Adoption Into The Canon
ADOPTION INTO THE CANON
We often cannot tell when one of the Fathers is quoting from Luke. Certainly Luke made use of oral tradition, and he used sources; but neither of these disappeared when he wrote his gospel. Luke explicitly says that many had written before him (Luke 1:1), and some of what he did not use may have contained material similar to that which he took up. Thus when an early Christian writes words that we find in the third gospel, we cannot always be sure that he is quoting Luke. He may have taken the words from the oral tradition that meant so much to many early believers; he may have taken them from a source that Luke used; he may have taken them from an early Christian writing that has perished. We must also allow for the fact that first-century memories were not infallible. While people developed their capacity to memorize rather more than we do and thus were able to quote longer passages with exactitude, they also seem often to have given the sense without trying to give the exact words. This means that a passage that merely resembles a part of Luke may yet come from that gospel. It is not easy to be sure in every case whether we are dealing with a quotation from Luke or not.
This kind of uncertainty confronts us as we face a number of passages in Clement of Rome (1 Clem. 13:2; 48:4), Polycarp (Phil. 2:3), and Ignatius (Magn. 10). These resemble Luke, but we cannot be sure that they are quotations from this source. We can be more certain that the Didache and the Gospel of Peter used Luke, the former being of uncertain date but quite early, and the latter possibly the middle of the second century. 28 Justin Martyr certainly used Luke (or a harmony based on it), and 2 Clement seems to have done the same. Marcion, of course, had an expurgated Luke as the one gospel in his canon. Some have argued that it was not our Luke that Marcion used, but an earlier source that both he and Luke employed, but evidence for this is lacking, and there seems no real doubt that it was the third gospel that formed the basis of Marcion’s work. In any case, from this time onward there is no real doubt: Luke is universally accepted in the church as authoritative and part of the canon of sacred books.
LUKE IN RECENT STUDY
Traditionally Luke has been seen as a historian, perhaps the greatest historian of the early church, and discussion has centered on just how good a historian he was. Comparisons have been made between his gospel and the others and between what he says in Acts and what may be gleaned from the Pauline Epistles and from our information about the first-century Roman Empire. There is still, of course, something to be done along these lines, for there is indeed a good deal of history in Luke’s two volumes. But the tendency in recent discussions has been to see Luke as a theologian.
It is recognized that he was not primarily concerned with history: his main concern was with what God had done in Christ. So Luke is now seen as one of the three great theologians of the early church. He may be thought of as not reaching the intellectual and spiritual stature of Paul and of John; like them, however, he produced writings that show something of the way God was active in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus and again in the life of the early church.
Hans Conzelmann set the agenda for a good deal of recent discussion by his treatment of Luke’s understanding of history and of salvation. He put a good deal of emphasis on a difficult text, Luke 16:16, which he regards as "the key to the topography of redemptive history.”29 Conzelmann argues that we should see three stages in what he calls the story of salvation.
1. The period of Israel (16:16).
2. The period of Jesus’ ministry (not of his "life”); see Luke 4:16ff.; Acts 10:38.
3. The period since the ascension, a period in which the church by looking back to the period of Jesus also looks forward to the parousia. 30
This outline highlights the ministry of Jesus and sees it as absolutely central to the working out of salvation. The German title of his book, Die Mitte der Zeit (The Middle of Time), well captures his argument. Such an emphasis is surely unexceptionable, and Conzelmann’s emphasis on the meaningfulness of history as Luke saw it is surely to be welcomed. Not so acceptable, however, is his treatment of Luke’s geographic references. He refuses to take them seriously as geography, for he doubts whether Luke knew Palestine. Rather, they are essentially symbolic, merely a function of Lukan theology. Thus the Jordan is simply "the region of the Baptist, the region of the old era.” 31 The desert in which Jesus’ temptations took place symbolizes the separation between the Jordan and Galilee; it is "pointless to attempt to locate it.” 32 This approach to geography is so important to Conzelmann that he devotes to it the first of the five parts into which his book is divided. But it is difficult to take seriously the idea that Luke did not mean his geography to be accurate, as is clear from his use of geographic references throughout Acts. 33
Conzelmann sees Luke as profoundly affected by the delay of the parousia. Whereas previously the imminence of the End was what mattered, Luke sees it as far away. Therefore instead of thinking of a short period of awaiting the parousia, he has more in mind the "Christian life” and gives attention, for example, to the importance of endurance (υπομονή, [hypomone, G5705]). 34 Where the first Christians had their eyes firmly fixed on the future with their emphasis on Jesus’ imminent return, Luke preferred to think of an ongoing historical process. 35 He saw the life of Jesus as a historical event of the past and as the anchor or the foundation of the continuing life of the church. With the End so far in the distance, Luke introduces a more reflective attitude.
All this is difficult to reconcile with some of the sayings Luke records, for example, the nearness of judgment in the teaching of John the Baptist (Luke 3:9, 17) and the nearness of the kingdom in the teaching of Jesus (10:9, 11), not to mention his promise of speedy judgment (18:7-8). So also Jesus said, "This generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened” (21:32; there are problems in interpreting this verse, but it is as clear in teaching an imminent parousia as any other saying in the Gospels). With this we should take into consideration Luke’s deep interest in eschatology. As we shall see a little later, there is no real reason for thinking of Luke as essentially different from other New Testament writers in his attitude to eschatology. Conzelmann has done us a service in drawing attention to many features of Luke’s writing, but it can scarcely be denied that he has overplayed his hand.
The great interest of many recent writers on Luke-Acts stems from their conviction that Luke is one of the foremost exponents of FrOhkatholizismus, or "early Catholicism.” This is not always defined, and there is no agreement as to exactly what the term connotes. But most who write about it think of the first Christians as caught up in the enthusiasm that ensued on being saved through faith in Jesus. They lived in a charismatic freedom that gave no thought to the trammels of institutionalism. In particular, they lived in the daily expectation of the return of Christ. As E. Kasemann puts it, "You do not write the history of the Church, if you are expecting the end of the world to come any day.” 36 It was the proclamation of the kerygma and the awaiting of the parousia that preoccupied the first Christians. Only when time went by without the return of the Lord did believers begin to give serious attention to institutional Christianity. Luke says that Jesus taught a certain parable because "the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once” (19:11), and this is held to support the view that this evangelist had no thought of an imminent parousia. Luke, then, is seen as a man who has lost the keen expectation that Christ would soon return. His main interest is in establishing the life of the church as an institution.
For all its popularity in some circles, this viewpoint is far from having been established. That the early church lived in the daily expectation of the parousia has been pressed too far. Too much reliance has been put on confident interpretations of passages such as "we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:15). These words are taken to mean that Paul held that he would still be alive when the Lord returned. But the words do not necessarily mean this. Greek scholar J.
B. Lightfoot gave the meaning as "When I say ‘we,’ I mean those who are living, those who survive to that day.” 37 And people who insist that Paul expected the parousia during his lifetime take little notice of passages in which he says that he will be dead— for example, "God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also” (1 Cor.
6:14). Paul tends to class himself with the people of whom he is writing (see Rom. 6:1; 13:12; 1 Cor. 10.22); we should therefore not press 1 Thessalonians 4:15 beyond what is legitimate. Moreover, Paul’s interest in the institution is seen in his directions for disciplining an offender (1 Cor. 5:1-5), and in his references to the ministry (2 Cor. 11:28; Phil. 1:1; 1 Thess. 5:12-13; etc.).
To this we should add that Luke’s interest in eschatology should not be minimized. In addition to teaching he shares with the other synoptists, he has references to the coming of the kingdom in Jesus’ ministry that the other evangelists do not record (10:11). He alone records these words of Jesus: "Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet” (12:35-36). In the great eschatological discourse he makes a clearer distinction than either Matthew or Mark between what applies to the fall of Jerusalem and what refers to the parousia. 38 Charles E. Talbert sees Luke as making a distinctive contribution to the church’s understanding of eschatology. He holds that some in the early church thought that the parousia had already taken place, perhaps by seeing it as identical with Jesus’ being "received up,” perhaps by seeing it as identical with the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost. He thinks that Luke, in common with other early Christians, proclaims that the End is near, but that he also attempts "to prevent a misinterpretation of the Jesus-tradition by someone in the Lucan sphere of influence to the effect that the eschaton had been and could be fully experienced in the present.” 39 That such a position can be taken up shows clearly that it is erroneous to say that Luke has no interest in eschatology. He may express himself differently, and he may put emphasis on different aspects, 40 but it simply ignores the facts to say that he has no interest in eschatology.
We should also bear in mind that Luke says little about the ordained ministry or about the sacraments, two topics that have always been central in the "catholic” tradition. In Acts he mentions elders but says nothing about ordination and gives no certain example of the Holy Communion. In his gospel, he tells us of its institution, but in Acts all the occurrences of "the breaking of bread” could be understood as referring to ordinary meals. We would not contend that all must be taken that way; the sacraments are very important to a "catholic,” however, and it is unthinkable that the identification of sacramental observances would be left to chance. A "catholicism” without an ordained ministry and regular sacraments would be very strange indeed.
This is all the more important in view of Luke’s emphasis on the Word. In part we see this in the strong note of promise and fulfillment that runs through his writing. He is speaking about God’s Chosen One in language reminiscent of the Old Testament (Luke 1:32-35, 68-75). From the beginning, Scripture may be quoted of him (2:23) and seen to be fulfilled in his forerunner (3:4-6). A further fulfillment in John the Baptist really points to the divine plan in Jesus (7:27); Jesus is the One who fulfills the messianic hope of the Scriptures (4:16ff.). Indeed, in him "everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled” (18:31; cf. 20:17; 22:37). Furthermore, every such thing "must be fulfilled” (24:44, 46). 41 This teaching must be taken together with Luke’s emphasis on the Spirit; he is not writing of a rigid pattern that must be fulfilled with a wooden literalism, but of one with the freedom of God’s Holy Spirit. The fulfillment of what is written sometimes takes place in ways that people would never have expected.42
Luke begins his gospel by informing the reader that he is writing "so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught” (1:4). Just as the Word of God in the ancient Scripture is important, so also the authentic tradition about Jesus is important. Luke is writing to Theophilus so that he will be in no doubt about what that tradition is. As Childs points out, "The great events transpired in history, indeed in a series of acts which now lie in the historical past. Yet these events are not moored in past history but continue to be fulfilled time ‘for us.’” 43
These days there is a good deal of discussion about Luke’s placing of Acts after his gospel (in distinction from the practice of the other three evangelists), but we should not overlook the importance of the fact that he prefixed his gospel to Acts. The early church is inexplicable without authentic knowledge of who Jesus was and what he did. The speeches in Acts are surely meant, in part at least, to place on record what the apostolic preaching was. With this before them, local church officials would not be able to manufacture teachings and claim them to be authentically Christian. It may well be that the appointment of elders (Acts 14:23 etc.) was meant in part at least to secure adherence to the apostolic tradition. 44 C. K. Barrett comments, "Luke’s stress on the proclamation of the Word...shows that the Word itself was the decisive factor,” and that the church is an agency of salvation "only in so far as it provides the framework within which the preaching of the Word takes place.” 45 We should not miss this emphasis. Talbert goes so far as to suggest that Luke might well be thought of as "proto-Protestant” rather than "early Catholic.” 46