p. 41). In fact, the five major

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verbs in verse 24 by themselves tell practically the whole story: “came,” “awoke,” “arose,” “rebuked,” and “ceased” constitute a complete chain of action following the disciples’ fear for their lives while their Lord sleeps.

In the final verse, Jesus delivers a second rebuke, this time to His disciples: “Where is your faith?” (v. 25). Lack of faith was the disciples’ problem in the previous episode; here it is replicated in a more profound form. “It is true that in their fear they prayed to the sleeping Christ and aroused Him to help them. But even that was a prayer inspired by fear of the storm rather than by faith in Him” (Wallace, 1960, p. 58). As Christ earlier tells Peter, “Launch out into the deep” (5:14), so now “they launched forth” (v. 22) on what will prove to be another adventure in faith. The disciples fear their ship’s sinking as it becomes “filled with water” (v. 23); ironically, that is exactly what was threatened when the catch of fish “filled both the ships, so that they began to sink” (5:7). The response to both miracles is fear. Peter “was astonished . . . at the draught of the fishes,” and Christ has to tell him, “Fear not” (5:9, 10). After Christ stills the storm, the disciples “being afraid wondered, saying one to another, What manner of man is this!” (v. 25). Paradoxically, they are afraid after the danger is past. This fear, of course, is different. It is a reverential awe of One who “commandeth even the winds and water” (v. 25). He is the Psalmist’s God who “maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still” (Psalm 107:29; cf. also Psalm 89:9).

As Christ proves Himself a Fisher of men even while He is instructing the disciples in that mission, so in this story He Himself proves a living example of the faith He chides the disciples for lacking. Christ is so confident of His Father’s providential care that He can sleep through the storm. Luke does not mean the lesson to be lost on his readers, who must navigate their own tempests.

Of all the miracles, the feeding of the five thousand is the only one recorded in all four Gospels. Luke puts it last in his series of nature miracles, where it ties together elements from the other two narratives and provides a satisfying sense of closure.

The draft-of-fish story begins and ends on land, with the intervening lesson taking place at sea; the stilling of the storm episode occurs almost entirely at sea; the feeding of the five thousand takes place on land, yet the lesson recalls the sea in the emphasis on the fish. Christ here produces as many fish on land as He has in the draft at sea. He once again uses the disciples as instruments in His performing the miracle, showing them this time more graphically how they can be fishers of men.

Luke builds the story’s themes and major effects on the repetition of numbers. In the first verse, it is not “the disciples” who approach Christ, but “the twelve” (v. 12). When Christ commands them to feed the multitude, they protest that they “have no more but five loaves and two fishes” (v. 13). The next verse puts the number of the crowd at “about five thousand men” (v. 14), contrasting sharply with the mere dozen who are supposed to supply the food. Jesus then tells the disciples to have the people “sit down by fifties in a company” (v. 14). This insistence on order prevents the possible dilution of the miracle’s effect in confusion. Many skeptical readers have suggested that one person’s willingness to share his meager meal inspired a mass sharing so that everyone ended up being fed. The systematic grouping in fairly small units renders that interpretation highly unreasonable. The following verse repeats the numbers “five” and “two” (v. 16), probably to underscore the disparity between the food supply and the number of people it must satisfy, and also to magnify the effect of the spectacular miracle

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about to ensue. The last verse indicates that after everyone is fed, the leftovers alone fill “twelve baskets” (v. 17)—in effect, one for each disciple as an individual reinforcement of the miracle.

Luke thus conducts his story chiastically on a 12-5+2-5000-5+2-12 pattern. Matthew and Mark structure their renditions of the episode so that the actual number of the people fed is withheld until the last verse, creating a final impact of surprise (Matthew 14:21; Mark 6:44). John places the five thousand number in the middle of his account (6:10), assigning it no particular structural emphasis. His major focus is not on the huge number Christ miraculously feeds but on Christ as the Supplier. The Bread of Life discourse immediately follows, in which Jesus proclaims Himself the Bread which satisfies not just temporarily but eternally. Luke, however, directs the reader’s primary attention to the disciples and the lesson they are learning about faith, and so frames his narrative with the number twelve.

The disciples’ solution to the problem of mass hunger is to “Send the multitude away” (v. 12). Christ has to show the twelve that they cannot properly minister to people by directing the needy elsewhere. The disciples’ objection concerning the paucity of their resources echoes Peter’s complaint that after a full night’s work he has taken “nothing” (5:5). Likewise, at the end of a long afternoon, the five loaves and two fish are comparatively nothing to such an enormous communal appetite. But through Christ’s power, meager human resources produce results far out of expected proportions. It takes only twelve men to serve the needs of five thousand others; it takes only one fisherman to bring in thousands of fish. Christ inspires His disciples for the monumental task of evangelizing the world. “He uses what men have before He gives them more; He tells them to do what they can, before He does what He can” (Habershon, 1957, p. 130).

Luke underscores the completeness of Christ’s provision by noting not only that “they did eat,” but that they “were all filled” (v. 17). The arrangement of the phrases parallels that of the clauses describing the peace after the storm: “and they ceased, and there was a calm” (8:24). There is not just a dying down of the wind, nor is there a lingering breeze—only absolute stillness. Similarly, the feeding of those five thousand men does not merely slake their hunger pangs, but totally erases them. Christ never gives just enough: His generous Spirit always provides “exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). “Those broken pieces, which remained over after all had eaten and were filled, are the symbol of the inexhaustible spiritual food which is not diminished by being used” (Richardson, 1941, p. 95). “Here was subtraction without diminution, multiplication by means of subtraction, addition caused by division, and fractions which were larger than the whole” (Habershon, 1957, p. 129). It is profusion compounded.

In the narratives of the nature miracles, Luke reveals Jesus as the Ruler of the physical world. “Nature, whether usual or unusual, merely furnishes the stage for the major work of God. This takes place in the realm of history” (Fuller, 1963, p. 9). Christ controls all the elements: He governs the yield of the sea in the draft of fishes; He regulates water as well as wind and fiery lightning in the calming of the storm; He masterfully manipulates the earth’s harvest in the multiplication of the loaves. Fire, air, water, earth: all are dominated by their Creator.

In performing these miracles, Christ also remedies relatively minor personal adversities: the frustrating disappointment of profitless hard labor, the temporary

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gnawing of hunger. These may seem almost inconsequential against the backdrop of Christ’s intervention in the processes of nature. Even the threat of the ship’s capsizing during the storm proves not so ominous to the reader, because he knows that all the while the sleeping Christ is on board. But we must not forget that the nature miracles are all ultimately directed toward human beings in whom Christ has a personal interest. As a unit, they provide an effective transition to the healing miracles, in which people suffering with constant pain an severe handicaps experience marvelous cures that change their lives forever.

The Healing Miracles

At the beginning of His public ministry, Christ identifies Himself as the Great Physician by announcing that He is the fulfillment of Isaiah 61:1-3. He tells the listeners in the synagogue that God “hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18). The initial response of wonderment He evokes when He declares “This day is this scripture fulfilled” (4:21) quickly changes to outright hostility as He elaborates; when He compares Himself to Elijah the miracle-worker, the synagogue crowd, “filled with wrath” (4:28), hustles Him out of town and tries to throw Him from the top of a hill (4:29). Christ miraculously escapes their murderous intent at this point, for the Father has planned for Him a three-year earthly ministry during which He will perform numerous acts of healing that will surpass those of Elijah. At the end of that period, however, Christ will voluntarily surrender Himself to be killed on a different hill in order to complete that ministry of healing.

The thirteen healing narratives in Luke typically follow a pattern of request, regeneration, and result. In eight of them, Christ is approached by the needy person or on behalf of him; the AV uses the term “beseech” in half of those to convey the desperateness of the plea (4:38; 5:12; 7:3; 8:41). Since Bartimaeus cannot even use his eyes to enhance communication of his appeal, he must demonstrate unusual persistence in his suit: he “cried so much the more” when the crowd “rebuked him, that he should hold his peace” (18:39). The timid woman with the issue of blood risks exposure at her tentative touch because she has “spent all her living upon physicians” yet “neither could be healed of any” (8:43). Perhaps the ultimate persistence is exhibited by the ingenious friends of the paralytic, who lower him through a roof to Jesus.

In four of the other five episodes, Christ Himself approaches the one in need with a ready cure. For instance, He requests the infirm woman to make her laborious way to Him (13:12), perhaps to emphasize how effortlessly she is able to walk away from Him after her cure. Three of those four episodes—the infirm woman, the man with dropsy, and the man with a withered hand—are in the context of Pharisaical disapproval of Christ’s healing on the Sabbath, and Christ seems to have selected these persons to heal specifically as a challenge to His opponents’ perverted principles. The final miracle is simply a response to a situation caused by the instinctive protectiveness of Peter in Gethsemane, the healing of Malchus’s ear.

Christ regenerates in these narratives by both voice and touch. Those in which He does not speak the cure are extremely brief, and the focus of interest in them tends not to be the healing itself. The real point of the dropsy cure is the Sabbath dispute with the

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Pharisees; the ear replacement is more a lesson to the disciples than it is a personal ministry to Malchus. In seven of the narratives, Christ merely speaks to effect the cure, and Luke’s omission of any indication of touch strengthens the sense of Christ’s power. Of course, in the instance of the centurion’s servant, touch is not possible since Jesus heals him from afar. But it is remarkable that rather than effecting a mood of personal distance on the part of Christ from His patients by the absence of physical contact, Luke’s narratives actually manage to intensify the sense of human connection. Jesus “marveled” at the distraught centurion’s faith and rewards it with assurance (7:9); He cheers the paralytic; He singles out in an audience one crippled woman and graciously heals her.

In the remaining four incidents, Christ combines speech and touch. Luke writes that Jesus “put forth his hand, and touched” the leper, emphasizing His reaching out, and he follows up the action in the same verse by relating Christ’s words, “Be thou clean” (5:13). Jesus tenderly takes Jairus’s little girl “by the hand” as He tells her to “arise” (8:54).

The responses to the miraculous healings are generally divided. The reaction of the people at large is positive; that of the establishment, antagonistic. When Christ heals the paralytic, the people “were all amazed, and they glorified God”; some are “filled with fear” (5:26). The reaction to the revivification of the widow’s son is exactly the same: “And there came a fear on all: and they glorified God” (7:16). At the healing of the crippled woman, “all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him” (13:17). Of course, the healed men and women themselves almost always respond with gratitude and belief. Despite Christ’s frequent admonitions of silence, His fame spread “abroad . . . and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities” (5:15).

In contrast, the ruling Jews seek to kill Him. They are especially disturbed that in conjunction with the healings He “speak[s] blasphemies” in claiming to “forgive sins” (5:21). Christ puts them on alert when He forgives the paralytic’s sins before He cures him, and their rage in their crucifying of Him. Luke gives us a hint of the intensity of their irrational, murderous hatred when he informs us that after the restoration of the withered hand, “they were filled with madness” (6:11).

Luke includes only half as many healing miracles in Acts as he does in his Gospel. Christ is no longer incontrovertibly demonstrating His identity as God. He has satisfied the demand of the “proverb, physician, heal thyself” (Luke 4:23) by His own Resurrection. Therefore, Luke recounts only as many miracles as are necessary to support his contention that Christ is still working through His disciples in the genesis of His church. The miracles serve as His stamp of authority on the church builders. “His disciples and servants after him merely continued them in his name. In them his action was prolonged” (Fridrichsen, 1925/1972, p. 58). The miracle stories now focus more on the apostles, since Christ is acting through them in the person of His Spirit. Although apparently all of them perform miracles, and Philip specifically is mentioned by name as a healer in Acts 8:6 (possibly because of his encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch later in the chapter), Peter and Paul are the major miracle-workers in Luke’s narrative.

The structure of the stories in Acts roughly parallels that of the Gospel narratives, although there is no strict unifying pattern of request to introduce each story. In fact, the lame man at the temple gate asks of Peter and John not a cure but only “an alms” (3:3). Peter must tell him that he has neither “Silver nor gold” but that “such as I have give I

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thee” (v. 6). Peter acts in imitation of his Lord, who likewise lived in material poverty (cf. Matthew 8:20) but generously bestowed gifts of far greater value than money. Peter heals not in his own power but “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth” (v. 6). He tells the palsied Aeneas, “Jesus Christ maketh thee whole” (9:34), and Aeneas is immediately healed without his ever asking for a cure. Dorcas’s friends invite Peter only to mourn with them, but Peter, after having prayed for power from God (9:40), works a miracle of restoration.

Paul heals the crippled man from Lystra not because the man requests a miracle but simply because Paul perceives “that he had faith to be healed” (14:9). Paul also initiates the healing of Eutychus and Publius’s father, in the latter instance first praying as Peter does before he heals Dorcas. All of these miracles that are performed unrequested reflect Christ’s healings of the woman’s crippling infirmity and the men’s dropsy and withered hand; those cures, nevertheless, constituted deliberate object lessons on a specific subject, whereas these function within no definite teaching frame.

Peter’s and Paul’s healing methods vary. Peter commands Aeneas and Dorcas to “arise” (9:34, 40); likewise, Paul tells the Lystra cripple “with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet” (14:10). The other half of the six individual healing narratives include instances of touch. Luke specifies that Peter lifts the lame man “by the right hand” (3:7), encouraging us by that detail to visualize the scene more readily. Paul “laid his hands on” Publius’s father (28:8), a man of high position whom Paul, a prisoner at this time, barely knows. Paul unhesitatingly rushes to the young Eutychus, falling “on him, and embracing him” (20:10). These apostles do not shrink from touching the deformed, the diseased, and the dead. The miracles are part of their mission to preach “in his name among all nations” (Luke 24:47).

Some of the responses to the apostolic miracles echo the reactions to Christ’s miracles. The lame man’s healing promotes “wonder and amazement” among “all the people” (3:9-10), and the lame man himself cannot seem to stop “praising God” (3:8-9). The Jewish rulers, however, while acknowledging “that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them,” order Peter and John “not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus” (3:16, 18). The hostility that Christ’s miracles provoked results also from the miracles performed by His followers, although that antagonism does not stop the people at large from seeking miraculous healings. In the general healing accounts a few chapters later, Luke tells us that multitudes fill the streets with “sick folks . . . and many taken with palsies, and that were lame” (5:16, 8:7), adding that “they were healed every one” (5:16). Similarly, after Paul heals Publius’s father on Melita, “others also, which had diseases in the island, came, and were healed” (28:9).

The apostles’ intention is to draw people to Christ, and Peter is successful in this regard in the wake of the Aeneas and Dorcas episodes (9:35, 42). Paul, however, encounters a problem at Lystra when the witnesses to the miracle draw the conclusion that he and Barnabas must be incarnated gods worthy of sacrifices. The apostles vociferously reject the veneration, seeking vainly to turn the people’s worship toward the true God who incarnated Himself to become the only efficacious sacrifice for sin. But “with these sayings scarce restrained they the people, that they had not done sacrifice unto them” (14:18). The same superstitious reaction occurs on Melita when God directly preserves Paul from the deadly consequences of the viper’s bite. At first the “barbarous people” decide that Paul “No doubt . . . is a murderer” because of the attack by the snake

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(28:2, 4); when “the venomous beast” fails to kill Paul, “they changed their minds, and said that he was a god” (vv. 4, 6). Christ’s miracles affirmed His deity; the miracles in Acts are meant also to affirm Christ’s deity, not the apostles’. At Lystra and Melita, “there is a tendency to confuse the power that heals with the healer himself, and the healer acts immediately to set the record straight” (Tannehill, 1990, p. 177). Luke shows us these negative examples of responses to miracles in order to demonstrate within the whole context of his books what our proper response should be.

Luke uses both the showing and the telling methods to construct his stories, producing what Funk (1988) calls “focused,” or enacted, incidents, and “unfocused,” or recounted, incidents. Luke frequently blends the two, relying on recounted statements as narrative asides which supply the reader with information normally available only through omniscience. What Berlin (1983) observes concerning Old Testament narrative is equally true of the accounts in Luke.

In biblical narrative the narrator moves constantly between external and internal presentations, sometimes stepping back for a panoramic view and then moving close-in to a character to view things through his eyes, even getting into his mind to explain his actions and reactions. (p. 58)

The inspiration of the Holy Spirit obviously directs Luke’s writing in these instances, assuring the reader that Luke’s comments about mental states are not surmise but fact.

When Luke informs us how long the woman with the issue of blood has suffered, he is telling us some necessary information that he cannot show within the episode. Funk differentiates between focused and unfocused methods in the story of the lame man:

The healing of the lame man in Acts 3:1-10 is shown or enacted: the reder is permitted to see and hear what transpires. . . . It is to be noted, however, that in the midst of a scene otherwise enacted, the narrator inserts a statement in the recounting mode: (14) ‘and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong.’ This narrative statement reports an interior state, not visible to the human eye: the state is therefore not shown but told. (1988, p. 135)

Luke often relies on telling rather than showing in order to highlight the major point of a story. In this instance, he is pointing out “that the healing is the theme of this segment” (p. 135). Parsons and Pervo (1993) agree that Luke’s instructive asides provide a crucial commentary: “One of the most common forms of interpretation in both Luke and Acts is the use of narrative asides” (p. 74).

The miracle stories in Luke-Acts are inherently ironic. Nothing is more natural than to assume that a first-century blind man will continue sightless to his death. No one would expect incurable leprosy to be instantly eradicated. A woman bent nearly double with an eighteen-year crippling affliction does not just one day spontaneously straighten. Yet our expectations in these cases are constantly being jolted, and the final challenge to our assumptions proves to be the four recalled to life—the ultimate reversal. Beardslee (1970) notes that

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The very familiarity of a work may obscure its thrust. Even where the New Testament is not very familiar, its symbols and its vision have profoundly shaped our perception of the world; thus there is a certain indirect familiarity which flattens and undercuts shock value. (p. 11)

Nevertheless, the skillfulness with which Luke constructs his narratives largely mitigates any dampening effect resulting from our familiarity with the stories. He throws into prominence the difference between expectation and outcome, creating genuine surprise. “Surprise, finally, catching the reader off-guard due to a false impression given earlier, brings all the pleasures of the unexpected as the elements spring into new shape” (Sternberg, 1985, p. 259). Luke anchors his stories’ ironies with the stabilizing presence of Christ both in His own Person and in His followers: “Climax follows climax, but the Spirit of God remains constant” (Simon, 1975, p. 71).

Occasionally Luke reserves a narrative detail for later insertion where it will carry greater impact. It is only after the ten lepers are healed and one returns to thank the Lord that Luke reveals the grateful leper as “a Samaritan” (17:16). “This important information is introduced late in the scene as a surprise” (Tannehill, 1986, p. 119). The significance carries even greater weight when we remember the good Samaritan in Christ’s parable just a few chapters earlier (10:30-37). Luke waits until after Peter and John’s hearing before the Sanhedrin in the chapter following the lame man’s healing to tell us that “the man was above forty years old, on whom this miracle of healing was shewed” (Acts 4:22). At this particular point, the detail of the man’s advanced age effectively caps the Sanhedrin’s frustration, much to the reader’s delight.

Moreover, these most incredible of tales are frequently communicated to us in a decidedly ordinary tone. The prose is unadorned and straightforward: the leper’s disease merely “departed from him”; the paralytic simply “took up that whereon he lay, and departed to his own house” (5:13, 25). Even the effect of such a visually spectacular scene as the widow’s dead son all of a sudden sitting straight up on his bier is muted by Luke’s matter-of-fact observation of Jesus’s next move: “And he delivered him to his mother” (7:15). Luke’s account of the palsied man’s descent through the broken roof is more dramatic than Matthew’s or Mark’s, yet Luke contents himself with this phrasing: “they went upon the housetop, and let him down through the tiling with his couch into the midst before Jesus” (5:19). There is no embellishment concerning the multitude’s response to this flamboyant performance. The reason for the understated tone of these recitals, nevertheless, becomes readily apparent when we consider the writers’ assumption and underlying thesis that Christ is indeed God: if He is who He claims to be, then it is the most natural thing in the world that He should perform miracles. In fact, the only remarkable occurrence justifying extraordinary narrative touches would be if He should attempt a miracle and fail.

Luke records no exuberant reaction from the “saints and widows” at Dorca’s resurrection (9:41). He presents her awakening from death in the natural context of an awakening from mere slumber. First, “she opened her eyes”; then, just as anyone would do who is abruptly wakened from unconsciousness to find another person in the room, she instinctively adopts a more social posture: “when she saw Peter, she sat up” (v. 40). Luke does not mean to undercut the wondrous nature of the miracle; instead, he is

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underscoring the Lord’s power in being able to raise someone from death as easily as from sleep.

Other instances of narrative restraint occur in the Eutychus episode. After he raises up the young man, Paul calmly eats and talks the rest of the night and then departs without accolade. The final verse of the story in the AV states that the members of the congregation “were not a little comforted” (20:12), a striking example of litotes. Luke’s matter-of-fact tone in the narrative is subtly supported by the several specific details of time. Luke is physically present at Eutychus’s restoration: his “we” in the opening verse of the story makes that clear (v. 6). Whereas all the other miracle stories are set at indeterminate times (generally the stories begin somewhat vaguely with “It came to pass . . .”), in this situation Luke is careful to tell us that his group “came unto them to Troas in five days” and “abode seven days” (v. 6). The central incident happens “upon the first day of the week” when Paul preaches “until midnight” (v. 7). These temporal specifications do not render the stories more believable to fundamentalist readers, who accept the miracle narratives as equally authentic. What is important about the miracles is not always when they happened but that they happened. But Luke uses these details here to enhance the immediate realism of the story for us with their scrupulous exactness, once again placing the extraordinary within an ordinary frame. Luke is also accompanying Paul when Publius’s father is healed, and, accordingly, he tells us that Publius “lodged us three days courteously” (28:7).

The inherent irony of the stories is amplified by the many contrasts that appear throughout them. For instance, the paralytic is thrust into Christ’s notice when he is let down through the roof, whereas the centurion humbly protests, “Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roof” (7:6), and begs Him to speak his cure from afar. Instead of seeking Christ’s healing touch, the woman with the issue of blood decides to touch Him and finds her method equally efficacious. The mourners with Jairus’s daughter “laughed him to scorn” (8:53), but their laughter becomes self-mockery. Here there is additional irony in the mourners’ “knowing” that the girl is dead (v. 53), because in light of Christ’s words in the previous verse and his actions in the following one, they obviously “know” no such thing.

All of the cures provoke in us smiles of satisfaction and delight, but the tone also frequently allows for delicious humor. When Jesus senses that someone has “touched the border of his garment,” He asks, “Who touched me?” (8: 44, 45). To the disciples this is an amazing question, considering the crowd’s insistent jostling. They repeat Christ’s question back to Him with an incredulous twist, patiently pointing out what they perceive to be the obvious: “Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?” (v. 45). Their boldness with their Master surprises us, but our surprise at their apparent audacity is outweighed by our amusement at Christ’s demonstration that what is obvious to Him and what is obvious to them are two different matters. There is also something situationally comical about Bartimaeus’s calling out loudly and insistently and with total unself-consciousness despite the crowd’s efforts to stifle his outbursts. And generations of congregations have somewhat sheepishly but with good humor identified with Eutychus, who “sunk down with sleep” during Paul’s “long preaching” (Acts 20:9).

When the infirm woman is gloriously freed from her painful handicap, the synagogue ruler incongruously responds “with indignation” (13:14)! He is furious that

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Jesus has not postponed this amazing transformation until a more appropriate time—that is, until the Sabbath is over. After all, he tells the people, “There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed” (v. 14), as though healing is an everyday occurrence to be achieved at will. The ruler disregards the stupendous nature of the miracle to fasten on a relative nonessential, callously endorsing an extension of suffering to satisfy a criterion of legalism.

Another of the unifying features in the healing narratives is the intensification of audience interest through suspense. Suspense can be generated through a withholding of information from the reader, often resulting in a climactic surprise, or through dramatic irony, which can be enhanced through foreshadowing. The first method relies on audience curiosity; the second depends on audience anticipation. The latter approach often requires of the author more sophisticated skills since reader interest can be more difficult to retain if the end is known in advance, especially when the author is working with familiar historical events, as is Luke. “Thus the introduction of foreshadowing devices, or the arrangement of traditions in such a way as to cause a reader to anticipate future events was a greater challenge” (Martin, 1986, p. 218). Sternberg (1985) suggests that suspense created by withholding knowledge can be equally successful:

Its arousal requires the least (certainly the least overt) meddling with temporal sequence. An omniscient narrator may be expected to start by unfolding the expositional past and then to lead the reader through a succession of narrative presents as each comes into being; but he cannot reasonably be expected to anticipate the future, which would amount to a trumpeting of artificial license. Predictably, the Bible seldom resorts to such perceptible anticipations. (p. 265)

Sternberg also observes that “suspense pays a moral as well as an epistemological dividend. . . . What gives a sharper sense of the agents’ freedom of choice than the uncertainty of their ultimate fate?” (p. 266). Luke, though, presents this uncertainty within an overall context of providence, and his audience is thus afforded a certain measure of comfort in which to enjoy the narratives.

Audience expectation is repeatedly raised and satisfied with a variety of suspenseful devices. First, the many details emphasizing the abject helplessness of the victims build sympathy for them and raise hopes for alleviation of their ills. “The miracles . . . remind us of the consequences of sin-sickness, blindness, death—and of the power of the Lord to do something about those consequences” (Ryrie, 1984, pp. 10-11). Luke informs us that the crippled woman has suffered for eighteen years and that the bedridden Aeneas has endured his condition for eight. Luke rounds off neither number but instead grabs our attention with the precise and unusual figures. In social prestige the victims range from a synagogue ruler who has been brought low in his distress to outcast, begging lepers who have nothing left to lose. Every stratum of society is equally importunate, and each gains our pity. Those who approach Christ humbly (e.g., the centurion, leper, and woman with the issue of blood) and those who boldly seize the spotlight (Bartimaeus, the paralytic, and the ten lepers) alike have us silently cheering them on. “We may certainly set down as one of the attitudes of Luke to his subject a personal sympathy and interest” (Cadbury, 1961, p. 337).

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Most of these healing narratives, like the Gospel episodes generally, are quite short.

The most notable stylistic trait of the Gospels is their economy of words and details. This was nothing new, since it is also the norm for storytelling in the Old Testament. But the tendency is perhaps even more pronounced in the Gospels. (Ryken, 1987b, p. 35)

Details that are not interesting in themselves are generally excluded. “Action statements tend to dominate the narrative” (Funk, 1988, p. 114). Accordingly, Luke focuses not on individual character traits so much as he does on the extremity of the situation requiring remedy. Of the New Testament it is true what Berlin observes of the Old, that “the ratio of description in general to action and dialogue is relatively low, and character tends to be subordinate to plot” (Berlin, 1983, p. 34).

After all, it is the moral and spiritual facts about a person, not the psychological, that Scripture considers fundamental, and consequently there are not a great many personal details in the stories. Luke identifies more persons by name in Acts than he does in his Gospel, perhaps because Christ is not physically present to dominate the interest. Luke even gives Dorcas two different names and uses them interchangeably in the story. “Acts also displays a tendency to give more personality than is customary to characters who do not figure significantly in the overall plot. This is true of Aeneas and Tabitha in 9:32-43” (Powell, 1991, p. 101).

Luke more than the other three Gospel writers features Christ’s reaching out to the fringe elements of society, those who evoke our sympathy by their existence outside the pale of respectability or simply by their lack of first-class-citizen status, such as women.

He often balances a scene in which a male is central with one in which a male is central with one in which a female has a prominent role, as when the prophecy of Simeon was followed by that of Anna at the presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple. It is characteristic of Luke to show concern for those less favored by society. (Edwards, 1981, p. 37)

In his comments on the beginning of Acts, Parsons (1990) notes in reference to Acts 1:12-14, “To mention women is unusual for a succession list” (p. 405). Gabel and Wheeler (1986) state that “those who show up to best effect in Luke’s stories are invariably Gentiles” (p. 195), probably because those identified as Jews, especially the establishment, so often actively oppose Christ’s ministry. “In one group of stories, the social and religious status of the needy person is a potential obstacle, adding suspense by raising the question of how Jesus will react to such people” (Tannehill, 1986, p. 93). Tannehill is referring to the leper, the centurion, the woman with the flow of blood, and the ten lepers. “Of these four stories, only the last is unique to Luke. Nevertheless, their importance in Luke is indicated by the fact that they fit a larger Lukan emphasis on Jesus’ ministry to the neglected and excluded” (p. 93).

Luke produces even more pathos by emphasizing the personal relationships. The lifeless young man is “the only son of his mother,” and the fact that “she was a widow”

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accentuates the poignancy of the death (Luke 7:12). Jairus, too, has “one only daughter” who is dying (8:42). The servant for whom the centurion humbles himself “was dear unto him” (7:2). The Lord Himself has close ties to Peter’s sick mother-in-law because of the Master/disciple relationship. He calls the woman with the issue of blood “Daughter” (8:48). The widows pathetically show Peter “the coats and garments which Dorcas made,” demonstrating their personal grief at the death of such a generous friend (Acts 9:39). “Because Tabitha is characterized in an attractive way, the sense of loss increases and with it the pathos of the scene” (Tannehill, 1990, p. 125). Our expectations for a satisfying end to all of this human woe are thus aroused.

A second way that Luke heightens anticipation and resolves tension is by emphasizing and repeating key words. He liberally scatters throughout his narratives terms such as “immediately” and “straightway” to convey the excitement of the healings. When the fever leaves Peter’s mother-in-law, she “immediately” leaves her sickbed to minister to he guests (Luke 4:39); the leper’s disease is “immediately” cleansed (5:13); the paralytic “immediately” rises (5:25); when the woman touches Christ’s garment, “immediately her issue of blood stanched” (8:44); “straightway” Jairus’s daughter arises (8:55); the crippled woman is “immediately . . . made straight” (13:13); Bartimaeus “immediately” receives his sight (18:43); “immediately . . . the feet and ankle bones” of the lame man are strengthened” (Acts 3:7); Aeneas rises from his bed “immediately” (9:34). And our taste for high drama is richly satisfied.

In almost every instance of a person’s being delivered from a sickbed or deathbed, Luke includes Christ’s or the apostle’s verbal command “Arise.” Again, it is characteristic of the New Testament what Berlin observes of the Old: “A story may be told through narration alone, but it is in the nature of scenic representation which typifies biblical narrative to prefer direct discourse whenever possible” (1983, p. 64). It is true that in the incident of Peter’s mother-in-law, Luke atypically uses indirect discourse to state that Christ “rebuked the fever; and it left her” (4:39). Since this is Luke’s first recorded healing miracle, perhaps Luke uses a slightly different technique to separate this miracle from the rest of the series as introductory. But the pattern is fairly strong thereafter. Paul’s command to the cripple at Lystra varies only slightly from the others in specificity—“Stand upright on thy feet” (14:10)—but the effect is the same. “Because repetition conveys interpretation through emphasis, it is important for us to take careful note of what is repeated. Interpretation takes place through selective repetition” (Tannehill, 1990, p. 75). By including the command to “arise,” Luke is quite probably stressing the uplifting effect, both literal and metaphorical, of healing. Both lame men in Acts go beyond the command merely to get up: in each instance, Luke tells us that before the men walk, they leap. In Acts 3, Luke emphasizes the cure with a chiastic structure: “And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping” (v. 8). He continues the interlinking by ending the verse with a reference to “praising God,” the same way he concludes the following verse, and the verse 9 phrase is preceded by another reference to “walking.” The immediate positive response to all the commands to arise supports the biblical emphasis of prompt, voluntary obedience to godly directive. In the process of telling compelling stories, Luke encourgages his readers’ obedience.

Another oft-repeated motif is sight. Christ “saw” the weeping widow, the infirm woman, and the ten lepers (7:13; 13:12; 17:14), and we as readers wait to “see” His

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response, knowing He will not ignore an obvious need. Similarly, He “saw” the faith of the paralytic’s friends (5:20); we are eager to view the expected reward. Bartimaeus cannot physically see the passing Christ, but he uses the crowd as his eyes; Christ then complements his spiritual sight with physical. The leper, “seeing Jesus” (5:12), demonstrates the same trust in Christ’s healing powers and is not disappointed. That Dorcas “opened her eyes” and “saw Peter” (9:40) proves her return to life. In the stories in which Christ heals the dropsy and the withered hand, the Pharisees “watched him” (6:7; 14:1), suspicious of His intention to perform miracles. Their hypocritical malevolence sharply differs from the simple faith of those wishing to be healed, and their spirteful watchfulness—motivfated by hatred and with the intention of preventing aid—vividly emphasizes by contrast Christ’s alert notice of the needy, which is motivated by love and a desire to help.

The lame man at the temple gate, “seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple” (3:3), views the apostles in no special light, but simply as a potential source of income. Funk (1988), nevertheless, considers his spotting of the apostles as a highly significant introductory detail:

This act of seeing on the part of the lame man is a narrative device that focalizes the scene for the reader also. A focalizer is thus any narrative device that instructs the reader where to focus the senses, where to look for the action that is about to take place. (p. 102)

Instead of indifferently brushing off the beggar with scant notice, Peter arrests his attention by “fastening his eyes upon him” and commanding him likewise to “Look on us” (v. 4). Obediently the man “gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of them” (v. 5), in the process stirring the reader’s expectations, which are then amply satisfied.

All of these examples demonstrate how repetition functions as a cue to arouse expectations and contribute to suspense. “Repetitive patterns in narrative encourage interaction among characters and events in the reader’s experience. The character or event is experienced not in isolation but against a background that gives it ‘resonance’” (Tannehill, 1990, p. 76). Directly inspired by God who is the Source of all patterning, Luke unifies his narrative through repetitions that advance our perceptions of that divine order.

A third means of stimulating audience suspense is syntax. The style of these narratives tends strikingly toward the paratactic, a format that fosters a mood of anticipation with its elongated cadences. “Prose narrative in the Bible shares many characteristics of the poetry in song. The language of both is rhythmic and repetitive” (Thompson, 1978, p. 29). With very few exceptions, the verses all start with “and,” “but,” and “for,” and clauses and phrases within the verses are similarly joined. In fact, “and” appears thirteen times in the four-verse account of the healing of the mother-in-law and a remarkable nine times just in the two verses that directly relate the cure, accelerating the mounting excitement. The cumulative effect of these continuous, verse-by-verse additions is to create curiosity and retain interest, impelling us along.

Fourth, strategic delays in the narration contribute to the suspense. On His way to see Jairus’s daughter, Jesus pauses to concentrate on another ill person. The jeering

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crowds try their best to deny Bartimaeus an audience with Christ. The paralytic’s friends are momentarily stymied by the problem of access to the Healer: “they could not find by what way they might bring him in because of the multitude” (5:19). When the paralytic is presented to Him, Jesus first forgives the man’s sins and then engages in a debate with the Pharisees over whether it “is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk” (v. 23). Verse 24 is a masterpiece of dramatic construction, providing a grand finish to the debate: “But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins, (he said unto the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house.”

Interest in and concern for the needy person’s success in finding a cure are increased when obstacles appear which must be surmounted by decisive action. . . . When Jesus overcomes the obstacle, this emphasizes his authority and power, but these obstacles also increase the readers’ involvement in the experience of the person in need, adding interest and suspense to the development from need to solution which is basic to these healing stories. (Tannehill, 1986, pp. 92-93)

Finally, the envelope structures provide satisfying resolutions to the suspense. We mourn with the widow as her dead son is “carried out,” separated presumably forever from “his mother” (Luke 7:12); the procession is neatly reversed when Christ brings him back in, so to speak, “to his mother” (v. 15). Sanwiched in between is his surprising, thrilling awakening from death. A larger frame occurs with the interruption of the Jairus story by that of the woman with the issue of blood. “Many healing miracle stories reported in the Gospels are of the single-scene variety. However, we occasionally find more comples healing narratives consisting of two or more scenes” (Funk, 1988, p. 165). We hang in suspense concerning the fate of the little girl while an older woman is healed, but the connection between the two incidents is made perfectly clear by Luke. The girl’s twelve years of age parallel the twelve years of the woman’s ailment; since the woman is so easily, instantly cured, we can allow ourselves high hopes for the daughter. In fact, Christ even calls the woman “Daughter,” but, in a jarringly ironic twist, in the very next verse Jairus receives the news, “Thy daughter is dead” (8:48, 49). We may feel momentarily cheated; nevertheless, remembering Christ’s effortless healing of the older woman, we can quickly regain our confidence in Jesus’s restorative powers, and our faith is promptly rewarded by the girl’s return to life.

Peter is associated with both the first and the last healing miracle in Luke. In the first, his is a background role: it is his mother-in-law who is cured. In the last,k his role is decidedly active: he assaults a participant in Christ’s arrest. In Acts, Peter rises to prominence in the narrative as an aggressive force for both healing and building.

The Lord directly performs the healing miracles in Luke, but in Acts, He works through human instruments. Nevertheless, in the final chapter of Acts, He once more performs a miracle directly in preserving Paul from the venom of the snake.

Another unifying element of the miracle stories is the revelation of Christ in two specific attributes, power and compassion, qualities which seldom co-exist in human heroes but complement each other beautifully in the incarnated God. What seems primarily to astound Christ’s audience is not so much His ability to heal (since demons can at least approximate this power with magic) as the mass scale on which He performs

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these miracles, His perfect success rate, the variety of His methods, the moral quality of His miracles, and—what proves most unacceptable to the Pharisees—His tying this power to that of forgiving sins. “His miracles mirror those of Elijah/Elisha: healing a leper, reviving a widow’s son, giving sight to the blind, multiplying food, and gathering disciples” (Thompson, 1978, p. 240), but the prophets could not perform the miracles in their own name, nor could they forgive sins in the process. The scribes are positively outraged at Christ’s pronouncing the paralytic’s sins forgiven without even first implying that He will heal him. They do not even have to verbalize their anger, because Jesus, “who perceived their thoughts,” can reply to their unspoken criticism (5:22), probably startling them with His knowledge of their thinking. Christ does not give them a chance for verbal vilification in the episode of the withered hand, either, before He tacitly answers their protest with the cure, again because “he knew their thoughts” (6:8). Luke does not record an accusation, spoken or thought, before he tells us that “Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees” concerning the man with dropsy (14:3; emphasis mine). And with His strikingly incisive dialectics, Christ can overwhelm the petty and selfish logic of his attackers. He calls a synagogue ruler “Thou hypocrite,” charging him with caring more for an animal’s needs than a crippled woman’s; as a result, “all his adversaries were ashamed” (13:15, 17). He uses the same argument against those critical of His kindness toward the man with dropsy, and “they could not answer him again to these things” (14:6). When He challenges the Pharisees with the alternatives of benevolent activity or evil passivity as Sabbath behavior, once more they can come up with no adequate retort, but “communed one with another what they might do to Jesus” (6:11).

Thus the power of Christ dominates the narratives in Luke. “The concrete impression of his person is obtained by depicting his clash with hostile forces and his saving help in famine, sickness, and death” (Simon, 1975, p. 54). This is not to deny that the essence of Christlikeness is humility: the only times Christ asserted Himself with overwhelming power is when He was proving Himself God, as He did through His miracles. Further, under the impulsion of inspiration, Luke selected miracles that demonstrate Christ’s power through a variety of methods, thereby showing that the power to heal was not in any one method, but in the Man. Nowhere is His saving power more strongly demonstrated than in His healing of the leper.

The sense of supernatural contamination is so strong that leprosy was said to be cleansed rather than healed. Thus Jesus’ ability to cure this frightening condition was much more impressive than any ordinary miracle-working. . . . The implied argument is that it takes a supernatural person to cure a supernatural disease. (Edwards, 1981, pp. 38-39)

The pervasive sense of Christ’s power extends to the healing incidents in Acts. In his analysis of the lame man’s healing, Tannehill (1990) draws our attention to Luke’s provision for this impression: “Remarkably, the lame man is physically present even at the hearing before the Sanhedrin after the apostles’ arrest (4:14). He is a persistent reminder of the power of Jesus’ name” (p. 48). And even more to the point:

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Thus the similarity between Jesus’ healing of the paralytic and Peter’s healing of the lame man lies less in the healing itself than in the function of these scenes in the larger narrative. In both cases the healing becomes the occasion for a fundamental claim about Jesus’ saving power, emphasizing its importance and general scope (“on earth,” Luke 5:24; “under heaven,” Acts 4:12). In both cases the healing leads to proclamation of a saving power that goes beyond physical healing. (pp. 51-52)

Luke constantly affirms not only Chirst’s power, but also His compassion.

Sentiment holds a much greater place in the third Gospel than in the other two synoptics. Here Jesus is readily depicted with the features of a benevolent physician of body and soul, the Savior of sins, who aids us in our distress. (Fridrichsen, 1925/1972, pp. 65-66)

Christ is stirred to “compassion” by the pathetic widow and He urges her to “Weep not” (7:13). He stills the “trembling” of the woman with the stanched issue of blood with His kind “be of good comfort” (8:47, 48). He promptly responds to the centurion’s request for help despite the centurion’s protestation that Christ “trouble not” Himself to “enter under my roof” (7:6).

The centurion’s decision to stop Jesus shows awareness that entry into a Gentile house is considered a source of defilement by Jews concerned with ritual purity. The very careful and courteous way in which Jesus is being treated results from the shared assumption that help for a Gentile requires special social negotiation because of a major social barrier. (Tannehill, 1986, p. 114)

Yet mere social convention does not hinder an expression of Christ’s compassion, “For there is no respect of persons with God” (Romans 2:11). He always chooses merciful personal intervention over slavish devotion to impersonal and inhumane Sabbath legalism devoid of the spirit of compassion. His final miracle is performed on an enemy, “the servant of the high priest” (22:50). Just as He compassionately has not shrunk from touching the untouchable leper, so He does not recoil from ministering to an adversary even in the process of unjust arrest. This act of unselfishness is soon to be replicated in His charity to the thief on the cross while He Himself is in agony.

Besides the features that render Luke’s healing narratives a homogeneous unit, there are unifying elements within the different categories of healing. In Luke 17, ten lepers are collectively healed, but only one, a Samaritan, bothers to demonstrate any gratitude. “All of the lepers were healed, but the Samaritan is singled out because he was changed in a deeper way” (Tannehill, 1986, p. 118). He invites comparison with the one leper who earlier is healed individually. Whereas the Samaritan stands calling with the rest of his group from “afar off” (v. 12), the single leper comes directly to Christ. Matthew’s account of the incident of the single leper states that in his approach he “worshipped him” (8:2), and Mark has him “kneeling down to him” (1:40); Luke says that he “fell on his face” (5:12). When the Samaritan finds himself cleansed, he returns to thank Christ and “fell down on his face at his feet” (v. 16). His healing occurs outside

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of the immediate presence of Christ, paralleling his request shouted from a distance, whereas the single leper is healed with a touch, reflecting his more intimate approach to Jesus. Both cures, nevertheless, provoke profoundly personal gratitude.

The victims of crippling diseases are the most dependent on others. The paralytic, confined to his couch, must be maneuvered into Christ’s presence by his friends; the centurion’s servant must rely on his master to acquire help for him; the lame man at the temple gate has to depend on the kindness of strangers for his sustenance; and the crippled woman’s mobility must have been severely limited by her cramped posture. We are told that several of the invalids have suffered for an extended period of time. Therefore, the cures generate a striking sense of freedom. Christ pronounces the woman “loosed” from her infirmity (13:12). He encourages the new feeling of independence in the paralytic by directing him to carry his bed, symbol of his previous confinement. The lame man leaps and leaps for joy.

The resurrection narratives are, of course, unique in that what is bestowed on the person is not just a physical gift to enhance his quality of life, but life itself. “It is a miracle of Reversal when the dead are raised. . . . it involves playing backwards a film that we have always seen played forwards” (Lewis, 1947, p. 147). Beyond that, the two that Christ raises from death in Luke’s Gospel are children of others mentioned in the stories, giving the narratives a particularly personal flavor. Dorcas, too, is beloved by a family of friends. All the mourners of these three believed irrevocably dead weep (Luke 7:13; 8:52; Acts 9:39), reminding us that only the Lord can supply true succor. Even Paul’s congregation is “not a little comforted” by the restoration of Eutychus (Acts 20:12).

The widow does not request Christ’s restoration of her son, nor do the friends of Dorcas ask Peter to bring back their friend; Jairus, on the other hand, seeks Christ out specifically to ask for healing for his sick child. Whereas the widow and friends thus have no initial expectation of a miracle, Jairus does anticipate one. But while Christ is delayed by the woman with the flow of blood, Jairus’s daughter dies. As a consequence, Jairus reverts to the widow’s and friends’ state of no expectation, exacerbated, perhaps, by disappointment. Nevertheless, all are joyfully surprised: each receives more than he has expected, and Jairus receives more than he has asked.

Some additional minor parallelisms associate the work of Christ in Luke’s Gospel with the work of the Holy Spirit through the apostles in Acts. Luke specifically mentions that Peter is present in the room when Jairus’s daughter is raised, because Christ “suffered no man to go in, save Peter,” the two other members of the inner circle, and the girl’s parents (Luke 8:51). When Peter arrives at “the upper chamber” where Dorcas lies, he likewise “put them all forth” before he prays and performs the resurrection (Acts 9:39, 40). Also, the mourners of Jairus’s daughter laugh when Christ tells them that she is only sleeping; it is ironic that Eutychus unintentionally extends his temporal “deep sleep” (20:9) into a deeper, ostensibly permanent one. Both young people are restored by the only One who has the power to awaken them.

The sick, the lame, the blind, and the dead—all are made whole in these stories of remarkable hope and beauty. The centurion’s servant is made “whole that had been sick” because of his master’s faith (Luke 7:10). The withered hand is “restored whole as the other” (6:10). Christ tells the woman with the issue of blood and the ten lepers: “Thy faith hath made thee whole” (8:48; 17:19). “Faith is the condition naturally required of

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the one wishing to be healed by Jesus’ supernatural power. Whoever confidently appeals to him in his distress is helped” (Fridrichsen, 1925/1972, p. 77). Jesus perceives the faith of the paralytic and his friends and responds with forgiveness and healing. Paul discerns that the Lystra cripple “had faith to be healed” (Acts 14:9) and cures him. We are invited to read our own need into these powerfully written narratives, and in them to find the solution to the inadequacies rooted in our own sinful condition as we anticipate our final healing, when “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

The Exorcisms

The narratives relating liberation from demon possession are technically healing stories, but as a group they contain some significant differences from those other stories of release from physical ailment and death. Sin’s destructive effects are more graphically displayed as demons exercise control of these unfortunate persons: instead of Satan’s indirectly causing suffering as a result of the universal blight of sin on creation, here Satan with viciously personal intent occupies men and women through his evil agents. “Since Satan is not omnipresent, demons serve as his hands and feet in carrying out his plans” (Ryrie, 1984, p. 76). As a consequence, these exorcism stories manifest a grim violence in both the possessions and the purgations that is markedly absent from the relatively serene healing accounts. The demon invasions prove even more overwhelming than death, because these malicious spirits erase the human individually of their victims, treating them as mere vehicles and condemning them to a death in life. The exorcisms, therefore, function as virtual resurrections through the power of Christ, freeing the erstwhile prisoners of darkness to seek out the rightful Master of souls.

Luke’s first recorded miracle is an exorcism, the cleansing of the man in Capernaum. Earlier in the chapter, Christ has resisted Satan’s temptation in the wilderness. Satan takes Him “up into an high mountain” and offers Him dominion over “all the kingdoms of the world”: “All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them” (4:5-6). Christ demonstrates power over Satan by declaring allegiance not to him but to God. Luke then emphasizes His supremacy by framing the tale of the Capernaum exorcism with the term “power.” When Christ teaches in the synagogue, His listeners “were astonished at his doctrine: for his word was with power” (v. 32); upon His performing the exorcism, “they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out” (v. 36). Christ does not need any power Satan has to offer, for His is superior. Likewise, it is made clear after the exorcism that He does not lack the “glory” (v. 6) which Satan before tried to tempt Him with, for He can provoke amazement at His words as well as His deeds: “And the fame of him went out into every place of the country round about” (v. 37). Satan boasts that he dominates this world and deals out the favors, but Christ proves that God exercises ultimate control, for even Satan’s troops must submit to Him.

Christ’s cures of the possessed persons are as instantaneous as His healings of those only physically afflicted. The demon in Capernaum promptly obeys the divine command to exit the man’s body, realizing that defiance is useless. “this was no gradual

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cure of some supposed psychosomatic illness; this was real demon control and immediate deliverance” (Ryrie, 1984, p. 33). The demons in these stories recognize Christ for who He is even though the people often do not, and they instinctively recoil from Him. “The demons want to preserve distance and be left alone” (Tannehill, 1986, p. 89). Christ evicts them suddenly from the territory they have brazenly claimed and drives them further from Him.

The Gadarene demons also address Christ by name, declaring their antipathy to Him and His power that they fear and resent. “Thus the words, ‘What do you have to do with me?’ in 8:28 recall the almost identical response of the demon in 4:34. This is verbal indication that a basic situation—a demon sensing the threatening presence of Jesus—has returned” (Tannehill, 1986, p. 94). In the healing narratives, the Pharisees similarly acknowledge Christ’s power, but they do not acknowledge Him as their Lord in an attitude of loving faith. Mere awareness of Christ’s identity is not salvific: after all, James tells us, “the devils also believe, and tremble” (2:19). In his inclusion of the demonic reactions to Christ’s presence, Luke reveals that not just deference but total submission is the only acceptable response to Christ. Luke also may intent to equate, in the reader’s estimation, Pharisaical attacks with satanic opposition.

The Gadarene maniac has been totally depersonalized, even animalized, by the powerful forces within him. Like a beast instead of a civilized human, he “ware no clothes, neither abode in any house” (8:27). In him the image of God is not just marred but virtually eradicated, its place usurped by the ugly image of Satan. Further, the maniac is a tomb-dweller, effectively symbolizing his death in life. He has suffered from demon possession “a long time” (v. 27), just as many of the sick in Luke’s healing stories have suffered for many years; and as in their cases, the immediacy of the revolutionary change is thereby heightened.

The power of Christ’s very presence manifests itself immediately. Noticing Jesus, the wild man” fell down before him” (v. 28). Later in the chapter, Jairus and the woman with the issue of blood also fall at Christ’s feet; Luke’s grouping thus highlights their equal need of divine healing. As the woman is in bondage to her infirmity and Jairus’s daughter is imprisoned by death, so is the maniac enslaved physically and spiritually. “He was kept bound with chains and in fetters,” and even when “he brake the bands,” he is constantly subjected to demonic torment (v. 29). The exorcism, therefore, signals a glorious freedom. The maniac reclaims his social status as a human, for he is now “clothed”; he regains control of his mental faculties, for he is “in his right mind”; he evidences spiritual transformation, for he is “found . . . sitting at the feet of Jesus” (v. 35). “The rather full description of the Gerasene demoniac’s behavior before and after the exorcism emphasizes the great change that Jesus has made in his existence” (Tannehill, 1986, p. 90).

The reaction of the people of Gadara is not so sanguine. When the unclean spirits invade the unclean animals, “the swine . . . ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked” (v. 33). Ironically, the hogs will not endure what humans will. Luke tells us twice that the people were seized with fear (vv. 35, 37), and they beg Christ “to depart from them” (v. 37), chillingly echoing the demons’ request of Christ to leave them alone. Apparently the people prefer to cope with devils rather than with Jesus. Christ obligingly leaves, not forcing Himself on the unreceptive.

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Divine power is creative and restorative; demonic power is destructive. In their not scrupling to inhabit young people, demons vividly demonstrate Satan’s cruelty to children. A father cries to Jesus to heal his son; “Luke adds to Mark that the child was an only child” (Cadbury, 1961, p. 238), increasing the pathos that is already prominent in the vicarious pain of a parent for his suffering child. The spirit that possesses the boy is a particularly malicious one, for even as the father is delivering his son to Christ, “the devil threw him down, and tare him” (9:42). The act of savagery reflects the violence that Satan, “a roaring lion,” in general inflicts on creation (I Peter 5:8). Violence is a logical extension and natural expression of evil, starkly antithetical to godly peace. Luke supplies many details of the demons’ violence, from their defiant snarlings to the brutal hurlings and bruisings of their victims.

Thus, the conclusions of these stories are characterized by a marked tranquility, whether the demons quietly or turbulently relinquish their hold. As he exits the man of Capernaum, the demon throws “him in the midst” but “hurt him not” (4:35); in this story of the child’s exorcism, the devil throws and tears the boy before Christ banishes him, but Christ immediately repairs the damage: “Jesus . . . healed the child, and delivered him again to his father” (9:42). The phrasing replicates that of Luke 7:15, in which Christ, after having restored from a different type of death another young man who is also an only child, “delivered him to his mother.”

Luke makes eminently clear in these exorcism tales that Christ’s power derives from His Father. The father of the tortured boy tells Jesus: “I besought thy disciples to cast him [the demon] out; and they could not” (9:40). As in the story of the centurion, the faith necessary for Christ to heal comes not from the victim but from his intercessor. The disciples’ lack of this faith results in their impotence. Christ labels them “faithless” (v. 41), unequivocally identifying their problem before He redresses the situation that they could not. Luke then tells us that “they were all amazed at the mighty power of God” (v. 43). In the Capernaum episode, everyone is also amazed at Christ’s power, but in this incident Luke takes care to stress the source of that power and, in the process, identify Christ as God. In fact, whereas Mark emphasizes throughout his account of this incident the importance of faith (cf. Mark 9:23-24, 28-29), Luke stresses the idea of power.

When Christ casts the demon out of the dumb man, several people accuse Him of using black magic: “He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils” (11:15)—as though evil spirits will respond only to evil masters. In reply, Christ tells two parables. The point of the first one is that a strong man can be overpowered only by a stronger one: if Satan is not sabotaging his own efforts (v. 18), the unavoidable conclusion is that Someone mightier than he is routing his agents. Once more, the emphasis is on power. The second parable teaches the ultimate inefficacy of exorcism when the cleansing is not followed by conversion. “The lesson to be learnt by linking the miracle with the second parable is that when the enemy has been cast out a new tenant is needed” (Habershon, 1957, p. 185). The person rescued from demonic oppression through Christ’s power must subsequently live in that power. Although demons actively desire to possess men, they cannot fill hearts which Christ already occupies.

The masters of the “damsel possessed with a spirit of divination” (Acts 16:16) financially profit from the girl’s possession, thereby compounding her enslavement. Their disappointed expectations of wealth at Paul’s exorcism of her demon result in their wrathfully haling Paul and Silas before the city magistrates for punishment. This action

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parallels that of the Pharisees, who “filled with madness” (7:11) rage against Christ and seek to destroy Him. They perceive a loss of their own prestige and power; the men in this episode “saw that the hope of their gains was gone” (v. 19). The enslaving deadly sins of avarice and pride war with liberating Christian selflessness. Paul and Silas indeed “exceedingly trouble [the] city” (v. 20), thwarting evil with good.

In verse17, “the reference to Paul and his companions as ‘servants of God most high’ especially recalls the possessed man’s address of Jesus as ‘Son of God most high’ in Luke 8:28” (Tannehill, 1990, p. 197). Paul, troubled by the demon’s repetitive taunts, commands the spirit “in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her” (v. 18). Armed by the Holy Spirit, he performs easily what the powerless disciples in Luke’s Gospel found impossible.

In the first three exorcisms, the reaction to cleansing is generally positive, although not unequivocally so. There are always dissenters in any situation, but the people in the Capernaum episode gladly spread Christ’s fame; the former Gadarene maniac becomes a witness for his Healer; and the father receives his precious son back whole. In the fourth story, most of “the people wondered,” but “some” make the serious charge of collusion with the powers of evil and “others, tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven” (11:14, 15). Luke uses the exorcism as an occasion to showcase Christ’s defending Himself against spiteful and ignorant accusers, and the tone of the story is thus more negative than that of the previous ones. In this last incident, the apostles bear the full weight of Satan’s antagonism; ironically, the opposition comes not so much from the demon as from human beings who have essentially engaged in a financial partnership with the demon, in which each partner gets what he most wants. Luke relates no joy on the part of the people, not even the girl herself; instead, “the multitude rose up together against them” (v. 22). The only joy is what follows: the Philippian jailer’s conversion as a result of Paul and Silas’s prison testimony.

Exorcism removes one more satanic obstacle to total transformation in Christ. Satan very aggressively yet vainly attempts to block human recognition and reception of the only One who can change lives in a truly meaningful way. In these five stories, Luke exhibits God’s correction of conditions otherwise hopeless without His purifying power. The “god of this world” (II Corinthians 4:4) is no match for the God of the universe, who “ruleth by his power for ever” (Psalm 66:7).

The Rescues

Luke includes in Acts two stories of miraculous rescue from prison. Peter is conducted out of jail by an angel, and Paul is delivered by an earthquake and a frightened warden. These accounts combine narrative details from the nature and healing miracles and provide an effective transition to the conversions. The swinging open of the iron gate by an unseen force and the localized earthquake are expressions of the Lord’s power over the material world that recall His actions in the nature miracles. All of the healings are essentially rescues from suffering and death, and the prison in these two rescue narratives functions as an appropriate symbol of the captivity endured by the sick and sinful. Herod’s vicious personal attack on Peter parallels the malevolent assault on Paul and Silas after the exorcism, demonstrating the intense hatred of satanic forces for Christ and His representatives. But as in the other miracle narratives, Christ’s power and

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compassion prevail, providentially turning the machinations of the wicked into a force for good: the faith of the church is strengthened as a consequence of Peter’s rescue; as a result of Paul’s imprisonment, many are converted.

Peter’s release from prison in Acts 12 is the second instance in the book of angelic liberation by night. The other account, however, is comparatively low-key; Luke does not construct it deliberately as a rescue story, the focus of which is the miracle. Instead, the rescue enables the apostles to resume their preaching in Jesus’s name after the interruption of imprisonment by the angry Jewish rulers. When the priests discover that the men they have “put in prison are standing in the temple, and teaching the people” (5:25), they simply re-arrest the apostles and continue their haranguing interrogation. Submitting to the advice of Gamaliel, the officials then release Peter and the others with the same ineffectual warning not to “speak in the name of Jesus” (v. 40). First, though, they beat the prisoners, who “departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name” (v. 41), much as Paul and Silas “sang praises unto God” after their beating (16:25).

The account of Peter’s rescue is studded with ironies and gentile humor. We might expect the angel to awaken Peter with a brisk shake of his shoulder, but instead he delivers a no-nonsense blow to his side. The angel then has to direct the dazed Peter in the process of clothing himself, much as a parent must provide step-by-step instructions to a distracted, lethargic child. Luke exhibits for us the economy of the supernatural: God does for Peter only what Peter cannot do for himself. The supernatural is supplementary to the natural. Luke is also showing that the mundane cannot be ignored even in the midst of the miraculous: in our human condition, the ordinary is always a part of the extraordinary.

Despite the strictest security measures, Peter is able to exit the prison without impediment. Herod has “delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him”; Peter sleeps “between two soldiers, bound with two chains: and the keepers before the door kept the prison” (12:4, 6). But human ingenuity cannot obstruct divine will. Luke does not give us the details of how Peter manages to walk past his jailers unobserved. Whether they are selectively blinded or in some other way prevented from seeing him is not important: all the narrative attention is on Peter and the angel, whose presence assures us that Peter’s escape will go undetected until he is safe.

The urgency of the angel’s admonition of haste initially puzzles the reader. If an angel can freely invade a heavily guarded cell and take time to make sure that Peter clothes himself properly; if the dark prison can brighten with a supernatural light without attracting attention; if Peter and the angel apparently do not have to whisper or tiptoe out; if no one notices their progress through the barriers—why does the angel tell Peter to “Arise up quickly” (v. 7)? A possible reason is that God’s timetable operates not just within the confines of this episode; this event must still coordinate with others within a larger schedule, and the angel may be restricted by a divine allotment of time for the escape. Human beings must accommodate themselves to God. Also, the command to “Arise” recalls the healings of the lame and dead, providing a narrative link to those other miracles. The men and women in those accounts always respond immediately, paralleling the “quickly” of the angel’s directive. Again, the implication is that proper obedience is prompt obedience.

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Initially his situation appears surreal to Peter. As the angel leads him through the prison, he “wist not that it was true which was done by the angel; but thought he saw a vision” (v. 9). Peter, of course, has already experienced the quite spectacular vision of the sheet in chapter 10, and so in our eyes he has some basis for his supposition. It is not until he finds himself alone on the street that he can “know of a surety, that the Lord hath sent his angel, and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod” (v. 11). After the oppressive surveillance of the guards, his solitary condition assures him of the reality of the rescue.

When Peter arrives at Mary’s house, where the prayer meeting for his rescue is still in progress, the Christians replicate Peter’s earlier incredulity, convinced that Rhoda is seeing a vision. They first accuse her of hallucination and then decide that it must be Peter’s spirit at the gate. Their conclusion that “It is his angel” (v. 15) ironically glances at the real angel who has aided Peter’s escape.

In this narrative, a delightful minor character provides an instance of ironic humor. Instead of immediately admitting Peter, Rhoda leaves both him and the reader in suspense as she “for gladness” neglects the obvious action (v. 14). Whereas the heavy iron gate earlier opens by itself to let Peter out, Rhoda’s mere house gate remains closed until Peter’s insistent knocking summons everyone to let him in.

The story builds a chain of surprises on several levels. Peter certainly does not expect a miracle: he is sleeping, and once awakened, he must be prodded every step of the way out. His having already once experienced a prison deliverance and his having witnessed and performed many miracles himself might lead the reader to suppose that this particular rescue will provoke in him no great wonder; nevertheless, it does. We are surprised by Peter’s surprise. The Christians who pray for Peter’s salvation apparently do not expect such an immediate, concrete answer to their petition. Peter’s release is not just reported to them; Peter himself stands at their door as living proof of God’s faithfulness in spite of human lack of faith. God has answered while they still ask. No one is more surprised than the jailers themselves. The AV relates in classic understatement, “There was no small stir among the soldiers, what was become of Peter” (v. 18). Their surprise, however, has no happy ending. They are summarily condemned to death. Herod must remain as bewildered as we are concerning Peter’s whereabouts, for Luke simply tells us that “he departed, and went into another place” (v. 17).

Whereas Peter’s story embodies frequent moments of humor, the account of Paul’s experience is somber. Nevertheless, there are many similarities. The prisoners in both narratives are supposedly securely bound: Peter is chained under heavy guard, and Paul and Silas are “thrust . . . into the inner prison” where their feet are locked “fast in the stocks” (16:24). Both rescues occur during the night, Paul and Silas’s specifically “at midnight” (v. 25) when their situation seems darkest. Appropriately, in both prisons light appears. In Peter’s case, it is to provide physical illumination for his dressing and escape; also, it fittingly accompanies the angelic presence and announces deliverance. When the Philippian jailer realizes that his suicide is unwarranted, “he called for a light” (v. 29), which signals hope and foreshadows his spiritual illumination.

As soon as Peter and the angel reach the gate leading to the city, it opens for them “of his own accord” (12:10).

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This is perhaps the most notable instance in Scripture of heavy objects being quietly set in motion in obedience to an unspoken command, and it is an example of how easy it is for God to exercise His power over inanimate matter, in any shape or form. (Habershon, 1957, p. 135)

The earthquake in the Philippian prison shakes the very foundations, “and immediately all the doors were opened” (16:26). Once again we witness the economy of the supernatural. “The earthquake at Philippi accomplished exactly what was required, no more and no less. The prison was not leveled to the ground, no one seems to have been injured” (Habershon, 1957, p. 43). In both cases, God supernaturally opens doors that are humanly locked.

Both episodes end at the homes of believers. After his escape, Peter shows up at Mary’s house, where he is at first unwittingly rebuffed. Paul and Silas are unreservedly welcomed into their new convert’s house, where the jailer “set meat before them” after earlier having “washed their stripes” (vv. 34, 33), tending to the physical aspect of their healing.

Several contrasts between the two narratives highlight the different purposes of the rescues. Peter is the victim of Herod’s campaign “to vex certain of the church” (12:1) which strategically targets the leaders. Paul and Silas’s imprisonment is the result of mass hysteria fanned by vengeful Philippian citizens who have been personally deprived of their livelihood. Further, unknown to them, God is leading them to a needy soul. Whereas Peter enjoys abundant prayer support, Paul and Silas are isolated amid general hostility, and so far as the reader knows, they are the only ones praying. Nevertheless, God hears equally the prayers of intercessors and the sufferers themselves.

At the moment of rescue, Peter is sleeping, whereas Paul is singing. It shows peace of heart and mind for a man to be in a deep sleep on the eve of his intended execution. Further, Peter may be justifiably fatigued, but Paul is also surely exhausted from his trial and beating. However, God gives him grace enough to remain sufficiently alert to recognize the jailer’s predicament and forestall his suicide attempt. Peter practically sleepwalks through his rescue and passively allows himself to be led; Paul seizes control of the chaotic situation and resolves it.

Peter’s rescue confirms the faith of the Jerusalem Christians, and Paul and Silas’s promotes faith in Philippi. Because there is no disturbance in the prison at Peter’s escape, the jailers remain unaware of the miracle and, as a consequence, they die. Because of the earthquake in the Philippian jail, the keeper awakes and his life is spared. And as a result of Paul’s witness, he will live forever.

The Punitive Miracles

Acts contains three narratives that relate miracles of judgment. The nature miracles solved human problems; the healing miracles relieved human misery; the exorcisms purged the tortured of unclean spirits; and the rescue miracles restored freedom to the imprisoned. But these three judicial miracles are different in that their intention is not curative but punitive. In the first one, two believers are punished with instantaneous death for lying. In the second, a king who is guilty of hubris is infested with worms before he dies. And in the third, an evil magician is temporarily blinded for

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attempting to interfere with the work of the Holy Spirit. Whereas Christian readers derive satisfaction from the latter two instances at just retribution, we shudder at the deserved judgment visited on what are apparently fellow believers. The incident grimly impresses on us its warning against hypocrisy.

Ananias and Sapphira’s financial conspiracy recalls the secret dealings of Judas with the officials who “covenanted to give him money” (Luke 22:5). As Judas earlier betrays Christ, so the husband and wife betray the unity of Christ’s church, which functioned as a unit: “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul” (Acts 4:32). Judas is an outsider, the aberrant member of the chosen Twelve who does not think as the others do. Similarly, Luke tells us three times in the verses immediately preceding chapter 5 that every church member voluntarily shares his money and possessions. Barnabas is specifically mentioned as one who “Having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet” (4:37). In the very next verse, Luke presents Ananias and Sapphira as a glaring contrast.

When Ananias and Sapphira attempt to deceive the apostles, they are in reality trying to defraud God, who has already demonstrated through apostolic miracles that Peter and the others are His representatives. Although Luke does not indicate that the couple are possessed by Satan as was Judas (Luke 22:3), Peter does characterize their behavior as satanic. Their temerity in attempting to deceive the apostles parallels Judas’s audacity in believing he can keep secret from omniscience his plot to sell Christ. Perhaps Ananias and Sapphira are not totally selfish, for when they sell their possession, they withhold only “part of the price” (5:2); nevertheless, that part is enough to call down God’s judgment on them. Of course, their giving may very well stem from selfishness: it could be motivated by social pressure or social advantage.

Ananias and Sapphira are, like Judas, controlled by greed. Dante understands this when he uses the two in his Divine Comedy as examples of the greed for which those on the fifth terrace of Purgatory are suffering. He has earlier in the work explained the biblical philosophy of wealth which Luke includes in his Gospel’s account of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount: “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom” (6:38). As Dante puts it, focusing on “the prize/of worldly goods, which every sharing lessens” is counterproductive; instead, viewing God’s material gifts in a spiritual perspective multiplies them so that everyone is satisfied, much as the 5000 were fed: “. . . for the more there are there who say ‘ours’—not ‘mine’—/by that much each is richer” (ll. 49-50, 55-56) (Dante, 1961, p. 163). Ananias and Sapphira, however, exemplify the negative consequences of the second half of verse 38: “For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.” As Ananias and Sapphira are stingy with God’s material gifts to them, so God magisterially cuts short His gift of their very lives. As Judas saw no more in Christ than a source of material gain, he forfeited Christ’s gift of eternal life.

Ananias’s death startles the reader in its unexpectedness; that Ananias abruptly drops to the ground heightens the immediacy of the punishment. It is a strict reversal of the immediate healings in the other miracle narratives. We watch in horrified fascination the dramatically ironic scene in which Sapphira, unaware of her husband’s judgment, repeats his lie and follows him in death. Peter announces to her with synecdochical significance the ominous presence “at the door” of “the feet of them which have buried

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thy husband” (v. 9). Luke then specifies that Sapphira falls “down straightway at his feet” (v. 10), the place where she and her husband earlier proferred their unacceptable offering. At that point, they voluntarily refused to give all their money; now they are forced to give all in the ultimate sense.

The reaction of the witnesses both times is “great fear” (vv. 5, 11). The compassionate Lord of the healing miracles is also a demanding Judge who requires of His followers purity. His early church had to fight enemies within its own ranks as well as external satanic forces.

The narrative of Herod’s gruesome death immediately follows that of Peter’s rescue, which ends with Herod’s pronouncement of death on the hapless soldiers. Just a few verses later, God pronounces death on Herod. His crime is pride, the chief of sins and one particularly associated with Satan. Herod sits “upon his throne” (12:21) greedily encouraging his subordinates’ worship. The frenzied mob deifies him, declaring of his oration, “It is the voice of a god, and not of a man” (v. 22). It is significant that Luke makes no mention of the crowd’s being punished for worshipping “the creature more than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). Instead, Herod is stricken with disease “because he gave not God the glory” (v. 23). Seeking to elevate himself, he is brought low by a ghastly death, for as Christ tells the self-aggrandizing Pharisees, “That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15). Ananias and Sapphira, too, failed to give God His due and were similarly punished, but their execution was mercifully swift. As earlier in the chapter an angel “smote” Peter as the first step in his rescue, so now it is an angel who “smote” Herod to initiate his degenerative disease (vv. 7, 23). “Modern commentators may bring it in as ‘death from natural causes’; but the narrative clearly shows that it was a sudden judgment” (Habershon, 1957, p. 135).

Luke’s healing narratives in Acts are evenly divided between those that feature Peter and those in which Paul performs the miracle. Likewise, one of the prison rescues is of Peter, the other of Paul. Now once again Luke balances a miracle category by relating one story in which Peter exercises the punishment and one in which Paul is God’s instrument of judgment. The sorcerer in the latter story is referred to both as Barjesus and as Elymas,. This is the second time Luke gives the subject of a narrative two names (in Acts 9, Dorcas is also Tabitha). It is interesting that this is also the transitional narrative in which Saul’s name is changed to Paul (v. 9) and in which Paul takes over as the central figure in the larger narrative of Acts.

Elymas, who is attached to the company of Sergius Paulus, zealously tries to “turn away the deputy from the faith” (13:8). Paul’s words identify him with the demons of the exorcism narratives who strenuously oppose Christ: “thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness” (v. 10).

As Peter “fasten[s] his eyes” on the lame man right before he heals him (3:4), so now Paul “set his eyes” on Elymas (v. 9) prefatory to blinding him. Paul sees what Elymas, in his sin-benighted condition, cannot—that the magician is ripe for judgment. The blindness with which Elymas is smitten fitly manifests his spiritual blindness. As Elymas has sought to blind others by leading them away from God, so now he is forced to wander “about seeking some to lead him by the hand” (v. 11). “Although Paul’s words are harsh, the judgment invoked is comparatively temperate, especially because the blinding is temporary. It serves as a revelation to the proconsul, and perhaps to Elymas himself, of the blindness of this supposed seer” (Tannehill, 1990, pp. 162-163).

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Paul’s vehement denunciation of Elymas echoes Christ’s condemnation of the Pharisees, whom Christ declares “full of ravening and wickedness . . . as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them” (11:39, 44). Their satanic activity is doomed to failure. In these early days of the church, determined opposition only stimulated equal determination by the church to perform its mission, and as a result, “the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved” (2:47).

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Chapter III

THE CONVERSION

There is a kind of miracle that incorporates aspects of all those previously discussed but transcends them. It accomplishes more than a renewal; it amounts to a new act of creation: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, aol things are become new” (II Corinthians 5:17). When the woman who has suffered from an infirmity for eighteen years is healed, she moves again with the freedom of her youth. The man cured from leprosy recovers his once-unblemished skin. When his demon is expelled, the man of Capernaum regains control of his bodily expression and mental functioning. Each of these healings, nevertheless, is a temporary remedy, for bodies eventually deteriorate with age, sudden death can devastate even healthy ones, and Satan can claim forever those who die unregenerated. The “new creature” whom Paul speaks of in this passage from II Corinthians is one who has experienced the only transformation with eternal repercussions: a metamorphosis of the inner man made possible through Christ’s having been made “sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (v. 21). Whereas physical healing may modify a person’s appearance and alter our perception of him, it does not of itself change his essential nature; the spiritual healing effected by conversion, however, produces a thoroughly different person in the eyes of God. The many glorious miracles that the Lord performs do alleviate earthly suffering, but more important, they emblematically testify to the fact that He is the One who rescues us from eternal suffering through the miraculous transformation of redemption.

Luke’s conversion narratives are characterized by a mood of exciting commencement.

For Luke, stories of conversion are stories about beginnings—the beginning of the Jerusalem community, the beginning of the church in Samaria and beyond, the beginning of triumph over the church’s enemies. Conversion also begins the response of an individual to a calling (9:15-16) and the response of a community to its calling (11:1-18). (Gaventa, 1986, p. 125)

This sense of freshness, of starting anew, permeates the conversion narratives. All of them originate with the transformation of individual souls through Christ, a transformation likened to resurrection from death. It is God’s will “that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Over and over Scripture uses the antithesis of death and life to describe the absoluteness of the reversal generated by conversion. The conversion stories in Luke-Acts highlight this “newness of life.”

Most of the conversion stories are in Acts, since the Gospel focuses on Christ’s work that makes salvation possible. Accordingly, whereas the miracle narratives—most of which occur in the Gospel rather than Acts—concentrate our attention on the divine nature of the healings, the conversion stories tend to direct our focus toward the persons saved. Nevertheless, the miracle and conversion narratives share several significant features and at many points overlap.

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The persons featured in the conversion stories vary in their social status as much as do the recipients in the miracle accounts. They range from outcasts such as the sinful woman and the thief to Roman officials such as the centurion and the proconsul. Readers may experience dual impressions of figures such as the Ethiopian eunuch, who is obviously excluded from normal social interaction yet is “a man . . . of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure” (Acts 8:27). Likewise, Saul appears to be a rising star in Jewish society (cr. Acts 7:58; 9:14), but his intense persecution of Christians, “whether they were men or women” (9:2), provokes in us equally strong dislike and lowers him in our estimation. Yet just as no physical debilitation, not even death, proves too severe for the Lord to remedy, so do these miraculous conversions exhibit His power to redeem “all that believe . . . from all things” (13:39).

Some of the conversions directly follow miracles. The Philippian jailer calls for a light after the tremendous earthquake in his prison, and Paul immediately afterward responds with “the light of the glorious gospel of Christ” (II Corinthians 4:4). “It is striking that in Philippi Paul is twice presented with opportunities for freedom (vv. 26, 35-36) and twice refuses them. These developments focus attention not on the fact of miraculous release but on Paul’s reasons for rejecting these opportunities” (Tannehill, 1990, pp. 198-199). The jailer moves into the cell with alacrity: he “sprang in, and came trembling” with alarm at the quake and in fear for his life (16:29), falling down before Paul and Silas. His physical and emotional quaking recalls the woman with the issue of blood; although she approaches Christ with reluctance and trepidation instead of the jailer’s nervous eagerness, she likewise “came trembling . . . falling down before him” (LOuke 8:47). Paul delivers a powerfully simple answer to the jailer’s urgent plea, “What must I do to be saved?” (16:30). As Christ tells the healed woman, “Thy faith hath made thee whole” (8:48), so Paul informs the keeper of the prison that faith in Christ is the key to conversion: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (16:31). It strikes the reader with ironic delight that a jailer is himself freed from a dungeon far worse than that in which he keeps his own prisoners.

The jailer’s joy at his deliverance from not just physical but eternal death is exhibited in his warm reception of Paul and Silas into his house as guests and Christian brothers. He “washed their stripes” (v. 33), paralleling the action of the sinful woman in Luke who humbly greets Christ in the Pharisee’s house “and began to wash his feet with tears” (7:38). She, too, is saved by faith (v. 50).

The conversion of Sergius Paulus results from the blinding of Elymas the sorcerer, and the story of the conversion actually frames that punitive miracle. That Sergius Paulus “desired to hear the word of God” (13:7) initiates the opposition of Elymas; that Elymas is blinded convinces Serius Paulus of the truth of that Word. “Then the deputy, when he saw what was done, believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord” (13:12). His astonishment echoes the repeated amazement of the multitudes at Christ’s and the apostles’ miracles.

In chapter 8 another sorcerer serves as an illustration of incomplete or counterfeit conversion. Simon the magician enjoys great fame throughout Samaria, encouraging the people’s veneration of him by “giving out that himself was some great one” (8:9). He commands the reverence of all Samaritans “from the least to the greatest” (v. 10). Luke tells us twice “that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries” (v. 11; cf. v. 9),

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echoing in this description of a continuing spiritual captivity the long periods of physical enslavement that those in need of healing miracles had endured. When the people at large respond with belief to Philip’s preaching, “then Simon himself believed also: and . . . he was baptized” (v. 13). But Luke casts doubt on the genuineness of the conversion by emphasizing that what really impresses Simon about Christianity are “the miracles and signs which were done” (v. 13). The dubious authenticity of his profession of faith is reinforced by his reaction to Peter and John’s invocation of the Holy Spirit. “When Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given” (v. 18), he attempts to bribe the apostles in order to gain that power for himself. Simon yields to his lust for prestige and his attraction to miraculous powers.

Luke consistently differentiates miracles from magic. At the beginning of his Gospel, Christ is shown resisting the temptation to display miraculous powers from satanic instigation. Further, Jesus never uses miracles to satisfy self: He always performs them to serve God’s purposes. Talbert (1982) points out that one certain means of distinguishing miracles from magic is “the good character of those who work miracles” (p. 246). When Peter preaches to the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius, he identifies Christ as One who, having been anointed “with the Holy Ghost and with power, . . . went about doing good” (10:38).

Paul and Barnabas are horrified when the crowds at Lystra try to deify them after Paul’s miraculous healing of the crippled man. The apostles actively discourage the people’s enthusiastic adoration and protest that they are merely “men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God” (14:15). Convinced that they have witnessed a sign from their pagan gods, the people persist in their superstition and miss entirely the point of the miracle. Likewise, Simon focuses on the miraculous acts themselves rather than on what they signify. He sees the apostolic power only as a means of regaining his lost status as chief magician; in other words, Simon is interested in using God instead of being concerned about how God can use him. His goal is to glorify not Christ but himself.

Peter severly reproves Simon for his grotesque request.

Although miracles are ascribed to Peter and Paul in Acts that seem close to magic, the line between their mission and tendencies toward self-promotion and the use of religion for financial benefit, typical of magicians and other corrupt dealers in the supernatural, is clearly drawn through Peter’s confrontation with Simon. (Tannehill, 1990, p. 107)

Simon has committed a fundamental error similar to Ananias and Sapphira’s, that of eclipsing the spiritual with the material. Indeed, Peter’s censure of Simon echoes the apostles’ condemnation of Ananias. As Ananias and Spphira try to buy into the tight unity of the Christian community with a hypocritical offering, so Simon thinks “that the gift of God may be purchased with money” (v. 20). None of them realizes what Luke records Paul as reminding the Ephesian elders of, that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (20:35). As Peter accuses Ananias of having permitted Satan to fill “thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost” (5:3), now in this passage he warns Simon that “thy heart is not right in the sight of God” (v. 21) and urges him to “pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee” (v. 22). As Ananias and Sapphira are permanently

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removed from the church group, so Peter sternly informs Simon, “Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter” (v. 21). Although the reader might be expecting immediate judgment on Simon after what has happened to Ananias and Sapphira—especially after Peter’s opening statement to him, “Thy money perish with thee” (v. 20)—the apostle holds open to Simon the possibility of forgiveness. Perhaps the difference is that Ananias and Sapphira had been assimilated into the church and were defiling it, whereas Simon was at or near the threshold.

Luke’s selection and handling of the miraculous conversion stories reinforces the difference between the miraculous and the magical and actually subordinates the physically miraculous to the spiritually miraculous. Talbert (1982) states that one of Luke’s lessons concerning miracles is that “in terms of priorities, having miraculous powers is secondary in importance to having experienced conversion” (p. 246). He cites in support Luke 10:20, in which Jesus tells His disciples to “rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.” An indication by Simon of true conversion would have been the response of the Ephesians to Paul’s preaching. Luke tells us that as evidence of their changed thinking, “many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver” (Acts 19:19). Simon, on the other hand, far from burning his magic books, has in effect preserved their essence in his heart; instead of sacrificing silver, he wishes to retain it as a tool for self-advancement. Just a few chapters later, Herod will suffer a painful death for that very sin.

Peter points out Simon’s perverse inclination to attend only to the miraculous, which Simon equates with the magical, and only to the miraculous in its physical effects. In no uncertain terms he commands Simon to repent of his “wickedness,” charging him with being bound in “bitterness” and “iniquity” (vv. 22-23). But Luke records no penitence on Simon’s part, only fear. There is no indication of remorse that he has offended God or of sorrow that he, as a supposed child of God, has so grievously misunderstood his Father’s free grace. Instead, Simon merely wishes to avoid the consequences of his sin, asking Peter to pray “that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me” (v. 24). Rather than directly requesting the Lord to restore his fellowship in the family of God, Simon acts like an outsider who vaguely recognizes a Christian as having power with God that he himself is denied. Simon does not prove to be someone for whom “all things are become new.”

The Three Conversions in Luke

In his Gospel, Luke tells the stories of three conversions that together describe three facets of salvation: the penitence required of the sinner, the price of true conversion, and the power of the only One who can forgive and redeem mankind. Each of the persons converted in these stories is publicly identified as a sinner. Luke establishes the unchaste woman in chapter 7 as “a sinner” before the Pharisee, too, calls her one (vv. 37, 39). The observers of Christ’s conversation with Zaccheus murmur that Jesus is “gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner” (19:7). And the thief on the cross conspicuously hangs on top of a hill in full view of a huge crowd because he is one of two “malefactors” being punished along with Jesus (23:39). Christ assures each one of

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salvation precisely because each comes as a sinner, “for the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (19:10).

The sinful woman approaches Christ as He is eating in the house of a Simon the Pharisee. The introduction to this story is similar to the beginning of the account of the man with dropsy, in which Christ enters “the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath day” (14:1). Both Pharisees silently judge the Lord for what they perceive as breaches of the law, and in both instances Luke writes that Jesus was able to “answer” their unspoken objections (7:40; 14:3), even as He could defend Himself because “he knew their thoughts” (6:8). Berlin’s comments on narrative omniscience in the Old Testament remind us that in biblical narrative generally, “the narrator has a potentially omniscient perceptual point of view. He can be anywhere and everywhere, even inside the minds of the characters. The reader’s perception is formed by what the narrator reveals of his omniscience and the way it is revealed” (1983, p. 52). In these particular instances, Luke’s indication of the Pharisees’ secret dislike of Christ emphasizes their vindictive spirits.

The Pharisee in this incident reasons that “this man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him” (7:39). In relating the Pharisee’s judgmental thoughts, the text implies an exquisite irony: had Simon only realized who Christ was, he would have known that He welcomed the woman’s touch. The point is that Christ does know that a sinner has touched Him. A further irony is that in the manner of a typical Pharisee, this host does not consider himself a sinner unworthy of contact with Jesus. He takes for granted the Lord’s presence at his table.

The reader does not share the Pharisee’s surprise that Christ allows the woman to touch Him freely, for Luke has already related the incident of His touching the leper (5:13). In the very next chapter, the woman with the issue of blood touches Him and receives the same response as this woman: “Go in peace” (7:50; 8:48). In fact, the phrase concludes both narratives, imparting a sense of harmonious resolution.

To illustrate why He regards the woman favorably, Christ tells a story, just as He frequently elaborates on the significance of a miracle with a parable. The incident anticipates the one a few chapters later in which Christ conquers His opponent by telling the story of the Good Samaritan. Jesus pressures the lawyer to complete the moral of the parable when He asks him which character is the true neighbor to the victim. The lawyer replies, “He that shewed mercy on him,” and Christ immediately seals the lesson with a “Go, and do thou likewise” (10:37). Likewise, here Christ tells the story of the creditor who forgives the debts of two men who owe him money. When He asks Simon which of the two debtors will love him most, the Pharisee reluctantly gives the correct answer: “I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most” (7:42-43). Christ congratulates Simon: “Thou hast rightly judged” (v. 43). The irony is that the Pharisee has judged himself, for Christ follows up on Simon’s answer by comparing his cold treatment of the Lord to the woman’s warm acts of love. As Jesus approvingly catalogues her humble acts of worship, the enormity of the Pharisee’s deficiencies becomes emphatically apparent; and the relentless listing, climaxing in Christ’s pronouncement of forgiveness on the woman, drives home the point of the parable. The function of parable in these incidents involving the lawyer and Simon recalls Nathan’s exposure of David’s crimes. David, too, responds

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properly to a story and unknowingly judges his own sin in the process until Nathan surprises him with the terse identification, “Thou art the man” (II Samuel 12:7).

The woman scorned by Simon weeps as she comes to Christ, signaling her recognition of her unworthiness. Jesus responds in mercy to her self-judgment, rewarding her conviction of sin and contrition for that sin with unconditional forgiveness. The Pharisees immediately question His qualification to forgive sins, echoing the Pharisaical objection to Christ’s having forgiven the paralytic’s sins. In both instances, Christ ties forgiveness to faith in Him.

The account of Zaccheus’s conversion is an example of how a few descriptive details artfully arranged can enrich a story, rendering it truly memorable. Luke introduces Zaccheus as a “chief among the publicans,” pointedly adding, “and he was rich” (19:2). Thus Luke establishes him as a wealthy outcast, for publicans were generally despised (cf. Matthew 5:46). The reader also immediately connects Zaccheus with the “very rich” young ruler of the previous chapter, who sorrowfully decides that the price of “treasure in heaven” is too high (18:22-23). Jesus’s comments to His disciples after the young man has left on the difficulty of a rich man’s entering the kingdom of God cause the reader to entertain serious doubts about the probability of Zaccheus’s salvation.

Luke also informs us that Zaccheus “was little of stature” (v. 3). Our initial unfriendly reaction to him is somewhat mitigated by his physical disadvantage: “Readers may become concerned with Zacchaeus and with the outcome of his story, leading to sympathetic involvement in his quest” (Tannehill, 1986, p. 122). That Zaccheus “climbed up into a sycomore tree” (v. 4) to get a better view of Christ also tells us something about his initiative, which recalls that of Bartimaeus a few verses earlier. Luke may also intend to reveal something about Zaccheus’s personality, since it is natural for the reader to infer that the high-ranking publican is a climber by nature. When Berlin (1983) comments on the paucity of physically descriptive details in the Old Testament stories, she notes that “physical description is not an end in itself; it is a suggestion of a certain kind of person. It is not a question of the Bible’s limited use of physical description, but a question of the Bible’s purpose of that description” (p. 138). For instance, that Eglon is fat increases Ehud’s chances of getting away with the murder; Eli’s blindness signals his increasing ineffectiveness as a father and priest. “Physical description, like other kinds of character description, is meant to add to the total configuration of a character, to give a sense of what kind of person he is” (p. 138). Chatman’s observation that character and plot “are separable, and that plot and character are independently memorable” (1978, p. 118) is all the more true when applied to historical accounts, such as the ones in Scripture. Eglon, Eli, and Zaccheus are “autonomous beings, not . . . mere plot functions” (p. 119). This is not to say that biblical characters are not part of the total action in Scripture that serves theme and spiritual purpose. It is merely that these characters have an interest in their own right. Because of the dual historical-literary nature of Scripture, biblical characters are both real and lifelike. That is why we care so much about Zaccheus’s fate and why we rejoice with him in his conversion.

The Zaccheus narrative, like the healing stories, underscores an important characteristic of Christ: that he always notices the one in need. Just as He picks out from the crowd the woman with the crippling infirmity, so in the tumult of the “press” He

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stops at this one particular tree and summons Zaccheus, addressing him by name. Christ’s command to “make haste” because He is coming to Zaccheus’s house “to day” (v. 5) and Zaccheus’s prompt obedience parallel the immediacy in the healing episodes and underscore the critical urgency of Zaccheus’s need of the Savior. When Christ tells him, “I must abide at thy house” (v. 5), He may be implying a permanent occupation, for at Zaccheus’s conversion He declares, “This day is salvation come to this house” (v. 9). The incident prepares us for the jailer’s reception of Paul and Silas “into his house” after the apostles proclaim salvation “to all that were in his house” (16:32, 34).

Zaccheus’s joyful reception of Christ makes the juxtaposed murmurings of the dissenters in the next verse seem all the more repellent. Their complaining about Christ’s social interaction with “a man that is a sinner” (v. 7) suggests the irony that Christ has several times eaten with the Pharisees, who were far less worthy of His company than is Zaccheus. In fact, when Christ earlier in the Gospel feasts with another publican, Matthew, the Pharisees deliver a protest identical to the one in this story: “Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?” (5:30). Christ’s answer anticipates the conclusion of the Zaccheus story: “They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick” (5:31; cf. 19:10). Christ calls Zaccheus “a son of Abraham” (v. 9), piquing the Pharisees, who assume that through their works they have a superior claim to the status that appellation implies. Ironically, though, the rich man in hell is also identified as a son of Abraham (16:25)—again, much to the irritation of the Pharisees. It is indeed hard for a rich man to enter heaven (18:24-25), but “the things which are impossible with men are possible with God” (v. 27). Zaccheus’s conversion illustrates the truth of that glorious possibility. He, like the beggar Lazarus in the parable, will reside in “Abraham’s bosom” (16:22).

In the story of Simon and the unchaste woman, Luke shows the conditions for salvation; in this story, he shows the consequences of it. As the sinful woman sacrifices in bestowing her costly ointment on Christ, so Zaccheus as a result of his conversion willingly offers his treasure. He promises “half of my goods . . . to the poor” and vows that he will make ample restitution for any thievery (19:8). Luke prefaces Zaccheus’s announcement by telling us that as Zaccheus speaks he is standing. The simple statement “And Zacchaeus stood” (v. 8) increases in our eyes the moral stature of this small man. We know that no matter how much he gives away, he will “receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting” (18:30).

The malefactor hanging on a cross beside Jesus is another repentant social reprobate. His story is one that reminds us how little is required for salvation. It is a little, nevertheless, that divides humanity right down the center, as the thief is separated physically and spiritually by Christ from the jeering malefactor. It has been aptly observed that Luke gives us one poignant narrative of a “deathbed” conversion so that no unregenerated reader need despair, yet only one so that no one should presume on the opportunity for salvation.

The sneering, skeptical thief mocks Jesus with the taunt, “If thou be Christ, save thyself and us” (23:39). He echoes the crowd’s challenge two verses earlier: “If thou be the king of the Jews, save thyself” (v. 37). The reader is reminded of the Pharisee’s scornful dismissal of Christ in the episode of the unchaste woman, that “if he were a prophet,” He would have known that it was a sinner who touched Him (7:39). It is significant that all of these people assume that Christ’s not acting in the expected manner

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proves their charge: that He is not God. His acting contrary to their expectation, however, actually fits His mission as Messiah. In this instance, when the jeering criminal says that if Jesus is really Christ He should save the two thieves, Jesus is in the process of providing for exactly that. Of course, just the fact of His being Christ and providing the means of salvation is not enough to save someone: that person must be willing to accept salvation in the proper way.

The repentant thief shows the insight that the Pharisees do not. He realizes that the law has justly condemned him and that, whereas he and the other criminal “receive the due reward” of their deeds, Christ “hath done nothing amiss” (v. 41). The Pharisees, on the other hand, always judge Christ, not themselves. The thief shows respect for Christ that the Pharisees do not. In response to the man’s sincere faith and humble address of Jesus as “Lord” (v. 42), Christ pronounces a majestically brief assurance: “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (v. 43). Luke emphasizes that it is indeed God who hangs on that cross: in His unspeakable agony, He has the strength to utter only a few words, but those words are powerful enough to effect a complete change in the thief’s destination. As Christ has so frequently healed instantaneously, so is this transformation immediate. A few chapters earlier, Christ tells Zaccheus that He will abide “to day . . . at thy house” (19:5). He now invites the thief to His own house “To day” and for eternity.

The Three Central Conversions in Acts

The eighth, ninth, and tenth chapters of Acts contain the stories of three conversion in which God directly intervenes to alter dramatically the lives not just of the persons converted but also of those who are instrumental in the conversions. As a group, they demonstrate how the invitation of the gospel is extended to Gentiles. At the end of Luke’s Gospel, Christ states “that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (24:47). At the beginning of Acts, Christ repeats His commission right before His ascension: “Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (1:8). These three narratives which relate the conversions of the Ethiopian eunuch, Paul, and Cornelius illustrate the initial processes of the evangelism that eventually transforms the entire world.

A pervasive motif in Acts is the journey. In the story of the Ethiopian eunuch, two journeys intersect as Philip meets on a desert road the eunuch who is returning from Jerusalem. Much to the reader’s surprise, the “angel of the Lord” has directed Philip away from a fruitful ministry with the Samaritans and has steered him instead toward the sterile region of a desert (8:26). Luke will soon reveal, however, that this episode serves as one more example of the Lord’s concern for the individual.

It is interesting that “the angel tells Philip to arise and go down a deserted road in the middle of the day!” (Gaventa, 1986, p. 101). Noon travel was normally considered undesirable because of the sun’s heat and blinding rays. Yet when Paul relates the story of his conversion later in the book, he specifies that he, too, was on the road to Damascus “at midday” (26:13; cf. also 22:6). There is an appropriate correspondence between the strong sunlight at that time of day and the spiritual illumination that the eunuch and Paul

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receive. (In Paul’s conversion it was perhaps a foil emphasizing the strength of the light that shone on him from heaven.)

“One of the most conspicuous features of the encounter between Philip and the eunuch is the repetitive allusion to divine intervention” (Martin, 1985/1986, p. 2). The angel does not at the outset inform Philip of the purpose of his journey. The evangelist, nevertheless, obeys the commission without question. It is only when he actually spots the eunuch’s procession that the Spirit makes clear Philip’s task: “Go near, and join thyself to this chariot” (v. 29). In response, Philip “ran” to him (v. 30). Through this incident, the Lord impresses upon both Philip and the reader the rewards of unhesitating obedience. Because of Philip’s response to the guidance of the Spirit, someone is presented with the gospel at a moment of prime receptivity.

Another surprise is that an Ethiopian eunuch is reading from the Hebrew Bible. Eunuchs were considered by the Law ceremonially unclean (Deuteronomy 23:1), but this is a particularly pious man who has just come from worshipping in Jerusalem. He has been reading Isaiah 53 with very little comprehension, and he consequently invites Philip into his chariot as his “guide” to interpretation (v. 31). He asks Philip the obvious and crucial question: “Of whom speaketh the prophet?” (v. 34). “Many questions might be raised regarding the Scripture, but the eunuch seizes on one that is central: To whom does this text refer? Philip’s response to the question is to proclaim Jesus” (Gaventa, 1986, p. 105). Philip has gone out of his way to meet the eunuch; the eunuch has not inconvenienced himself to come to Philip. As Philip meets the eunuch where the man already is, so he accommodates himself to the eunuch’s particular Scriptural interest at the moment and moves from that point to the gospel message: “Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus” (v. 35).

The chariot has all this time kept moving. The eunuch arrives at his moment of conversion just as the chariot providentially arrives at a body of water. The eunuch requests baptism, “and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him” (v. 38). Philip has now completed his mission.

That Luke tells us right near the beginning of the story that the eunuch is from Ethiopia creates a sense of reader expectation. “The conviction that the Ethiopians lived at the ends of the earth is well documented in ancient literature” (Tannehill, 1990, p. 109), and Luke’s audience would thus be anticipating an initial step in the fulfillment of the Great Commission to the Gentiles. Martin (1985/1986) claims that “the Gentile eunuch precedes the Gentile Cornelius within the narrative apparatus precisely because his conversion represents a nascent stage of what was to become the e , ve , nement plus grand of the missionary outreach of the Church: the mission to the Gentiles” made explicit by Peter in chapter 10 (p. 236). Many Bible scholars, however, agree with Tannehill that “Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian is not a causal factor in a sequence of events that moves toward the end of the earth” (1990, p. 107). This is a private conversion with no witnesses mentioned, and there is no further reference in Acts to any public repercussions. But it is a heavily symbolic conversion.

The classical evidence confirms that the Ethiopian’s place of origin did represent the “end of the earth” in the southernmost region of the world according to prevailing geographical notions of the day. The association of Ethiopians with the “end of the earth” made the Ethiopian eunuch an ideal candidate to

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demonstrate precisely how the mission to the “end of the earth” might be achieved. (Martin, 1985/1986, p. 234)

Further, the eunuch represents foreignness to the highest degree: as a black man, he is conspicuously other-racial; as a eunuch, he is obviously outside the borders of normal life. Luke writes that the eunuch “went on his way rejoicing” (v. 39), and we can assume that he shared the joy of his salvation with others when he returned home.

The final surprise in the story is Philip’s sudden disappearance. “The Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip” (v. 39) and set him down in another city. It does not surprise us, however, that he immediately resumes preaching. The eunuch no longer needs Philip, for he now has the Spirit to guide him in his Bible studies. It is perhaps not presumptuous for us to speculate that he might continue his reading in Isaiah through chapter 56 and rejoice further in the Lord’s assurance to devout eunuchs: “Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off” (v. 5).

The next chapter of Acts contains what is probably the most dramatic salvation story in the Bible: the conversion of Paul. In many ways it differs significantly from the previous story about the eunuch. The narrative opens with a threatening atmosphere of violence which contrasts with the peaceful angelic presence that initiates the previous episode. The protagonist, still called “Saul” at this stage, dominates the story, whereas Philip and the eunuch share equally the reader’s attention. Saul is a hostile murderer who must be stopped and spoken to by the Lord Himself; the eunuch, a gentle and pious man, eagerly receives the gospel through a human agent divinely sent. In both cases, however, supernatural intervention at strategic moments results in ultimately transforming experiences.

The structure of the narrative can be diagrammed on the model of a traditional dramatic pyramid. Verses 1 and 2 deliver the exposition and rising action, in which Saul “yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord” seeks further opportunity to harass the church. Verses 3 through 7 detail the climactic conversation between Christ and Saul. Within this climax, the crisis, or turning point, occurs in verse 6, in which Saul asks the Lord’s direction. Finally, the falling action and denouement extend from verse 8 to the end of the narrative, although “falling action” seems an inappropriate term to describe what is literally a rising movement: at the “Arise” in verse 6, an excitement is born that will rapidly mature into the expansion of the church.

The structure that Gaventa (1986) perceives complements this traditional one.

The story beginning in 9:1 represents the best of Luke’s narrative art. There are five distinct scenes: (1) the persecution that leads Saul to Damascus (vv. 1-2), (2) the encounter with Jesus and its results (vv. 3-9), (3) the commission of Ananias (vv. 10-16), (4) the action of Ananias and its results (vv. 17-19a), (5) the epilogue (vv. 19b-30). (p. 56)

Literary critics can probably make a case for the narrative’s ending at any one of several points. Saul’s surreptitious exit from Damascus in verse 25 neatly corresponds to his

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openly traveling to that city at the beginning of the story. The episode begins with Saul’s plot to persecute Christians; by verse 29, his former allies are planning to kill him. In the opening verses of the story, the independent Saul avidly seeks new means to hurt Christians; in verse 30, his Christian brothers take charge of his itinerary to protect him from harm. And whereas at the start Sul is stirring up trouble for the church, in verse 31 Luke states that because of their adversary’s conversion, “Then had the churches rest.” Each of these four verses has merit as a satisfactory conclusion.

The first half of Acts is centered on Peter, but the insertion in chapter 9 of this conversion prepares us for Paul’s emergence in chapter 13 as the principal figure in the rest of the book. The healings in the second part of Chapter 9 restore the focus on Peter, but after his rescue in chapter 12, Luke tells us only that he “went into another place” (v. 17). A few verses later, Paul—who at this time undergoes his name change—takes over the narrative as the chief missionary to the Gentiles.

Saul is a complex, developing character. In writing about the major figures of the Old Testament, Berlin (1983) notes that “characters, especially main characters, in the Bible tend not to be absolutes. Our perception and evaluation of them comes through the contrasts with other characters, with their earlier selves, or with the reader’s expectation” (p. 136). In this narrative Luke documents the changes in Saul and in others’ perceptions of him. Luke introduces him at the stoning of Stephen as a young man before whom the witnesses to the execution lay down their clothes; indeed, “Saul was consenting unto his death” (8:1). Saul would soon do more than merely approve persecution of Christians. Luke states that “he made havock of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison” (8:3). At the beginning of the next chapter Luke writes again that Saul attacks both men and women (9:2). His ferocity toward women recalls the demonic victimization of even children in the Gospel narratives: Satan and his instruments exercise no delicacy in their persecutions. “We understand that Saul is the enemy and, when he reappears in Acts 9, we will expect further difficulties for believers” (Gaventa, 1986, p. 56). The “And” and “yet” which open chapter 9 convey the relentlessness of Saul’s oppression, and Saul’s “breathing out threatenings and slaughter” (9:1) reminds us of the hellish emanations from “the dragon . . . which is the Devil” (Revelation 20:2). This zealot who is motivated by intense hatred appears obsessed by his mission to rid the world of Christians. In his testimony before Agrippa, Paul confesses that as he brutally interrogated the saints, in his fury he often “compelled them to blaspheme . . . being exceedingly mad against them” (26:11). The reader will recall that the Pharisees also “were filled with madness” at Christ’s healing of the withered hand (Luke 6:11). Saul is a man who takes his mission very seriously and personally.

Such a strong will requires an even stronger one to bend it and force it in another direction entirely. It seems that nothing less than the blinding light and voice from Heaven would have been enough to seize Saul’s attention and thwart such fierce determination. The Lord compels Saul to stop, ask questions, and consider the answers. As a result, Saul surrenders his own plans and decides to follow the Lord’s. His impressive initiative and assiduity will now be directed toward the furtherance of the cause they once hindered, and he becomes an equally formidable and single-minded force for good.

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Acts 9 is a specific and dramatic example of what is said at the beginning of Acts 8; that the adversity that befalls the church becomes opportunity for further growth and movement. As the persecution in Jerusalem forced the dispersed believers into Samaria where they preached, so also the persecutor Saul is changed into a major advocate. (Gaventa, 1986, p. 66)

Saul has unintentionally furthered the growth of the church when his persecution drives Christians out of Jerusalem: “Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word” (8:4). His conversion, however, promotes even greater growth through his own missionary journeys abroad. Luke displays for the reader’s admiration God’s providence: the Lord will perform His will with or without man’s cooperation.

Luke emphasizes not just Saul’s strong will but also his intelligence. As an educated man, Saul very possibly recognizes the context of Aegisthus’s line in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, which Christ repeats to him: “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks” (v. 5). Aegisthus, accessory to King Agamemnon’s murder and the succeeding ruler as a result, advises the Mycenaean chorus that resistance to him is useless since all power now resides with him. Saul realizes at this moment that Jesus is the omnipotent God. His reflection on this point is implied during the three days that he is denied sight and during which he denies himself food and water: Saul has a lot to think about, and everything else is subordinated to this mental and spiritual concentration. After his conversion, he uses his intellectual skills in the power of the Holy Spirit to try to convince the Jews that Jesus “is the Son of God” (v. 20), instead of physically and verbally breaking others down to try to get them to say otherwise (cf. 26:11).

The entire book of Acts is electric with the ignition of the church, but there is an especial concentration here in the Damascus road incident. Luke employs terminology that we are familiar with from the miracle narratives: “suddenly” there shines a light (v. 3); “he fell to the earth” (v. 4); Saul is “trembling and astonished” (v. 6); at Ananias’s touch “immediately” his blindness is cured; “straightway he preached Christ” (v. 20); his listeners are “amazed” (v. 21). There is no more spectacular conversion recorded in Scripture, because the light from heaven at the moment of conviction is not metaphorical but literal. It is so bright that it blinds him, and the fact that the light impacts him so strongly that the sightlessness lasts for several days and is miraculously reversed at Ananias’s touch suggests a deeper significance to the physical blindness. After Christ healed the man born blind, He stated: “For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind” (John 9:39). When the Pharisees responded with sarcasm, Christ confirmed their spiritual blindness: “Now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth” (9:41). Saul’s physical blindness ironically permits his perception of the truth. The spiritual light that strikes him has displaced for a time physical sight, and he is afforded an opportunity for reflection without physical distraction. It is interesting that in Dante’s Purgatory, the wrathful are purged from their sinful tendency by being forced to walk about blindly in a dark cloud, which symbolizes the blackness of their earthly rage; Dante might very well have had in mind as a model the choleric Saul, who undergoes a similar purgation.

That Saul falls to the ground demonstrates an enforced humility that starkly contrasts with his proud stance at the stoning of Stephen. He has presumed to judge one

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of the Lord’s saints; now Christ calls him to account. Christ, however, speaks to him not harshly but in patient rebuke. The repetition of his name—“Saul, Saul” (v. 4)—echoes God’s address of His servants in the Old Testament at special moments of testing and revelation. From heaven God calls “Abraham, Abraham” when He interrupts the attempted sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22:11); in a vision He calls “Jacob, Jacob” when He reassures him at the outset of his journey into Egypt (Genesis 46:2); out of the burning bush He calls “Moses, Moses” when He commissions Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt (Exodus 3:4); in the night He calls “Samuel, Samuel” when He reveals the judgment to befall Eli’s house (I Samuel 3:10). In the New Testament, Christ personally and individually calls all of His disciples. Luke makes it obvious that the Lord intends great things for Saul.

This is a private conversation. The men with Saul “stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man” (v. 7). Because Paul states in his later testimony that the men “heard not the voice of him that spake to me” (22:9), we can conclude that the men did hear some kind of sound but could discern no comprehensible meaning in it. The message is intended specifically for Saul. That the Lord charges Saul with having persecuted Him shows that Christ identifies with His saints and takes personally any abuse against them.

The Lord reveals His will for Saul in stages. As the Spirit leads Philip gradually in the performance of his task, so the Lord at the outset encourages in Saul a step-by-step dependence on Him: “Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do” (v. 6). Saul is brought into Damascus “led . . . by the hand” (v. 8), ironically making a far different entrance from the one he had intended. At this point the reader is as much in the dark as is Saul about God’s intentions.

With verse 10 Luke introduces another character who will experience his own conflict with God as a result of the resolution of conflict between God and Saul. Ananias balks at the Lord’s command to minister to Saul, expressing fear at Saul’s reputation as a zealous persecutor. Remembering Saul’s former ferocity, the reader sympathizes with Ananias’s apprehension. God overrules the protests of Ananias and reassures him of Saul’s changed heart and his status as a deliberately “chosen vessel unto me” (v. 15).

The narrator takes time to present this reaction and the Lord’s corrective response. Therefore, this episode is more than the story of Saul; it is the story of Saul and Ananias, a story of how the Lord encountered both and brought them together. (Tannehill, 1990, p. 115)

Luke structures his account of Ananias to emphasize certain contrasts between the disciple and Saul. The Lord speaks directly to both, calling them by name. Saul, who does not know Him, has to ask “Who art thou?” (v. 5); Ananias, His child, simply answers, “I am here” (v. 10). Saul is a rebel, Ananias a disciple, yet it is the rebel who responds submissively and the disciple who initially resists. But when the Lord says once again to “Go thy way,” Luke tells us that obediently “Ananias went his way” (vv. 15, 17). The Lord tells Saul, “Arise, and go into the city” (v. 6); to Ananias He says, “Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight” (v. 11). Saul and Ananias end up at the same house.

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Ananias receives the Lord’s instructions in a vision. From it we learn that Paul, too, has had a vision that will increase his receptivity to Ananias. Accordingly, Ananias can confidently approach Saul as a “Brother” (v. 17) and deliver a healing touch. Following these heavenly visions, then, Saul regains the gift of his physical vision and receives in addition the gift of the Holy Spirit.

When Saul begins preaching “Christ in the synagogues,” them which called on this name in Jerusalem, and came hither for that intent, that he might bring them bound unto the chief priests?” (vv. 20-21). The answer, of course, is “No.” This is not the same man at all: he is a totally “new creature,” reborn in Christ after his symbolic three days in darkness. Gaventa (1986) argues that “it is reading into the text to conclude that this is death and resurrection imagery, or that Saul has undergonetransformation” (v. 60). Though Luke does specify three days as the length of Christ’s interment,

none of the other instances of that time reference in Luke lend themselves to such an interpretation (cf. Luke 2:46; Acts 25:1; 28:7, 12, 17). On the contrary, Luke, like other biblical authors, uses “three days” to refer to a short period of time, and there is no reason to see in this instance anything more. (p. 60)

Despite Gaventa’s reservations, it seems clear that the three-day period is indeed significant. Not only is Saul in total blackness, but he is also without any nourishment. Upon his receiving his sight back, he “arose” (v. 18), a term which appears frequently in the accounts of healing from extreme infirmity, not mere blindness; the only other narratives it is used in are the resurrections. Further, when Saul regains his sight, he partakes of some “meat” (v. 19). Jairus’s daughter is given food at her resurrection (8:55), possibly to underscore in the revival of her physical appetites her return to life. When Christ appeared to His disciples after His own resurrection, He asked, “Have ye here any meat?”; receiving “a piece of a broiled fish, . . . he took it, and did eat before them” (24:41-43). He was proving the reality of His physical presence. Peter emphasizes the significance of His post-Resurrection eating by stating in the sermon to Cornelius that after God raised up Christ and “shewed him openly . . . unto witnesses chosen before of God,” the disciples “did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead” (10:40-41). Through the food that Paul is given, “he was strengthened” (v. 19), and Luke repeats a few verses later that “Saul increased the more in strength” (v. 22). He is, in fact, a stronger man than he was before his conversion, because his strength is now properly directed.

From his very first appearance in Acts 7:58 until he departs for Tarsus in 9:30, the story centers on Saul as the enemy. He is first the active persecutor, then the immobilized persecutor, and finally the preacher whose former persecution causes suspicion. By means of the increasing activity of Saul first as persecutor and then as believer, Luke has underscored the reversal aspect of the narrative. (Gaventa, 1986, p. 65)

Saul must escape Damascus by night, just as Peter before long will escape in the night from prison. His being let “down by the wall in a basket” (v. 25) is a sharp contrast to his striding in arrogance toward Damascus in the opening verses of the story. It also

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exhibits a total dependence on others that began with his being led into Damascus after his blinding. This progression from independence to helplessness is artfully highlighted by Luke’s having deliberately placed the plots against Saul in the verses immediately following his conversion, when evidently Saul went to Arabia before his return to Damascus (cf. Galatians 1:17).

The Lord tells Ananias that He will show Saul “how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake” as he bears “my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel” (vv. 15-16). Of this commission Tannehill (1990) observes:

Each of the three versions of Saul’s conversion in Acts highlights the Lord’s commission that will direct Saul’s life from that point on, but these commission statements are presented within different dialogue segments of the narrative. The Lord is speaking to Ananias in 9:15-16, Ananias is speaking to Saul in 22:14-15, and the Lord is speaking to Saul in 26: 16-18. (p. 116)

We may naturally assume that Ananias has repeated the Lord’s words to Paul. In his address to Agrippa, Paul merely conflates the events since it is obvious to him that the genesis of the commission is in the Lord’s words on the Damascus road: “It shall be told thee what thou must do” (v. 6). Dennis Hamm (1990) also believes that through the three accounts, Luke is highlighting Saul’s commission, but that Luke does so using the motifs of darkness and light in varying ways.

In his treatment of the motifs of blindness and sight in the three versions of the Damascus episode, Luke moves from a story in which Paul experiences blindness as a punitive act of God and recovery of sight as a divine healing (Acts 9) to a story in which the same loss and recovery of sight is told in muted and ambiguous language (Acts 22) and, finally (in Acts 26), to a story in which Paul’s own experience of loss and recovery of physical vision is transmuted to a metaphor describing the end-time mission of Israel, Jesus and Paul. (p. 71)

All of these are, of course, the same story. It is just that as he matures spiritually, Paul realizes in a deeper way the significance of his calling and its personal cost to him. Luke is merely recording faithfully Paul’s own testimonies of his conversion.

Paul is enduring the persecution predicted in chapter 9 even as he testifies before Agrippa. Yet he can honestly say to Agrippa, “I think myself happy” (26:2), for he is even in captivity engaged in his all-consuming life’s work. It is thrilling for us to witness the great change that conversion has worked in this former Pharisee after our having observed such willful blindness in the Pharisees of the other transformation stories. As Saul’s own eyes have been opened to the truth of the gospel, so is his mission to others “To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins” (v. 18).

The rest of chapter 9 concerns the healing of two saints, Aeneas and Dorcas. Each is told to “Arise,” one from a sickbed, the other from death. In contrast, when Saul is told by the Lord to “Arise,” he is physically well but spiritually sick. However, Saul will be physically impaired by God. He is temporarily afflicted for only a few days, whereas Aeneas has been ill with palsy for eight years and Dorcas is experiencing what

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seems to be a permanent affliction. Nevertheless, each affliction is cured, reinforcing the upward mood of the entire chapter.

The next chapter contains an account of two more visions by which an apostle is brought to a person anticipating his coming. As Ananias communicates healing and the Holy Spirit to Saul, so Peter imparts the good news of Christ and the Holy Spirit to Cornelius and his household. “The double vision of Ananias and Saul reappears in a more developed way in the double vision of Peter and Cornelius. Once again, a representative of the church is sent in the form of Peter, who protests against the task” (Gaventa, 1986, p. 124). Cornelius reacts fearfully to the angel’s appearance, yet he immediately recognizes the vision as from God: “And when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Lord?” (10:4). Peter, on the other hand, reacts with puzzlement to the vision of the sheet: “Peter doubted in himself what this vision which he had seen should mean” (v. 17). This is a different man from the impetuous Peter of Luke’s Gospel. The wiser, more mature apostle “thought on the vision” (v. 19), much as he “considered” the significance of his situation at his rescue a few chapters later (12:12). He comes to an accurate conclusion about the meaning of the vision: “God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean” (v. 28). Th story of Cornelius’s conversion to the kingdom of God is also the story of Peter’s conversion to a wider view of that kingdom.

Cornelius the centurion is a “devout man, and one that feared God with all his house . . . and prayed to God always”; his servants inform Peter that he is “a just man, and one that feareth God, and of good report among all the nation of the Jews” (vv. 2, 22). The reader automatically recalls the centurion of Luke 7, whose faith is greater than that of God’s own chosen people. Jesus “marveled at him,” remarking, “I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel” (v. 9). Edwards (1981) finds it significant that in contrast to Matthew’s report of the centurion’s personal importuning of Christ, “Luke has the centurion deal with Jesus through intermediaries, never in person. This alteration fits the Lukan habit of not permitting any direct contact between Jesus and gentiles, with the result that the gentile mission is reserved for the Book of Acts” (p. 43). Luke, of course, is reporting only part of the incident. Tannehill supports the reason that Edwards gives for the different emphases of the accounts: “This spatial separation heightens the sense of social separation that constitutes the problem with which the story is working. The barrier which excludes Gentiles is only gradually broken down in Luke-Acts” (1986, p. 115). God now reveals to Peter that salvation is intended for Gentiles as well as Jews.

Several other Gentiles in Acts are similarly described as good persons who, because of their devoutness, are instantly receptive to the gospel message. Lydia, for instance, “worshipped God,” and as she listens to Paul, the Lord directly intervenes to open her heart (16:14). Demonstrating her new membership in the family of God, this merchant graciously opens her house to the apostles as her Christian brothers, much as the Philippian jailer in the following verses will invite them into his house. In fact, Lydia’s hospitality is quite insistent: Luke says that “she constrained us” (v. 15). As a result, they obviously feel comfortable in returning to Lydia’s home after their experience in the Philippian jail.

The references to Lydia and her household form a frame around the rest of the episode (cf. 16:14-15, 40) and show an interest in the key role of a patroness of

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the community and hostess for the missionaries in the founding of a church. (Tannehill, 1990, p. 196)

Cornelius, too, invites Peter to be a guest in his home.Another Gentile as evidently devout as Cornelius is Apollos, who has been

“instructed in the way of the Lord” and who is “fervent in the spirit” (18:25). When Aquila and Priscilla supplement his knowledge of “the baptism of John” with the gospel of Christ, Apollos welcomes the information. “Apollos is not being set down as a troublemaker in the church. . . . Knowing only the baptism of John is a deficiency in a man who otherwise has great gifts for the mission and is already putting them to use” (Tannehill, 1990, p. 232). Because of his former diligence in learning and teaching “the things of the Lord,” this “eloquent man” is singularly equipped to aid those “which had believed through grace” (vv. 24-25, 27). Like Paul, who immediately after his conversion “confounded the Jews . . . proving that this is very Christ” (9:22), Apollos “mightily convinced the Jews, and that publickly, shewing by the scriptures that Jesus was Christ” (v. 28).

The Ephesian disciples of John are as diligent as was Apollos in preaching the baptism of John. Luke makes the connection between them clear in the transitional first verse of the next chapter, which he introduces with the phrase “And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth . . .” (19:1). These disciples are ignorant of the existence of the Holy Spirit until Paul tells them the good news of Christ. “When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus” and “the Holy Ghost came on them” (19:5-6). As was true for Apollos, the message of John has prepared these men to accept readily salvation through Christ, even as the religious observance of Cornelius prepares his heart for Peter’s sermon. Luke concludes his account of their conversion with the observation that “all the men were about twelve” (v. 7). His notation of that specific number recalls to the reader’s mind Christ’s twelve disciples in the Gospel. Luke is perhaps making the point that what began as a small group is now multiplied many times over in the rapid growth of the church.

The conversion of Cornelius is a key incident in that expansion. When the devout centurion is favored with this vision, he immediately obeys the angel’s directive and sends to Joppa for Peter. The apostle is staying with Simon a tanner, practicer of an unclean occupation. “Simon” is a Jewish name, but working with animal carcasses would keep one unclean. Luke must have selected this detail for inclusion as indicative of a developing change of attitude preparatory to the vision. Cornelius chooses as messengers two servants and a “devout soldier” (10:7), who will no doubt be a member of Peter’s audience for the sermon later in the chapter. The messengers arrive at Joppa just as Peter is experiencing his vision; and as Peter ponders its meaning, the Spirit informs him that the three men are waiting for him. In a continuation of the “Arise” motif in the two previous conversion stories of the eunuch and Saul—as well as the healings of Aeneas and Dorcas—the Spirit tells Peter: “Arise therefore, and get thee down, and go with them” (v. 20). Like Cornelius, Peter obeys the Lord’s command without question, bringing with him “certain brethren from Joppa” (v. 23) who will serve as witnesses to the Gentile conversion. The sermon Peter delivers at Cornelius’s house is preached to an eager congregation. Cornelius announces to Peter: “Now therefore are we all here present before God, to hear all things that are commanded thee of God’ (v.

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33). The sermon results in the salvation of the listeners, whose conversion confirms to the Christian leaders at Jerusalem that God has “also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life” (11:18). Luke artfully displays this entire chain reaction which was initiated and directed by God.

Peter is at first shocked when God urges him to eat animals that he has always religiously considered unclean. Luke tells us that he receives the vision “about the sixth hour”—noontime—when “he became very hungry” (vv. 9-10). So when the vessel appears with an array of food, Peter treats God’s command to eat almost as a temptation to disobedience. In fact, Peter is so devoted to the ceremonial observance of Jewish dietary laws that he actually does initially disobey God in his horrified protest, “Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean” (v. 14). Ironically, he replicates the sin of the Pharisees in elevating the law over God’s expressed intentions, but he does so in a different spirit from that of the Pharisees and, unlike them, he responds immediately to the Lord’s correction. God emphasizes His will in the threefold repetition of the pronouncement “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common” (v. 15). The repetition is necessary to jolt Peter out of his exclusionist mindset. More importantly, because it removes the obstacle of Gentile uncleanness, “it opens the possibility of Jewish Christians conducting a mission among Gentiles” (Tannehill, 1990, p. 136). It also ensures Peter’s acceptance of Cornelius’s invitation and quiets any reader apprehension that may have been aroused by this Gentile’s having asked Peter into his house. Indeed, Peter affirms to Cornelius that as a direct result of the vision, he has come “unto you without gainsaying, as soon as I was sent for” (v. 29).

Cornelius receives him graciously. In gratitude at Peter’s appearance, he “fell down at his feet, and worshipped him” (v. 25). Peter, with typically apostolic humility, lifts “him up, saying, Stand up; I myself also am a man” (v. 26). Cornelius may very well view Peter as a divine messenger, but Peter lets him know that he is only a human messenger divinely sent. He immediately preaches Christ, and the entire household undergoes a glorious transformation from merely “devout” to redeemed.

These three conversions of the eunuch, Saul, and Cornelius exhibit a pattern for evangelism that is replicated in the missionary enterprise throughout Acts.

The narrator is depicting a period of important new developments in the mission and does so by presenting an unexpected person, resulting in a conversion. In each case there is strong emphasis on divine direction through an angel, the Spirit, or the Lord. As a result the church is led to include two foreigners (the Ethiopian and the Roman centurion) and its bitter enemy Saul. (Tannehill, 1990, pp. 113-114)

The conversions thrill us each time we read them, reminding us of God’s providence that backs our human efforts toward evangelism. As we preach and teach Christ’s gospel, we remember that it is ultimately the Holy Spirit who prepares, convicts, and sanctifies those who stand in need of its transforming power.

The book of Acts begins in Jerusalem and ends in Rome. The geographical and spiritual spreading of the gospel throughout the world from Jew to Gentile has been accomplished. The Gospel of Luke ends with an air of joyful completion: the disciples

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“returned to Jerusalem with great joy: And were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God” (24:53). They are filled with the glorious excitement of the accomplishment of redemption through the Resurrection. Acts, on the other hand, ends on a note of equally joyful anticipation: Paul, now a prisoner, “received all that came in unto him, Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him” (28:31). It also breaks off abruptly—a feature that may not be without significance. Throughout the book, the disciples have been engaged in the strenuous work of spreading the news of redemption, and Luke implies that this mission will have to continue until the Lord returns and as long as there are lost people to be converted. In a very real sense, Luke’s book has no ending. Inspired by the wk of the apostles, we continue their evangelistic mission undeterred by human frailty and satanic opposition.

The apostle Paul discovers that despite his best efforts, “some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not” (28:24). Nevertheless, near the end of his ministry he preaches the truth with as much fervor as he does immediately after his conversion. He realizes, as do we, that in the end spiritual conversion results from a personal encounter between Christ and the individual. The mighty transformation of conversion is too powerful and personal a change for anyone else to effect. As Luke shows us throughout his Gospel and Acts, the change in those converted is immediately evident. As God assures throughout His Word, the transformation is eternally permanent.

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APPENDIX

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Although this paper is intended for the general reader, it is meant also as an encouragement to teachers and their students to re-evaluate their use of the Bible in the study of literature. The classroom teaching of literature is in reality the teaching of close reading: students are guided in the process of recognizing various stylistic devices and in the process of recognizing various stylistic devices and interpreting themes. If the world’s great literature deserves this careful attention, then how much more Scripture merits detailed examination and analysis of its richness.

Teachers can incorporate Scripture passages into literature lessons in a variety of ways. They may choose to illustrate figures of speech and sound with appropriate examples from biblical poetry, heightening their students’ awareness of the beauties of the Psalms. The teacher may introduce a discussion of characterization in a story by referring to round and flat characters in biblical narratives and asking the students not only to list qualities of each but also to explain why each is necessary to a particular type of story. The importance of dramatic suspense to the design of a Shakespearean tragedy can be brought home powerfully to a student through comparison to the high drama produced by the patterned structure of Old Testament narratives such as those of Samson and David.

Students who cannot discern or appreciate the usefulness of what they are traditionally exposed to in their English classes can be inspired toward more enthusiastic performance by having pointed out to them concretely the applicability of what they are learning to their reading of God’s Word. The Christian teacher will experience satisfaction in having brought his students one step nearer the goal of interrelating all knowledge and integrating God’s Word more fully into every facet of their education.

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