CHAPTER NINE
HISTORICAL RELIABILITY
At the beginning of this study of Acts a short summary was given of the mam views on the reliability of Luke's account, it is now time to draw together the various strands of evidence which have been studied and, while being aware that only select passages have been considered and not the whole of Acts, to propose some tentative conclusions on the broad and complex question. In the section on Luke's Gospel it was concluded that while Luke had mistakenly placed the command for a Gentile mission on the lips of Jesus in the immediate post-Resurrection period, he did not anachronistically place the origins of this mission within the ministry of Jesus. While Jesus prophesied the future inclusion of the Gentiles in the Kingdom of God and responded positively on the rare occasions he met a Gentile, he does not begin the Gentile mission himself In view of Luke's interest in the Gentiles, it might have been tempting for him to make Jesus into the first Gentile missionary, but instead he follows in all essentials the pattern laid down in Mark's Gospel. With his knowledge both of Mark and of the fact that the Gentile mission had taken place, it would have been virtually impossible for Luke to probe behind the Gospel traditions and discover that Jesus did not authorize a historical Gentile mission.
This leads us immediately to the narrative in Acts 10-11 as we have already implied, Luke has magnified and schematized the account of Cornelius' conversion what was originally a simple, straight forward legend about the conversion of a godly Gentile, has been transformed into a type or pattern for all Gentile converts Cornelius is singled out as the test-case around which all the problems of Gentile converts are settled once and for all. That Luke has magnified it out of all proportion is clear from the fact that a few years later a council convenes in Jerusalem to settle these problems once again, when ostensibly they had already decided. Certainly, it has a historical core, but this core has been embellished, probably both in pre-Lukan tradition and by Luke himself.
Much the same can be said about Luke's account of the Apostolic council The outline of the narrative accords with what we find in Galatians, but at several points Luke betrays the presuppositions of a later age The conflict and it is the Apostles Peter and James who, rather idealistically, are the chief defenders of the right of the Gentile mission. Paul’s apostles are in tandem over the question of the Gentiles Luke has also misplaced the Apostolic decree, and he assumes wrongly that Paul assented to it. Clearly, Luke is not aware of the depth or the extent of the conflict over the Law m Paul's teaching. It might appear that the extent of the harmonizing and idealizing process in Acts 15 is so great that it betrays more than a simple misunderstanding, namely a deliberate distortion of the facts. If this is so, then we cannot impute the whole of this process to Luke, for he rarely, if ever, gives the impression that he distorts facts which he knew to be true, rather, it is the facts which were available to him and his own understanding of them which are deficient. In the tradition which Luke uses in Acts 15j it is possible that at one or more stages the account was deliberately recast. Or it may be that Luke or his tradition were unwittingly influenced by traditions which stemmed from Paul's opponents. In either case, being both ignorant of Paul’s epistles and influenced by the ideal picture of Paul in Christian tradition, and living at a time when the heated disputes of the Apostolic era had faded in importance, it was almost inevitable that Luke would accept the tradition as he found it. Even if he was not the man to perpetrate deliberate falsehoods, neither was he exactly looking for evidence of disharmony in the primitive Church.
In his account of Paul's preaching to the Gentiles, Luke goes a little more astray (Acts14, 7) He is correct in supposing that Paul did use arguments from Nature and more general philosophy a l notions, but the use Paul makes of these arguments and the conclusions he draws from them are very different in Acts and Romans In Acts 17, Gentile religiosity is assessed positively and independently of any overall theological framework, it is seen as the first stage on the way to salvation In Romans, it is used negatively and is integrated in to Paul's total theological complex, it is seen as the basis of the Gentiles' condemnation Luke seems to have allowed his picture of Paul's preaching to be influenced by the sort of Gentile missionary sermon common in his own day.
To conclude Luke is neither totally reliable nor is he a wholly tendentious writer. He intends to write good history even if he is not successful. When he fails it is due to a variety of motives and not simply because he uses history to speak to his own generation. Luke has undoubtedly made clear his own interpretation of events, but he has also left sufficient number of lacunae and loose ends for us to be able to construct our own interpretation and this says a lot for his basic honesty. While it would be naive to accept uncritically everything Luke says, it remains true that for the careful and critical reader Acts contains an immense amount that is of great historical value.
We have already had cause to notice the link in synoptic eschatology between the Parousia and the kingdom of God. In terms of the thesis we have been examining, the association of these two concepts (as in II Tim 4 1) is now seen to be natural as well as inevitable for NT theology. The concept is not static, the kingdom of God, his sovereign rule, is concluded of various points from the incarnation onwards; still that prayer, "Thy kingdom come," is always relevant. In the same way, the Parousia of God in Christ took place plainly and fully at Bethlehem and during the earthly ministry of Jesus; yet he is still to appear in glory at time’s end. At the same time the confusion persists, impacting its moral demands as much in the realm of mission as ethics, and both truths cohere - that “Our Lord comes in, even as we wait for him.” We have already had cause to notice the link in synoptic eschatology between the Parousia and the kingdom of God. In terms of the thesis we have been examining, the association of these two concepts (as in II Tim 4 1) is now seen to be natural as well as inevitable for NT theology. The concept is not static, the kingdom of God, his sovereign rule, is concluded of various points from the incarnation onwards; still that prayer, "Thy kingdom come," is always relevant. In the same way, the Parousia of God in Christ took place plainly and fully at Bethlehem and during the earthly ministry of Jesus; yet he is still to appear in glory at time’s end. At the same time the confusion persists, impacting its moral demands as much in the realm of mission as ethics, and both truths cohere - that “Our Lord comes in, even as we wait for him.”
In view of the ground we have covered, is it too much to suppose that we do not witness in Paul's letters the fabrication of a vast "eschatological reconstruction," and we look at him for effect of God's saving action in Christ on both history and history's relation to eternity, at present articulated in the church, the body of Christ; and as we do so, that we perceive a shift of emphasis, but no generically different perspectives.