Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-45l2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T00:57:50.981Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

An Anti-Gnostic Tendency in Lucan Christology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Charles H. Talbert
Affiliation:
Winston-Salem, N.C., U.S.A.

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Short Studies
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 259 note 1 Most recently, the works of Ferdinand Hahn, Christologische Hoheitstitel (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1963) and Fuller, R. H., The Foundations of New Testament Christology (New York: Scribner's, 1965) emphasize the point.Google Scholar

page 259 note 2 Opinions regarding the contents of the fragment differ. See Barrett, C. K., The Epistle to the Romans (New York: Harper, 1957), p 18Google ScholarHunter, A. M., Paul and His Predecessors (rev. ed.; Philadelphia; Westminster, 1961), pp. 24ff.; Fuller, op. cit. pp. 165 ff. On any reading, however, the fragment is adoptionistic.Google Scholar

page 259 note 3 Schweizer, E., ‘The Concept of the Davidic “Son of God” in Acts and Its Old Testament Background’, in Studies in Luke-Acts, ed. Keck, and Martyn, (Nashville: Abingdon, 1966), p. 186.Google Scholar

page 259 note 4 See Fuller, op. cit. pp. 216ff., 222ff., for summary and recent bibliography.

page 259 note 5 This has been a special concern of Schweizer, E.. See his ‘Orthodox Proclamation: The Reinterpretation of the Gospel by the Fourth Evangelist’, I.N.T. viii (1954), 387403Google ScholarLordship and Discipleship (Naperville: Allenson, 1960), especially pp. 104ff.Google Scholar‘Two New Testament Creeds Compared’, in Current Issues in New Testament Interpretation, ed. Klassen, and Snyder, (New York: Harper, 1962), pp. 166–77. Also, very briefly, K. Stendahl, I.D.B. i, 426.Google Scholar

page 260 note 1 A comparison of C. K. Barrett's, Luke the Historian in Recent Study (London: Epworth, 1961) with A. T. Robertson's, Luke the Historian in the Light of Research (New York: Scribner's, 1920) will indicate the legitimacy of speaking of a Lucan Christology. C. F. D. Moule, ‘The Christology of Acts’, in Studies in Luke-Acts, p. 160, says that ‘it is a commonplace of New Testament criticism that the Gospels are theological documents and, at the very least, reflect the faith of the writers and of their communities’.Google Scholar

page 260 note 2 The designation ‘Luke’ is used only for convenience and is not meant to prejudice the question of authorship in either direction.

page 260 note 3 On reading aloud in antiquity, see Cadbury, H.J., The Book of Acts in History (London: Black, 1955) p. 18 andGoogle ScholarMetzger, B. M., The Text of the New Testament (New York: Oxford, 1964), p. 13 n. 3, for evidence.Google Scholar

page 260 note 4 That Luke-Acts was written for Christians rather than unbelievers seems clear, (1) It assumes a knowledge of the LXX. (2) It was written to those who had already been instructed in order to guarantee the truth of such earlier instruction.

page 260 note 5 Assumed in this article are the priority of Mark, the existence of some source or sources common to Matthew and Luke commonly designated Q, and the existence of certain traditions peculiar to Luke commonly designated L.

page 260 note 6 This is the commonly accepted methodology of Redaktionsgeschichte. See Conzelmann, Hans, The Theology of St Luke (New York: Harper, 1960), pp. 9 ff.Google ScholarLampe, G. W. H., ‘Luke’, in Peake's Commentary on the Bible, ed. Rowley, and Black, (London: Nelson, 1962), p. 821Google ScholarLampe, , ‘The Lucan Portrait of Christ’, N.T.S. 11 (1956), 160. In the article in N.T.S. pp. 161 ff., Lampe, however argues that the best point of departure in the quest for the Lucan Christology is in the speeches of Acts. Though influenced by both Lucan style and theology, however, these speeches can serve our purposes in an auxiliary way only. (1) They sometimes reflect pre-Lucan Christology (e.g. Acts ii. 36; xiii. 33; iii. 17 ff. Cf. J. A. T. Robinson, ‘The Earliest Christology of All’, in Twelve New Testament Studies [Naperville: Allenson, 1962], pp. 139–53). (2) They omit references to the birth narratives which are integral to the Third Gospel. See the summary of evidence in P. S. Minear, ‘Luke's Use of the Birth Stories’, in Studies in Luke-Acts, pp. 111–30. (3) Also, the travel narrative (cf. Acts xiii. 31) and the ascension (cf. Acts ii. 34) occupy a relatively minor place in the speeches. The speeches, then, represent a mixture of Lucan and non-Lucan elements. This requires that they be sifted carefully in order to sort out the disparate elements. The speeches of Acts, therefore, can serve only to confirm and to complement conclusions drawn from an examination of the Lucan use of sources. They cannot be the starting-point in a search for the Lucan Christology.Google Scholar

page 261 note 1 Conzelmann, op. cit. p. 170, is certainly correct when he says that ‘the special elements in Luke's Christology cannot be set out by a statistical analysis of the titles applied to Jesus’. The failure to recognize this fact is a major flaw in the work of S. S. Smalley, ‘The Christology of Acts’, Exp. T. LXXIII (1962), 358 ff., and in that of Taylor, V., The Person of Christ in New Testament Teaching (London: Macmillan, 1958), pp. 912, and I.D.B. iii, 184. Conzelmann's preoccupation with the Lucan eschatology, however, prevents his work from being a thorough consideration of Lucan Christology. The thesis of this paper does not automatically exclude Conzelmann's views, but neither does our thesis rest upon the validity of his.Google Scholar

page 261 note 2 Ramsay, A. M., ‘What was the Ascension?’, Bulletin of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, 11 (1951), 45–50. Our analysis focuses upon the narrative in Acts i rather than on the reference in Luke xxiv not only because Acts i is the fuller discussion but primarily because Acts i is clearly a reflexion of the Lucan hand while Luke xxiv is actually a reflexion of a different point of view, one that is traditional. Cf. n. 1 and n. 2, p. 262 below.Google Scholar

page 262 note 1 Luke xxiv. 26; Acts ii. 32–3; v. 30–1, for example. So Ramsey, op. cit. p. 45; Sleeper, C. F., ‘Pentecost and Resurrection’, J.B.L. LXXXIV (1965), 392Google ScholarWilder, A. N., ‘Variant Traditions of the Resurrection in Acts’, J.B.L. LXII (1943), 313–18. Perhaps the difficult passage, Luke xxiv. 51, should also be included here. Regardless of whether one prefers the longer or the shorter text, the verse still refers to the ascension. Here ascension is part of resurrection day as in the Fourth Gospel.Google Scholar

page 262 note 2 It is better to acknowledge the presence of two views of the ascension in Luke-Acts than to try various expedients to excise one or the other. When Ropes, J. H., Beginnings of Christianity (London: Macmillan, 1926), III, 256 ff., suggests that the ascension was not originally present in Luke xxiv. 51 or Acts i. 2, it is just as unconvincing as P. H. Menoud's arguments that Acts i. 3 is a part of two later additions to Luke-Acts, Luke xxiv. 50–3 and Acts i. 1–5, in ‘Remarques sur les textes de l'ascension dans Luc-Actes’, Neutestamentliche Studien fuer Rudolf Bultmann, ed. Eltester (Berlin: Toepelmann, 1957), pp. 148–56.Google Scholar

page 262 note 3 van Stempvoort, P. A., ‘Interpretation of the Ascension in Luke and Acts’, N.T.S. v (1958), 37–9; Wilder, op. cit. p. 310.Google Scholar

page 262 note 4 For what follows, see my book, Luke and the Gnostics (Nashville: Abingdon, 1966), pp. 30ff.Google Scholar

page 263 note 1 Ibid. pp. 29 ff.

page 263 note 2 Because of the diversity of Gnosticism it would be a mistake to say that all Gnostics denied the resurrection. Among the Gnostic writings from Nag Hammadi, for example, there are exceptions to the general rule. The Gospel of Philip, the Letter of James, and the Epistle to Rheginus all speak of resurrection in contrast to the Gospel of Thomas which presents the more normal Gnostic conception of stripping off the garment of the body. Both the Gospel of Philip and the Epistle to Rheginus present apparendy contradictory strands of evidence. Philip seemingly attacks the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh in one place (civ. 26–34) and defends it in another (cv. 9ff.). Rheginus speaks of Christ raising himself (xxiii. 17–23) and of a present (xxv. 13–16), spiritual (xxiii. 36–42) resurrection. James (Jung Codex, xiv. 35–6) has Jesus rise from the dead and then strip off the garment of flesh and be clothed in his heavenly robe. These writings are later than the period in which Luke-Acts was written, however, and reflect a more advanced Gnostic attempt to come to terms with Christian tradition. For a discussion of the problem of the resurrection among the Nag Hammadi writings, see Wilson, R. McL., The Gospel of Philip (London: Mowbray, 1962), pp. 88–9.Google Scholar

page 264 note 1 Not everyone is agreed on the extent of the journey section. There are at least three options, (i) ix.5i-xviii. 14, so Evans, C.F., ‘The Central Section of St Luke's Gospel’, in Studies in the Gospels, ed. Nineham, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1955), pp. 3753.Google Scholar(2) ix. 51-xix. 27, so Robinson, W. C. Jr, ‘The Theological Context for Interpreting Luke's Travel Narrative’, J.B.L. LXXIX (1960), 2031.Google Scholar(3) ix. 51-xix. 46, so Davies, J. H., ‘The Purpose of the Central Section of St Luke's Gospel’, in Studia Evangelica, II ed. Cross (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1964), pp. 164–9. The most natural division seems to me to be that of Davies.Google Scholar

page 264 note 2 Kümmel, W. G., Introduction to the New Testament (Nashville: Abingdon, 1966), p. 93; W. C. Robinson, Jr., op. cit. For what follow's, we are especially indebted to Robinson.Google Scholar

page 264 note 3 Schmid, Josef, Das Evangelium nach Lukas (Regensburg: Pustet, 1960), p. 176, speaks of Luke ix. 51 as an Ueberschrift for the entire travel report.Google ScholarAlso, Tinsley, E. J., The Gospel according to Luke (Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 109.Google Scholar

page 264 note 4 Lampe, ‘The Holy Spirit in the Writings of St Luke’, in Studies in the Gospels, p. 181.

page 264 note 5 J. H. Davies, op. cit. pp. i64ff.; Tinsley, op. cit. p. 109.

page 265 note 1 Davies, J. G., ‘The Prefigurement of the Ascension in the Third Gospel’, J.T.S., n.s. VI (1955), 230; Conzelmann, op. cit. p. 59; Lampe, ‘Holy Spirit in the Writings of St Luke’, p. 182.Google Scholar

page 265 note 2 Rengstorf, Karl H., Das Evangelium nachLukas (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1958), p. 129; J. H. Davies, op. cit.; Lampe, ‘The Lucan Portrait of Christ’, pp. 166–7; Evans, op. cit. pp. 39–40. Evans's argument, however, that νλημψις of ix. 51 must refer to more than just the ascension because of the plural μρας (cf. Acts i. 21–2) is possible but not entirely convincing.Google Scholar

page 265 note 3 Lampe, ‘The Lucan Portrait of Christ’, p. 167; Tinsley, op. cit. pp. 209, 210, 212.

page 265 note 4 W. C. Robinson, Jr., op. cit. pp. 29–30, is primarily concerned with the function of the travel narrative in relation to the apostles. His thesis is that the Lucan expansion of the motif of transition from Galilee to Jerusalem is solely in the service of the concept of the authenticated witness. It is certainly in the interest of the concept of authenticated witness, but not solely. The witness motif itself serves Luke's Christology.

page 266 note 1 Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. i: 30: 13–14. In 13 Irenaeus says: ‘they say that Christ himself…departed from him…while Jesus was crucified’ (The Ante-Nkene Fathers, vol. i).

page 266 note 2 Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 1: 24: 3–6. In 4 Irenaeus says that Basilides believed that Christ ‘did not himself suffer death, but Simon, a certain man of Cyrene, being compelled bore the cross in his stead; so that this latter being transfigured by him, that he might be thought to be Jesus, was crucified… For since he (Christ) was an incorporeal power…he…ascended to him who had sent him.’ Further on Irenaeus says that Basilides claimed: ‘If any one… confesses the crucified, that man is still a slave…’ (The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. i).

page 266 note 3 Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 1: 26: 1. ‘But at the last Christ departed from Jesus, and that then Jesus suffered and rose again, while the Christ remained impassible, inasmuch as he was a spiritual being’ (The Ante-Micene Fathers, vol. l).

page 267 note 1 Schweizer, Eduard, Spirit of God (London: Black, 1960), pp. 40–1.Google Scholar

page 267 note 2 The observation of Lampe, ‘The Holy Spirit in the Writings of St Luke’, p. 171, is to the point. ‘The reading of the prophecy and the announcement of its fulfilment in the mission of Jesus serve as a prologue to the whole of the rest of St Luke's work. It was, no doubt, in order to use it for this purpose that St Luke took the story of the Nazareth preaching out of its Marcan context and re-wrote it.’

page 267 note 3 The same point of view is found in the speeches of Acts. Cf especially Acts x. 38; iv. 27. This confirms our interpretation of the baptism following Luke's guidelines in Luke iii. 23.

page 268 note 1 Campenhausen, Hans von, The Virgin Birth in the Theology of the Ancient Church (Naperville: Allenson, 1964), p. 25, says: ‘It is only in Luke that the inner relation of this event to the nature of the child so born is expressly brought out and stressed: just because no human being, no man, but the Holy Spirit, will come over Mary and ‘overshadow’ her, the ‘holy’ one thus born will be called the Son of God.’ Cf. also, Fuller, op. cit. p. 288; Lampe, ‘The Holy Spirit in the Writings of St Luke’, p. 168.Google Scholar

page 268 note 2 It is generally recognized that the parenthesis ‘as was supposed’ in iii. 23 is due to the Lucan hand. From our examination it appears that it functions not as an apology for inclusion of the genealogy (so S. M. Gilmour, I.B., VIII, 82) nor as an attempt to cover up a discrepancy (so Creed, The Gospel according to St Luke [London: Macmillan, 1953], p. 49), but rather as a guideline for Luke's readers. Our examination makes it probable that the rest of the verse, except for ‘Jesus, son of Joseph’, also is a Lucan composition. Cf. Matt. i. 1.Google Scholar

page 268 note 3 This is true regardless of how one decides the different textual question of iii. 22. I personally find the recent argument of Leaney for the Western reading unconvincing (op. cit. p. III).

page 268 note 4 As Son of Adam, Jesus is ‘a real man with a family tree’. So Caird, G. B., The Gospel of Saint Luke (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963), p. 77.Google Scholar

page 269 note 1 Most recently, Feuillet, A., ‘Le récit Lucanien de la Tentation (Lc. 4: 1–13)’, Biblica, XL (1959), 617–31.Google Scholar

page 269 note 2 Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. i: 30:12–14. In 12 we read: ‘Jesus…was wiser, purer, and more righteous than all other men. Christ…descended into him, and thus Jesus Christ was produced.’ In 14 we read: ‘They strove to establish the descent and ascent of Christ, by the fact that neither before his baptism, nor after his resurrection from the dead, do his disciples state that he did any mighty works…’ (The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. i).

page 269 note 3 Irenaeus, Adv. Haef. 1: 26: 1. ‘After his baptism, Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove from the Supreme Ruler…’ (The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1).

page 270 note 1 The recent attempt of O'Neill, J. C., The Theology of Acts in Its Historical Setting (London: SPCK, 1961), to date the Lucan literature in the second century on the basis of parallels with Justin Martyr has proved untenable. Cf. H.J. Cadbury's review in J.B.L. LXXXI (1962), 198. In a recent study, Hans Conzelmann, ‘Luke's Place in the Development of Early Christianity’, Studies in Luke-Acts, ed. Keck and Martyn, pp. 298–316, concludes that Luke-Acts belongs to the ‘third generation’ or ‘to the transition from the first to the second century’ (p. 309).Google Scholar

page 270 note 2 Grant, R. M., ‘The Origin of the Fourth Gospel’, J.B.L. LXIX (1950), 310. In an attempt to determine whether the Fourth Gospel was written against Cerinthus, as Irenaeus claims (Adv. Haer. III: 11: 1), Grant shows that our principal sources of information about Cerinthus are: (1) Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 1: 26: 1; III: 3: 4 (used by Hippolytus, Ref. VII: 33, and to some extent by Epiphanius, Pan. Haer. XXVIII); (2) Gaius of Rome (in Eusebius, H.E. VII: 28: 2; used by Dionysus of Alexandria, in Eusebius, H.E. VII: 25: 1–3); (3) The Epistle of the Aposdes i. 7. An evaluation of these sources, leads Grant to conclude that for all practical purposes we are left with Irenaeus and his followers.Google ScholarAs Keck, L. E. has recently observed: ‘We must bear in mind that even though the new texts from Nag Hammadi are of inestimable value, for many forms of Christianized Gnosticism we are as dependent now as before on what its opponents (i.e. Irenaeus) report’ (‘John the Baptist in Christianized Gnosticism’, in Initiation, ed. Bleeker, [Leiden: Brill, 1965], p. 184).Google ScholarThis forms no major problem since the Nag Hammadi documents have shown that the Church Fathers did not appreciably exaggerate their accounts of Gnosticism (so Albright, W. F., ‘The Bible After Twenty Years, of Archaeology’, Religion in Life, XXI [1952], 548).Google Scholar

page 270 note 3 Adv. Haer. 1: 26: 1.

page 270 note 4 Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 1: 26: 2) says of the Ebionites that ‘their attitude towards the Lord is like that of Cerinthus and Carpocrates’. This is apparently taken by Epiphanius (Pan. Haer. XXX: 16) to mean: (1) that Jesus, for the Ebionites, was begotten of human seed, and (2) that they believed the spiritual Christ came upon him at his baptism in the form of a dove. If Epiphanius' interpretation is correct then one could allege that Luke's Christology is anti-Ebionite as well. However, examination of Adv. Haer. 1: 25 (Carpocrates) and 1: 26: 1 (Cerinthus) shows that whereas (1) is common to both, (2) is not. For Carpocrates the transcendence of Jesus was tied to his remembering what his soul had seen in its pre-existent state with God. There is no descent of the Christ at Jesus' baptism. For Cerinthus, it is the descent of the spiritual Christ at baptism that is the source of transcendence in Jesus. It is in the denial of the virgin birth that Cerinthus, Carpocrates, and the Ebionites have their point of agreement. In this light, it seems best to regard Epiphanius' report as a confused elaboration of what Irenaeus said. The Ebionites held merely that Jesus was not born of a virgin. Thus, the Ebionites were adoptionistic while Cerinthus was docetic.

page 270 note 5 The following points are those which Grant, op. cit. p. 313, says the Gospel of John would have to make if it is to be regarded as written against Cerinthus. Whereas these points do not fit the Fourth Gospel, they certainly do fit Luke-Acts. Grant, in part, has seen this. He says; ‘The idea that the Christ not only did, but had to, suffer is set forth not in John but in Luke (xxiv. 26, 46)’ (P. 315).