Friday, March 5, 2010

Acts and Doctrine

Friday March 5, 2010

ACTS AND DOCTRINE


So the conversation goes this way:

Pro -
Well, these accounts in the book of Acts all seem to be saying a similar thing, so I am going to take that as truth for the church for all time - doctrinal underpinning for my life.

Con -
Can't do that, because the Book of Acts is a historical book and you can't develop doctrine from experiences.

Pro -
But this is the word of God and He has given this to us....remember the statement "all scripture is profitable for....doctrine?"

Con -
Yes, but He has given us books that are specificially doctrinal, teachings of the Apostles, setting down truths for the church specifically.


Ever had one of these conversations?

I did when a student at Wheaton College. It was a center of questing for truth so the converstions were passionate.

So when I came across the writings of George Eldon Ladd...then the dean of New Testament scholars - anchor mind at Fuller Seminary - now gone home to be with Jesus...it was a huge deal.

Here was his thinking, and he wrote copiously and brilliantly about the whole of the New Testament. (As a church planter said to me Wednesday over coffee..."One of the clearest, most progressive thinkers ever.")

In Ladd's book, THE YOUNG CHURCH (Abingdon, 1964) he explores the nature of the book of Acts as "just history."

He adequately defends Luke's historical accuracy....but then explores Luke's historic completeness and there...well, let me quote him:

"Strictly speaking, Acts does not record the acts of the apostles. Where are the acts of Matthias? Where are the acts of John?....And Peter...the last mention of him in Acts 15:7 echoes the problem of the modern student: "there was no small stir...what had become of Peter?" (12:18) We are still asking the same question. As for the other apostles, apart from Peter, James and John...not one of them is mentioned in the book again." pp.10-11

If I were to cite all the things that Ladd mentions about Luke's interesting and selective history, this blog would set a new record for length. But here is how he sums up, again in brief.

"Luke is obviously not trying to write a detailed history of Paul's movements. His selection of historical data is so controlled by a distinctive purpose that he has left scholars with nearly insoluble problems in correlating the data of Acts with the epistles." p.12

"It is clear that Acts intends to be an historical record; yet it is not a record of history for its own sake but history with a purpose, history that tells a story. If this purpose includes a theological viewppoint, it need be no less historical." p17

And his final summation...the paragraph that let me know as a Spirit-filled believer I would NOT have to park my brain...or lose this point in an argument :)

"Acts was written for a theological and an apologetic purpose. However, it is a purpose which Luke finds in history. It is not theology read into history or history distorted to serve theology. It is a theological interpretation of history."
p.21

Ah, the relief and the confidence...the entry of the truth always does that.

May you have a truth-sets-free day!

Selah...

David

1 comment:

Galen said...

I think God tends to deal with similar types of people in similar ways. Over time, cultures and world-views change, and new common complications arise that differ from those of previous times.

Each individual fall tends to be complicated in similar ways – ways that are shared in common with his contemporaries, much like new strains of a disease differ critically from its past manifestations, but share the new mutation, a complication that makes it a significant threat at the moment. (We might label this observation the “Zeitgeist.”)

These new complications are "resistant" to old treatments and call for new approaches to help "undo" the new twists and warps in a person’s misshapen character. Although the convolutions flow from the common causation of sin, they are less "treatable" by simpler methods, and require a creative approach, something God would have little trouble fulfilling.

Of course there is no iron-clad rule to which we can hold God. In the Old Testament, God often delivered with mighty, large-scale miracles, such as the pillar of fire or the parting of the sea. Such “treatment” must have met a need in the lives of the people, and been useful as an anchor of remembrance for them. I don't think God stopped doing this type of miracle. I think the tornadoes and battering storms that drove the British out of Washington and Baltimore in the War of 1812 demonstrate it’s still in His arsenal. But over time, I think God's emphasis tends to change, based on the kinds imprints sin has left on the people of the era He is dealing with. People of particular times generally have similar complications and similar spiritual difficulties and maladies. Hence, patterns of how God deals with them may change.

God must always redesign His method of drawing the sinner out of an ever-morphing fall. The one constant is pain. Pain seems to be a common denominator in the admixture, and pain tends to force ultimate kinds of choices. It hurries the process along to meet the deadline of the human lifespan, either to ultimate surrender or to final rebellion.