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A distinguished group of scholars here provides a comprehensive survey of the theology of the early church as it is presented by the author of Acts. The twenty-five articles show the current state of scholarship and the main themes of theology in Acts.
Back cover: Kai Akagi considers what the speeches in Acts 10 and 17 say about Jesus when they speak of him as a judge. This historical and literary study reveals that Jesus' role as a judge both suggests that he judges with divine authority and expresses his identity as Jewish messiah.
Thought-provoking alternative perspective on the full humanity of Jesus Christ In A Man Attested by God J. R. Daniel Kirk presents a comprehensive defense of the thesis that the Synoptic Gospels present Jesus not as divine but as an idealized human figure. Counterbalancing the recent trend toward early high Christology in such scholars as Richard Bauckham, Simon Gathercole, and Richard Hays, Kirk here thoroughly unpacks the humanity of Jesus as understood by Gospel writers whose language is rooted in the religious and literary context of early Judaism. Without dismissing divine Christologies out of hand, Kirk argues that idealized human Christology is the best way to read the Synoptic Gospels, and he explores Jesus as exorcist and miracle worker within the framework of his humanity. With wide-ranging exegetical and theological insight that sheds startling new light on familiar Gospel texts, A Man Attested by God offers up-to-date, provocative scholarship that will have to be reckoned with.
In The Embodied God, Wilson focuses on depictions of God's body in the New Testament. She argues that Luke-Acts emerges as an important example of a New Testament text that portrays God as visible and corporeal and that this portrayal has significant implications for how we are to understand early Christology.
The baptism with the Spirit and fire has been a major area of study by theologians and has been pursued by the historical church seeking God’s holiness and power; yet its relationship to judgment has often been ignored. This book explores the Holy Spirit’s relationship with judgment in Luke-Acts through seven texts: Luke 3:16–17; 12:8–10; Acts 5:1–11; 7:51; 8:18–23; 13:9–11; 28:25–28. In these texts, the Holy Spirit is connected with fire, unforgiveness, deception, resistance, greed, blindness, or condemnation. In each instance, Luke’s presentation is examined to determine the Spirit’s role in the process of judgment. Through the Spirit, Jesus judges, cleanses, purges, and divides his people from the world. Luke portrays the Spirit as the executive power of Jesus’ reign as judge, exposing, opposing, and condemning those who reject the gospel.
Despite the striking frequency with which the Greek word kyrios, Lord, occurs in Luke's Gospel, this study is the first comprehensive analysis of Luke's use of this word. The analysis follows the use of kyrios in the Gospel from beginning to end in order to trace narratively the complex and deliberate development of Jesus' identity as Lord. Detailed attention to Luke's narrative artistry and his use of Mark demonstrates that Luke has a nuanced and sophisticated christology centered on Jesus' identity as Lord.
Adoptionism--the idea that Jesus is portrayed in the Bible as a human figure who was adopted as God's son at his baptism or resurrection--has been commonly accepted in much recent scholarship as the earliest explanation of Jesus's divine status. In this book Michael Bird draws that view into question with a thorough examination of pre-Pauline materials, the Gospel of Mark, and patristic sources. Engaging critically with Bart Ehrman, James Dunn, and other scholars, Bird demonstrates that a full-fledged adoptionist Christology did not emerge until the late second century. As he delves into passages often used to support the idea of an early adoptionist Christology, including Romans 1:3-4 and portions of the speeches in Acts, Bird persuasively argues that early Christology was in fact incarnational, not adoptionist. He concludes by surveying and critiquing notable examples of adoptionism in modern theology.
What if we have been missing a whole stage of how the canonical gospels came to be? What if there were a whole raft of prior Jesus narratives, whether written or oral, the fragmentary vestiges of which now appear in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? This would explain why these gospels seem over-crowded with incompatible understandings of Jesus ("Christologies")? In The Gospels Behind the Gospels, innovative biblical scholar Robert M. Price attempts to reassemble the puzzle pieces, disclosing several earlier gospels of communities who imagined Jesus as the predicted return of the prophet Elijah, the Samaritan Taheb (a second Moses), a resurrected John the Baptist, a theophany of Yahweh, a Gnost...
Luke has often been understood to transmit a variety of Christological traditions without reflecting on them in relation to each other. In this study, Daniel Gustafsson challenges such positions and demonstrates that when the Gospel of Luke is approached as a narrative, a different picture emerges. Presentations of Jesus as "Messiah", "Son of God", "prophet", and "Son of Man" are shown to conform to Luke's overall plot and significantly overlap each other. The voices of characters with high authority, the use of Scripture, and Jesus's relationship to the Holy Spirit are examples of other factors that contribute to coherency in Luke's Christology.
The Gospel according to John presents Jesus in a unique way as compared with other New Testament writings. Scholars have long puzzled and pondered over why this should be. In this book, James McGrath offers a convincing explanation of how and why the author of the Fourth Gospel arrived at a christological portrait of Jesus that is so different from that of other New Testament authors, and yet at the same time clearly has its roots in earlier tradition. McGrath suggests that as the author of this Gospel sought to defend his beliefs about Jesus against the objections brought by opponents, he developed and drew out further implications from the beliefs he inherited. The book studies this process using insights from the field of sociology which helps to bring methodological clarity to the important issue of the development of Johannine Christology.