Category Archives: Reading Notes

The Theology of the Gospel of Luke

In preparation for a series in Luke’s gospel this summer, I’ve been working several introductory works. I enjoyed Joel Green’s chapter in Reading Luke, and so I purchased a copy of his The Theology of the Gospel of Luke. Though his work is theologically weak at times, it’s a goldmine of intertextual insight, especially regarding Luke’s use of the Old Testament and the literary connections between Luke and Acts. Here’s a selection from early in the book.

“Luke’s Gospel draws on other texts, for Luke especially those of the Greek version of what we have come to call the Old Testament. By this form of intertextuality, he locates his narrative in those texts so as to allow the significance of the ‘old story’ to shed light on the present one, just as the story of Jesus, then, is allowed to interpret the story of Israel.

“What theological agenda might be served by the use of the Scriptures in this way? First, it is transparent that the rich interplay of scriptural texts within the story of Jesus roots that story in the authoritative story of Israel. … Second, this intertextuality reveals the oneness of God’s aim…. Third, the possibility of parody is introduced. … This is of major importance for Luke because of his belief that what is happening in and through Jesus is not only the unfolding but indeed the fulfillment of God’s design, witnessed in the Scriptures” (25-26).

Green consistently describes all of this as calling forth a decision, a response of faith on the part of the one hearing the good news of God’s purposes fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah. The genre of Luke’s gospel is proclamation, kerygma, the announcement of the fulfillment of the story of Israel for the sake of the whole world.

“Finally, Luke’s unrelenting emphasis on the purpose of God is presented as an invitation. People within the narrative may embrace or reject the divine aim. Luke’s readers receive he same invitation” (48-49).

Reason thus with life

Partly at the suggestion of T. David Gordon, I have taken up the project of reading through Harold Bloom’s wonderful The Best Poems of the English Language: from Chaucer through Robert Frost. Gordon argues brilliantly that, in order to be able to write, it is first of all necessary to be able to read, and to do be able to read something as a text — that is, not merely for its content, but for its literary form and beauty. C. S. Lewis describes beautifully what this entails in a quote posted earlier. One of the best ways to continue to grow in this ability is to maintain a steady diet of poetry. I have admired in this regard the consistency of James K. A. Smith, for example, and am now endeavoring to do something similar. Once I complete this volume, I hope to join my wife in reading Poetry magazine.

My intention through this project is to post favorite selections here as I come across them. We begin with a selection from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (Bloom, p. 122).

Be absolute for death; either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
Servile to all the skyey influences,
That dost this habitation, where thou keep’st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death’s fool;
For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun
And yet runn’st toward him still.

The Age-old Promised Thing

“The story [of the Gospel of Luke] is thus one of movement and fulfillment; movement and mission; God and his promises to Abraham; God and Abraham’s seed; God and his covenant with David; God and recalcitrant Israel; God and renewed Israel; God and the nations he said he would bless: for God himself is on the move (keeping promises, answering prayer, filling a people, working  miracles, stretching out his hand, setting prisoners free, spreading his people abroad, and overseeing their participation in his redemptive mission). God is doing something new in the world – first through his Spirit-empowered servant Jesus (3:22; 4:1, 14, 18-19) and then (and now) through the Spirit-filled followers of Jesus (11:11-13; 24:48-49; Acts 1:4-8; 2:1-21). But this new thing is the age-old promised thing, the thing for which faithful Israel had for so long been waiting. The story of national Israel has reached its divinely intended climax – it is time for Yahweh’s renewed temple-people to be a house of prayer made up of all nations.” (Craig G. Bartholomew and Robby Holt, ”Prayer in/and the Drama of Redemption in Luke” in Reading Luke: Interpretation, Reflection, Formation, Bartholomew, et. al. eds., p. 360)

Think of the Bridge!

As part of an exhortation to preach Christ in a non-introspective way, T. David Gordon offers the following wonderful quote in his Why Johnny Can’t Preach (pp. 76-77). The Southern Presbyterian theologian Robert Lewis Dabney knew that his death was drawing near and wrote to his old friend Vaughan, expressing his doubts about the strength of his faith in the face of death. Vaughan responded to Dabney with the illustration of a traveler who was to cross a bridge over a chasm:

“What does he do to breed confidence in the bridge? He looks at the bridge; he gets down and examines it. He don’t [sic] stand at the bridge-head and turn his thoughts curiously in on his own mind to see if he has confidence in the bridge. If his examination of the bridge gives him a certain amount of confidence, and yet he wants more, how does he make his faith grow? Why, in the same way; he still continues to examine the bridge. Now, my dear old man, let your faith take care of itself for awhile, and you just think of what you are allowed to trust in. Think of the Master’s power, think of his love; think how he is interested in the soul that searches for him, and will not be comforted until he finds him. Think of what he has done, his work. That blood of his is mightier than all the sins of all the sinners that ever lived. Don’t you think it will master yours?…

“Now, dear old friend, I have done to you just what I would want you to do to me if I were lying in your place. The great theologian, after all, is just like any other one of God’s children, and the simple gospel talked to him is just as essential to his comfort as it is to a milk-maid or to a plow-boy. May God give you grace, not to lay too much stress on your faith, but to grasp the great ground of confidence, Christ, and all his work and all his personal fitness to be a sinner’s refuge. Faith is only an eye to see him. I have been praying that God would quiet your pains as you advance, and enable you to see the gladness of the gospel at every step. Good-bye. God be with you as he will. Think of the bridge! Your brother, C. R. V.”

What They Were Not Before

‘Speaking of the difference between those who “receive” literature versus those who merely “use” it, C. S. Lewis said, “The first reading of some literary work is often, to the literary, so momentous that only experiences of love, religion, or bereavement can furnish a standard of comparison. Their whole consciousness is changed. They have become what they were not before. But there is no sign of anything like this among the other sort of readers. When they have finished the story or the novel, nothing much, or nothing at all, seems to have happened to them.”‘ Experiment in Criticism, p. 3, cited in T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can’t Preach, p. 50.

A Stretched People

“We are a stretched people, citizens of a kingdom that is both older and newer than anything offered by ‘the contemporary.’ The practices of Christian worship over the liturgical year form in us something of an ‘old soul’ that is perpetually pointed to a future, longing for a coming kingdom, and seeking to be such a stretched people in the present who are a foretaste of the coming kingdom” (James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 159).

A Sign to the Coming Kingdom

“‘God’s reign arrives wherever Jesus overcomes the power of evil.’ Thus Jesus erects signs of healing and salvation that point to the presence of the kingdom. Again we see the missionary thrust of Jesus’ ministry. His ministry inspires us to prolong the logic of his mission. Since God’s reign has already come, it will come. God’s reign is both gift and promise, celebration and anticipation. The church’s mission is to live in the tension of the already-but-not-yet so that ‘something of the “not yet” may take shape in the here and now.’ Thus the church, like Jesus, erects signs of God’s reign; it commits itself to attack evil in its manifestations and ‘to initiate, here and now, approximations and anticipations of God’s reign,’ especially in the life of the church. The church’s communal life itself will be a sign to the coming kingdom, a people in whom something of the ‘not yet’ is in evidence. As sign the church will embody new relationships that point to the love and justice of the kingdom. As such it will be a ‘radically revolutionary movement’ providing an attractive alternative.” Michael Goheen, “A Critical Examination of David Bosch’s Missional Reading of Luke,” in Reading Luke: Interpretation, Reflection, Formation, p. 238.

The Righteousness of God in Daniel 9

Sinclair Ferguson, commenting on Daniel 9 in his commentary on Daniel, pp. 177-178:

‘Daniel’s praying was of the same order [as that of Elijah, cited by James] as his appeal to the “righteousness” of God eloquently testifies (vv. 7, 16). The Old Testament term “righteousness” has a specifically covenantal orientation. The young Martin Luther could not see this when he struggled to understand what Paul meant by “the righteousness of God” (Rom. 1:17). Of course, Luther was not helped by the fact that his Latin Bible translated Paul’s Greek word dikaiosune (righteousness) as justitia (justice). Luther’s mistake has sometimes been repeated by evangelical Christians. Often righteousness has been thought of merely as the equivalent of the just punishment of God. Preachers therefore may often accompany the use of the phrase “the righteousness of God” with the gesticulation of a clenched fist. It is clear even from this passage, however, that this is to reduce the full biblical meaning of God’s righteousness. Daniel sees the righteousness of God both as the basis for God’s judgment of the people (v. 7) and also as the basis for his own prayer for forgiveness (v. 16). How can this be? In Scripture, “righteousness” basically means “integrity.” Sometimes it is defined as “conformity to a norm.” In the case of God, the norm to which he conforms is his own being and character. He is true to himself; he always acts in character.

‘God has expressed the norm of his relationship to his people by means of a covenant. He will always be true and faithful to his covenant and the promises enshrined in it. Plainly, God’s righteousness is his faithfulness to his covenant relationship.

‘Daniel underlines God’s faithfulness to his covenantal promise to punish the covenant-breaking of his people: “O Lord, righteousness belongs to you, but to us shame of face… Yes, all Israel has transgressed your law, and has departed [from the covenant] so as not to obey your voice; therefore the curse and the oath written in the Law of Moses… has been poured out on us because we have sinned against him… Therefore the Lord has kept the disaster in mind, and brought it upon us; for the Lord our God is righteous in all the works which he does, though we have not obeyed his voice” (vv. 7-14). In contrast, the same righteousness of God is made the ground for Daniel’s appeal for mercy because he knows that God has promised to receive his penitent people and to restore them to fellowship with himself. His covenant righteousness holds out the hope of forgiveness, and Daniel clings to this with his whole heart: “O Lord, according to all your righteousness… let your anger and your fury be turned away… because of our sins… your people are a reproach to all those around us” (v. 16).’

Return From Exile

“Hosea 11:10-11 promises, then, that the Lord will restore his people from exile. … Matthew believed that the return from exile promised in Hosea ultimately became a reality with the true son of Israel, Jesus Christ. In calling Jesus out of Egypt – in replicating the history of Israel – we see that Jesus is the true Israel, the true son of the promise, the fulfillment of God’s saving purposes” (Thomas Schreiner, New Testament Theology, 74-75).

Overlap of the Ages

“His miracles and exorcisms indicate the dawning of a new creation, and yet Jesus also taught that there is an age to come when God will judge the wicked and vindicate the righteous. Jewish thought regularly distinguished between “this age” and “the age to come.” It seems that Jesus taught the overlap of the ages, for in his ministry the age to come penetrated the present evil age, and yet the coming age had not yet been consummated” (Schreiner, New Testament Theology, 26).