Friday, February 22, 2013

Luke’s Theology


A review of the book “Luke and the people of God: A new look at Luke-Acts” by Jacob Jervell. This is a 207 page book containing 7 chapters discussing the theology of Luke. The book mainly focuses on the book of Acts but does reference the Gospel of Luke at times.

The author is convinced that the real audience that Luke is writing to are Jewish-Christians and at least one of the questions that Luke is trying to deal with has to do with Paul and his view of the law. Is Paul an apostate to the law and Judaism? He tries to show that Luke was writing to prove that “Jesus’ followers were strict adherents to the law of Moses…” (Page 16). He goes on to say that “Luke wrote Acts because he was forced to do so by a crisis in the church, precipitated by rumors and controversies focusing on Paul. The problem was Paul’s attitude towards the Mosaic Torah, the Jewish way of life, and Israel.” (Page 17).  The author also believes that Luke taught that Paul was just another “…Pharisee, faithful to the law…” (Page 169).

               One of the major problems with the book is that it’s liberal theology which means that the author separates Luke from the other New Testament writers and places them at odds with each other. For example he places Luke and Matthew at odds with each other when he mentions “Luke’s reworking of the account…” found in Matthew’s gospel. Jervell doesn’t hold to the inerrancy and cohesive nature of the scriptures.

I did like the discussion about “true Israel” being those who are Israelites that accept Jesus as the Messiah and the apostate Israelites as those who reject the Messiah. There are nuggets of insight and lots of things to contemplate but unless one is firmly grounded in the inerrancy of scripture and knows something about German liberal theology as well as concepts such as “redaction criticism”, and “source criticism” it would be better to stay away from this book. I think it would only confuse someone rather than help. Those that have at least a basic understanding of these kinds of liberal views may find some interesting things to ponder.

               In the end I believe this book is fairly technical and is only worth reading if you want to have a few interesting things to chew on. It would be much better to stick with solid conservative material in my opinion.

               You can buy it here