Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Recent discussion has called my attention to the primitive-looking speeches contained in the early chapters of Acts, but I have decided to expand my original thread to include the entire issue of the remarkable (and near total) absence of atonement theology in Luke-Acts.

These observations combined with other evidence point to the idea that at the earliest period of Christian history the cross was not the fulcrum of faith in every community of believers. And since the Jewish-Christian communities of later times did not see the death and resurrection of Jesus as the source of salvation (1), it seems that some Christian communities never did adopt the theology of the cross.

For Luke it seems that forgiveness came not from the death of Jesus but from his exaltation (Acts 5:31):(2). And it is decisive that Luke, despite Acts 20:28, says nothing about the redemptive significance of the cross, nor does he link forgiveness with the death of Jesus (3).It is notable that the theology of atonement is absent from Peter's preaching in the Temple (Acts 3:11-26), despite the employment of the Servant motif to express a theology of suffering and vindication, and it is conceivable that "Luke was not entirely clear on the significance of the cross", with most references to it expressing a suffering-vindication motif (4).

Luke never speaks of the death of Jesus as atonement, expiation, or reconciliation, and only once as justification (5). For "the death of Jesus has (for Luke) no redemptive significance, and hence Lucan Christology in general lacks any substitutional soteriology (6).

Now the absence of the theology of the cross from Luke's portrayal of Paul in Acts raises the possibility that the theology attributed to Paul in Acts actually refers to that of the earliest Christian congregations (7). And so some scholars support the view that Acts, despite being "written quite late, preserves much older tradition"(8).

It is most significant that the primitive church in it's earliest days may well have been headed by leaders who continued to participate in the sacrificial cult of the Temple. For the Greek at Acts 3:1 could be translated "used to go" to the Temple at the "ninth hour", i.e. the hour of the evening sacrifice (9),so that leading scholars in the field of Lucan theology think that Luke passed on a tradition wherein the earliest Jerusalem Christians continued as exemplary Jews and participated in Temple worship (10).

Needless to say, for the Christians to participate in the Temple cult would be to effectively to deny the atoning significance of Jesus' death, suggesting again that this belief did not exist in the earliest levels of tradition or in the very earliest period of Christian history.

Luke does not depict the work of Jesus in terms of sacrifice or emphasize
his atoning ministry (11), and "Luke not only makes no doctrinal use of the
Servant Songs, but even seems deliberately to avoid the concept of vicarious
atonement (12).

Now there is a curious failure to exploit, or even refer to, the expiatory
nature of the death of Jesus in the discourses in Acts (13), and numerous
theological archaisms which mark the discourses in Acts have oriented scholars
the acknowledgment of a primitive kerygma there (14). And it has been posited
that "Peter's speeches in the first part" of Acts "consist of variations on a kind of
original community theology"(15), consistent with the slight evidence of an
Aramaic source behind the speeches as detected by specialists in that field (16).

The suggestion that the discourses in Acts 2,3 and 10 preserve earlier tradition
finds support in Luke's "lively"(i.e.imminent) eschatology (2:16-17):(3:19-21), less
typical elsewhere in Luke, as well as his primitive-sounding Christology (2:22,36):
(3:13-15):(10:38,42):(17).

The imminence of Peter's eschatological expectation at Acts 2:14-39 includes
the replacing of the Hebrew "afterward"(Joel 2:28) with "in the last days"(Acts 2:
17):(18),while the absence of the kerygmatic word "cross" from the discourse has
suggested an origin in an early stage of the tradition, at a time when Hellenistic
influence did not yet prevail (19).But the absence of the soteriology of the cross
from Luke-Acts "may reflect an early hesitation on the subject among the first
believers (possibly reflecting Jesus' own perspective)", so that Luke it seems has
faithfully preserved "an early theological perspective" that was "soon left behind"
(20).

It should be noted however that it is also pointed out that detailed examination
indicates that Peter's speech at Acts 2:14-41 presupposes use of the Septuagint, so
that it may have originated in a period subsequent to the establishment of the
Hellenistic church (21), while the speech also has been seen as reflecting a
recurrent theme in Acts, and may derive from Luke himself (22).

But if Luke's ideal of a Christian community is represented by his account of
the early days at Jerusalem (23), then it's failure to promote atonement through
the death of Jesus may have profoundly influenced Luke's overall theology, as well
as his portrayal of Paul's theology in Acts (24).

Now a status of importance is obviously attached to the theme of the Isaian
Servant's passion and glorification in the New Testament, and this is reflected in
various ways in Luke, though again without reference to the motif of expiation
(25).In fact the term "pais"("servant") is in the Old Testament a term with no
implication of any particular figure or specialized meaning, Luke was free to omit
phrases from Mark which refer to vicarious suffering, and does so even when he
quotes the Servant's Song (Luke 22:37):(Acts 8:32-33):(cf.Isa 53:8,12):(26).Indeed
it seems that Luke has chosen to "shun" connections between sin and the sacrifice/
death of the Isaian Servant (27).




1.Flusser "Judaism And The Origin Of Christianity" p.243.
Van Voorst "Jesus Outside The New Testament" p.214-5, despite it's similarity to Matthew,the passion narrative of the Jewish-Christian pseudo-Clementine "Recognitiones" assigns no atoning power to the death of Jesus. Rather, salvation comes from baptism in the name of Jesus,i.e. from the baptism that he preached, not from his death.
See also:Cullmann "Christology Of The New Testament" p.49.

2.Conzelmann "Theology Of Saint Luke" p.228n1.
Dunn "Christianity In The Making" v.2,p.94n383,in Acts, God as much as Jesus is the content of the proclamation to the Greeks.

3.Conzelmann "Theology Of Saint Luke" p.230n1.
Haenchen "Acts Of The Apostles" p.92/n6.
Dunn "Christianity In The Making" v.3,p.287.

4.Dunn "Christianity In The Making" v.2,p.92,227-8,950/n398.

5.Fitzmyer "Anchor Bible" v.31,p.287.

6.Haenchen "Acts Of The Apostles" p.131,quoting Wilckens.

7.Fitzmyer "Anchor Bible" v.31,p.146.

8.Wright "Resurrection Of The Son Of God" p.451n1.

9.Dunn "Christianity In The Making" v.2,p.232.

10.Fitzmyer "Anchor Bible" v.31,p.272.
Mason "Josephus And The New Testament" p.268/n11.

11.Taylor "Passion Narrative Of Saint Luke" p.126n2.

12.Hooker "Jesus And The Servant" p.154.

13.Meyer "The Aims Of Jesus" p.61.

14.Meyer "The Aims Of Jesus" p.66.

15.Dibelius "Book Of Acts" p.29.

16.Black "An Aramaic Approach To The Gospels And Acts" p.272.

17.Dunn "The Oral Gospel Tradition" p.335.

18.Dunn "Christianity In The Making" v.2,p.90-1,166.

19.Todt "The Son Of Man In The Synoptic Tradition" p.172.

20.Dunn "Christianity In The Making" v.3,p.287.

21.Haenchen "Acts Of The Apostles" p.185-6.

22.Haenchen "Acts Of The Apostles" p.185-6, in agreement with Dibelius.

23.Brown "Introduction To The New Testament" p.239.

24.Hooker "Jesus And The Servant" p.113, notes Acts' first quotation from
the Suffering Servant Song is attributed to a non-apostle (8:32-35), suggesting
that the Song was not central to the Christian preaching of the time.

25.Meyer "The Aims Of Jesus" p.66-7.

26.Hooker "Jesus And The Servant" p.4.

27.Cf.Haenchen "Acts Of The Apostles" p.311/n3.

It is because in John, Acts, and Paul, salvation is not salvation from hell but from death, i.e. salvation is the resurrection: Jesus died to establish the resurrection. This is why in no speech in Acts do you hear "believe in Jesus or burn in hell" but rather "believe in Jesus who God raised from the dead." The message of Acts is to believe that the OT prophecied "That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the FIRST that should rise from the dead" (Acts 26:23) Paul is on trial Acts 23:6 "for the hope of the resurrection of the dead." The function of an apostle is Acts 1:22 to "be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection." The Sadducees were "grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead." (Acts 4:2) The gospel in Acts is nothing but a more solid way to teach the resurrection of the dead than the older Pharisee way of twisting certain passages of the Old Testament, like God telling Moses "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" and pretending this teaches the resurrection; telling a story of a prophet who came and died specifically to be raised from the dead and to send out apostles to witness to this fact and preach the resurrection of the dead in his name on the basis of their eye-witness testimony to seeing him after his resurrection is just a more solid way to establish the same old Pharisee doctrine of a resurrection, and really little (if anything) more than that, in Acts.

Yes, "not salvation from hell but from death"..because in the earliest period the church's
imminent eschatology led members to believe that the calamities of the end times were
pending, but that the elect would survive them (Mark 13:20), so that "we shall not all die"
(1Cor 15:51), because whoever obeys Jesus will not taste death (John 8:51).
And if Peter had continued on quoting Joel he would have announced that "in
Mount Zion and in Jerusalem..shall be those who escape..the survivors.."(Joel
2:32).

But when Christians began dying there was panic and anxiety, among the
"uninformed", who were urged not to "grieve as others do who have no
hope"(1Thess 4:15).

.

Tod Stites wrote:Yes, "not salvation from hell but from death"..because in the earliest period the church's
imminent eschatology led members to believe that the calamities of the end times were
pending, but that the elect would survive them (Mark 13:20), so that "we shall not all die"
(1Cor 15:51), because whoever obeys Jesus will not taste death (John 8:51).
And if Peter had continued on quoting Joel he would have announced that "in
Mount Zion and in Jerusalem..shall be those who escape..the survivors.."(Joel
2:32).

But when Christians began dying there was panic and anxiety, among the
"uninformed", who were urged not to "grieve as others do who have no
hope"(1Thess 4:15).

Salvation from death is what Athanasius believes.
Salvation from death. The just are resuscitated to live forever whereas the evil remain dead forever; Athanasius, on the Incarnation. This seems to have been the belief of early Christians.

" But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption.

This is what Holy Scripture tells us, proclaiming the command of God, "Of every tree that is in the garden thou shalt surely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat, but in the day that ye do eat, ye shall surely die."7 "Ye shall surely die"—not just die only, but remain in the state of death and of corruption."

On the Incarnation of the Word , Athanasius, St. Archbishop of Alexandria (c.296-c.373)
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2548&p=57816&hilit= ... ius#p57816

davidbrainerd wrote:It is because in John, Acts, and Paul, salvation is not salvation from hell but from death, i.e. salvation is the resurrection: Jesus died to establish the resurrection. This is why in no speech in Acts do you hear "believe in Jesus or burn in hell" but rather "believe in Jesus who God raised from the dead." The message of Acts is to believe that the OT prophecied "That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the FIRST that should rise from the dead" (Acts 26:23) Paul is on trial Acts 23:6 "for the hope of the resurrection of the dead." The function of an apostle is Acts 1:22 to "be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection." The Sadducees were "grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead." (Acts 4:2) The gospel in Acts is nothing but a more solid way to teach the resurrection of the dead than the older Pharisee way of twisting certain passages of the Old Testament, like God telling Moses "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" and pretending this teaches the resurrection; telling a story of a prophet who came and died specifically to be raised from the dead and to send out apostles to witness to this fact and preach the resurrection of the dead in his name on the basis of their eye-witness testimony to seeing him after his resurrection is just a more solid way to establish the same old Pharisee doctrine of a resurrection, and really little (if anything) more than that, in Acts.

Luke 2:34 is an informative verse. The vulgate interprets this verse as risen from the dead and remaining dead. This seems to have been the belief of early Christians.

Luke 2
34] et benedixit illis Symeon et dixit ad Mariam matrem eius ecce positus est hic in ruinam et resurrectionem multorum in Israhel et in signum cui contradicetur