Acts (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible)

Jaroslav Pelikan

Description

In this volume, an internationally renowned historian of Christian doctrine offers a theological reading of Acts. Now in paper."[A] significant commentary. . . . Pelikan asks big questions: what is sin? what were the earliest creeds? what is the nature of apostleship? He is sensitive to nuances of Greek but not obsessed by them. As such, this book will be helpful to preachers and, to a lesser extent, general readers who are sometimes flummoxed by more specialized and technical biblical commentaries."--Publishers WeeklyNew series volumes will continue to release in cloth, but as older volumes reprint, they will release in paper.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441201799
• Langue: English

Extrait

ACTS
Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible
Series Editors
R. R. Reno, General Editor Creighton University Omaha, Nebraska
Robert W. Jenson Center of Theological Inquiry Princeton, New Jersey
Robert Louis Wilken University of Virginia Charlottesville, Virginia
Ephraim Radner Ascension Episcopal Church Pueblo, Colorado
Michael Root Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary Columbia, South Carolina
George Sumner Wycliffe College Toronto, Ontario
ACTS

JAROSLAV PELIKAN
2005 by Jaroslav Pelikan
Published by Brazos Press a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.brazospress.com
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-for example, electronic, photocopy, recording-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pelikan, Jaroslav Jan, 1923- Acts / Jaroslav Pelikan. p. cm. (Brazos theological commentary on the Bible) Includes bibliographical references (p. ). ISBN 1-58743-094-0 (cloth) 1. Bible. N.T. Acts-Commentaries. I. Title. II. Series. BS2625.53.P38 2005 226.6p077-dc22
2005050090
To my liturgical family at Saint Vladimir s
And they continued stedfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. -Acts 2:42 AV
CONTENTS
Series Preface
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction : From Apostolic Church to Church Catholic
Acts 1
1:2-3 As the Lord Jesus Christ Himself Instructed Us : The Gospel of the Forty Days
1:11 He Went Up, He Is Coming Again : Ascension and Second Coming
1:14 Mary the Theotokos
Acts 2
2:1 And in the Holy Spirit : The Fullness of the Church
2:31 Rose Up on the Third Day : The Centrality of the Resurrection of Christ
2:42 One , Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church : Marks of Continuity
Acts 3
3:18 Crucifixus pro nobis : Reconciliation and Atonement
3:21 Universal Restoration/Salvation Only by the Name of Christ
3:25 The Purpose of Calling Israel : The Abiding Covenant
Acts 4
4:20 This Is the Catholic Faith : The Confessional Imperative
4:24-30 Orthodoxy as Correct Worship and Correct Doctrine
4:32 One, Holy , Catholic, and Apostolic Church : Transvaluation of All Values
Acts 5
5:3-4 The Holy Spirit, the Lord : The Deity of the Holy Spirit
5:29a One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church : The Twelve and the Primacy of Peter
5:29b One Lord : The Sovereignty That Trumps Any Human Authority
Acts 6
6:2-4 Faith and Order
6:6 The Laying-on of Hands
6:8 Miracles as Signs
Acts 7
7:22 What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem?
7:47-48 The Paradox of Sacred Space and Sacred Time
7:59-60 The Imitation of Christ
Acts 8
8:25 The Communication of Divine Revelation
8:30-31 In Accordance with the Scriptures
8:37 Credo: The Rule of Faith
Acts 9
9:1-4 A Grammar of Assent
9:4-5 The Church as the Body of Christ
9:15 Paul the Chosen Instrument
Acts 10
10:15 The Yoke of the Mosaic Law
10:34-35 The Unity and Equality of All Humanity before God
10:38 De servo arbitrio : Sin Defined as Captivity to the Devil
Acts 11
11:23 Grace Abounding
11:26 The Given Name of Christ s Disciples
11:29 Mutual Support among the Members of Christ s Family
Acts 12
12:7 Both Seen and Unseen : The Angels as Ministering Spirits
12:13-16 A Humor That Is Not Unseemly
12:21-23 Sin Defined as Refusing to Let God Be God
Acts 13
13:8-11 Christus Victor
13:38-39 The Language of Justification
13:48 Foreknowledge/Election/Predestination
Acts 14
14:11-15 And Became Incarnate : Incarnation and Theosis
14:15-17 The Love Which Moves the Sun and the Other Stars
14:22 The Cost of Discipleship
Acts 15
15:2 Controversy and Polemics
15:8-9 The Historical Economies of the Living God
15:28 Authority at Church Councils and the Authority of Church Councils
Acts 16
16:4a Canon Law-Its Legitimacy and Its Limits
16:4b Apostolic Tradition and Apostolic Dogma
16:9 Visions and Private Revelations
Acts 17
17:18 Christian Theology in Encounter with Greco-Roman Philosophy
17:23 Apophatic Theology: Negation as the Affirmation of Metaphysical Transcendence
17:24-29 One God the Father, All-Powerful Maker
Acts 18
18:15 Theological Bickering about Words and Names
18:24-26a Accuracy in the Confession of Christian Doctrine
18:24-26b The Ministry of Women
Acts 19
19:2-3 The Abiding Theological Significance of Saint John the Forerunner
19:26 Images of the Divine?
19:28 We Believe in One God : Monotheism in Conflict with Polytheism and Idolatry
Acts 20
20:7 The Breaking of Bread
20:28a The Theological Import of Textual Variants
20:28b One Christ, One Son, One Lord
Acts 21
21:9-10 Who Spoke [and Speaks] through the Prophets
21:13-14 Religious Affections
21:37 Debtor to Greek : Language and Languages
Acts 22
22:6 The Uncreated Light as a Divine Energy
22:16 We Acknowledge One Baptism for the Forgiving of Sins
22:27 One, Holy, Catholic , and Apostolic Church : Every Native Land a Foreign Land
Acts 23
23:1 The Testimony of a Good Conscience
23:8 We Look Forward to a Resurrection of the Dead and Life in the Age to Come
23:25 Epistles-Jewish, Roman, and Christian
Acts 24
24:1-2 The Christian Appropriation of Classical Rhetoric
24:24-25a We Believe : Fides quae creditur
24:25b Ascetic Discipline and Self-Denial
Acts 25
25:8 The Law of Reason, the Law of Nations, the Law of God
25:11 Under Pontius Pilate : The Powers That Be
25:16 Due Process
Acts 26
26:18 I Believe : Fides qua creditur
26:20 The Forgiving of Sins : The Component Parts of Penance
26:26 Public Evidence for a Mystery?
Acts 27
27:1 The Predicament of the Christian Historian
27:3 De amicitia : The Divine Gift of Friendship
27:24 Sail with Those Who Sail
Acts 28
28:14 Launched into World History
28:23 His Kingdom Will Have No End
28:31 Freedom from External Coercion
Bibliography
SERIES PREFACE
Near the beginning of his treatise against Gnostic interpretations of the Bible, Against the Heresies , Irenaeus observes that Scripture is like a great mosaic depicting a handsome king. It is as if we were owners of a villa in Gaul who had ordered a mosaic from Rome. It arrives, and the beautifully colored tiles need to be taken out of their packaging and put into proper order according to the plan of the artist. The difficulty, of course, is that Scripture provides us with the individual pieces, but the order and sequence of various elements are not obvious. The Bible does not come with instructions that would allow interpreters to simply place verses, episodes, images, and parables in order as a worker might follow a schematic drawing in assembling the pieces to depict the handsome king. The mosaic must be puzzled out. This is precisely the work of scriptural interpretation.
Origen has his own image to express the difficulty of working out the proper approach to reading the Bible. When preparing to offer a commentary on the Psalms he tells of a tradition handed down to him by his Hebrew teacher:
The Hebrew said that the whole divinely inspired Scripture may be likened, because of its obscurity, to many locked rooms in our house. By each room is placed a key, but not the one that corresponds to it, so that the keys are scattered about beside the rooms, none of them matching the room by which it is placed. It is a difficult task to find the keys and match them to the rooms that they can open. We therefore know the Scriptures that are obscure only by taking the points of departure for understanding them from another place because they have their interpretive principle scattered among them. 1
As is the case for Irenaeus, scriptural interpretation is not purely local. The key in Genesis may best fit the door of Isaiah, which in turn opens up the meaning of Matthew. The mosaic must be put together with an eye toward the overall plan.
Irenaeus, Origen, and the great cloud of premodern biblical interpreters assumed that puzzling out the mosaic of Scripture must be a communal project. The Bible is vast, heterogeneous, full of confusing passages and obscure words, and difficult to understand. Only a fool would imagine that he or she could work out solutions alone. The way forward must rely upon a tradition of reading that Irenaeus reports has been passed on as the rule or canon of truth that functions as a confession of faith. Anyone, he says, who keeps unchangeable in himself the rule of truth received through baptism will recognize the names and sayings and parables of the scriptures. 2 Modern scholars debate the content of the rule on which Irenaeus relies and commends, not the least because the terms and formulations Irenaeus himself uses shift and slide. Nonetheless, Irenaeus assumes that there is a body of apostolic doctrine sustained by a tradition of teaching in the church. This doctrine provides the clarifying principles that guide exegetical judgment toward a coherent overall reading of Scripture as a unified witness. Doctrine, then, is the schematic drawing that will allow the reader to organize the vast heterogeneity of the words, images, and stories of the Bible into a readable, coherent whole. It is the rule that guides us toward the proper matching of keys to doors.
If self-consciousness about the role of history in shaping human consciousness makes modern historical-critical study critical, then what makes modern study of the Bible modern is the consensus that classical Christian doctrine distorts interpretive understan