Luke—
Historian and Theologian
I. Howard Marshall
Copyright © 1970 I. Howard Marshall
First published 1970
by Paternoster, PO Box 300, Carlisle, CA3 0QS, UK
Third Edition 1988
This digital edition 2006
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ISBN-13: 978-1-84227-451-4
ISBN-10: 1-84227-451-1
I. The Modern Approach to Luke-Acts
VII. The Word of this Salvation
VIII. What must i do to be saved?
X. Postscript: Lucan Studies Since 1979
Contemporary study of the Gospels is very much interested in the theology of the four Evangelists and attempts to express as clearly as possible the distinctive message of each Gospel. The purpose of the present book is to examine the writings of Luke—both his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles—from this point of view. It has three main suggestions to make.
The first is that Luke’s theology is closely related to that of his sources. One of the dangers of recent study of the Gospels is that it tends to accentuate the differences between the Evangelists and their sources. Luke’s work, however, represents a development of ideas already present in the traditions which he used. Luke, it may be claimed, was a historian who wished to give a faithful portrayal of the ministry of Jesus and the life of the early church. He did not, therefore, write a work of creative imagination, but was very much controlled by his sources. He believed that the Christian faith rested upon the events associated with the work of Jesus and the apostles, and so he gave a historical (not a “historicizing”) account of what had happened in order to confirm the faith of his readers.
A second suggestion is that the key concept in the theology of Luke is “salvation”. This is a wide term. As employed by Luke, it refers to the content of the good news preached by Jesus, a message which brought men and women deliverance from their sin and the joy of the kingdom of God. In the preaching of the apostles it comprised the offer ...
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About Luke: Historian and TheologianTaking into account both Luke’s Gospel and Acts, Marshall makes three suggestions. First, that Luke’s faith rested on the events associated with the work of Jesus and the apostles, hence the historical accounts found in his writings. Second, that the key concept in Luke’s theology is “salvation,” understood as both a present possession and a foretaste of future blessings. Third, that Luke was an Evangelist or preacher concerned to lead people to Christian belief on the basis of a reliable record of the historical facts. Luke’s writings have become the storm center of much biblical study. Is Luke a reliable historian or merely a theologian concerned to commend what he considered to be Christian faith, even at the expense of accuracy? In this book, Howard Marshall, author of an outstanding commentary on the Greek text of Luke, examines these and other related problems. |
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