In two of the literature surveys that we have cited above, namely the one by Gasque and the other by Bovon, it will have sufficiently emerged, we hope, that Gasque was a convinced 'Luke-as-historian' scholar. In reviewing Mattill's study of the problem of the historical value of Acts, Gasque says:
Mattill's position concerning the question of history in Acts would be roughly equivalent to the view of the present author, though he would be a little more hesitant than I have been to side completely with the defenders of Luke as a historian.165
The other survey of research in Luke-Acts to appear in the last few decades was, as we have seen, F. Bovon's, Luke the Theologian: Thirty-three years of research (1950- 1983).
Bovon differs from Gasque in that he approaches Luke-Acts as a theological project of the author, and his position is immediately evident in the title he has given to his survey.
If the 'Luke-as-historian' camp can boast of the support of some of the biggest names in Lucan scholarship, the opposition has an equally (and perhaps even more) formidable arsenal.166 For this latter camp, it is clear not only that Luke was a theologian, but one who deliberately used his sources and other materials at his disposal tendentiously and creatively to suit his theological purposes. Where the
W.W. Gasque, History, 21 A. Mattill himself, it may be noted, has no hesitation in affirming the general historical reliability of the narrative of Acts in the picture it gives of early Christian development. In Luke as a Historian in Criticism since 1840 (1959), he pleads for the treatment of Acts not as a theological treatise, but as any other historical document. Though Gasque makes his 'Luke-as-historian' stance obvious throughout his History, he gives his clearest support for this position when he says: "My study of the history of criticism, as well as the narrative of the Book of Acts and the historical problems involved, has strengthened my conviction that those critics who rate the author as a reliable historian of early Christianity are essentially correct in their conclusions.
Contrary to the impression given by some recent writers, this is not a minority opinion among scholars"; (:5). Other scholars, however, do not quite agree with Gasque on this last point, not to mention many others. See, for example, R.I. Pervo in Profit with Delight: "The concept of 'Luke the theologian' is an implicit heritage of the Tubingen school now accepted by the vast majority of scholars" (:2), or again, "Just why Acts is thought to be historiography is unclear...The notion that the Gospels are immanent, objective history has few contemporary adherents" (:4).
166 Such names as Baur, Kasemann, Dibelius, Haenchen, Conzelmann, Roloff, Jervell. What is immediately striking is that these are the biggest names in modern German scholarship, although Baur could hardly be called 'modern'.
'Luke-as-historian' camp acknowledges the presence of some historical inconsistencies in Luke's work without always convincingly providing explanations for them, the scholars who view Luke as a theologian make capital of these same historical inaccuracies to buttress their own position that the writing of history was not Luke's primary pre-occupation, and that, where it suited his theological purposes, he twisted the facts of history by arbitrarily altering or even inventing new material.167
Where the 'Luke-as-historian' camp has been at great pains to explain the discrepancies, for example, between Luke's Paul and the Paul of the Letters, for the 'Luke-the-theologian' scholars this has been merely another point of departure for the defence of their position. The discrepancies, they claim, are not so significant in and of themselves; rather what is significant is that they prove that Luke did not work as a historian but as a creative writer. Haenchen, for example, is of the view that Luke freely adapted his material for his theological purposes and did not feel under obligation to be strictly historical.168 The problem of Paul is thus yet another indication of Luke's creative imagination as a theologian not fettered by the need for historical accuracy.
Many scholars are of the view that if we are rightly to speak of an emerging 'shift' in Lucan studies (that is to say, from viewing Luke as a historian, to seeing him as a theologian) we must go back to the 1950's, to H. Conzelmann who was one of the first to systematically study Luke-Acts from a theological perspective. He viewed Luke as a very capable and original theologian, an innovator who reworked the tradition he had received and the sources at his disposal according to a theological agenda he had consciously set for himself. Conzelmann was a true upholder of F.C.
Baur's Tendenzkritik, about which see footnote 150 below.
Though the real catalyst in the development of this perspective (that is to say, Luke as a theologian) was R. Bultmann, his views were given their most definitive form by E.
Kasemann, M. Dibelius, and H. Conzelmann - all descendants, adherents or associates of F.C. Baur's famous Tubingen school.169 Though it was Baur himself
167 The most prominent representatives of this school of thought are Dibelius and Haenchen.
168 E. Haenchen, "Tradition und Komposition in der Apostelgeschichte", ZTK 52 (1955), 210-218.
169 F.C. Baur, professor of theology at Tubingen in the nineteenth century, was the famed founder of the Tubinger Schule of New Testament criticism. Baur used the method which later came to be known as Tendenzkritik ('tendency criticism), i.e. the study of New Testament writings in terms of the special theological viewpoint of the author or editor. Thus arose the suspicion (if not downright rejection) of the historical reliability of New Testament texts, especially of Luke-Acts, sometimes to the point where
who, on the basis of his critical method, set in motion the view that the book of Acts had little historical value,170 it was left to Bultmann, Dibelius, and Conzelmann to ring the death-toll for the historical reliability of Luke-Acts when, with the aid of form- and redaction-criticism, they put forth the view that Luke had lost the original eschatological understanding of Jesus,171 and replaced it with a theology of salvation history.
E. Kasemann developed Bultmann's view and also affirmed that Luke-Acts is marked by a loss of the original kerygmatic sense of the Jesus tradition. Due to this loss, so argued Kasemann, Luke replaced primitive Christian eschatology (a major element of which was belief in the imminent Parousia) with salvation history.
E. Haenchen, one of the foremost scholars on Luke-Acts, was more interested in the ongoing kerygmatic and apologetic mission of the early church in the time following Jesus' departure. According to Haenchen, it is in this uncomfortable void (uncomfortable, that is, for Luke and his community), that the seeds of Luke's theology are to be found.
It was H. Conzelmann who, with the aid of form-criticism, gave Bultmann's original view its fullest expression, especially in his Theology of St. Luke (1961). For Conzelmann, all of Lucan theology rests on the one key point: the delay of the Parousia and how to address this uncomfortable situation for the early Christians. In his article, "Shifting Sands: The Recent Study of the Gospel of Luke", Marshall gives a brief but very succinct review of Conzelmann's views as well as scholarship's not
Luke was believed to have actually created, ex nihilo, some aspects of Jesus' life in order to meet the requirements of his theological purpose or tendency. In the post-Baur period, Formgeschichte ('form- criticism') was to be rigorously applied to the study of scripture in a whole new way. Formgeschichte attempts to get behind the written words to the oral tradition in the transmission of the Gospel materials. The goal is to determine, as far as possible, the Sitz im Leben of the individual pericopae.
This has often led, in the hands of scholars like Bultmann, Dibelius, and others, to conclusions that are extremely skeptical of the historical foundations of the life and ministry of Jesus.
170 See F.C. Baur in the Jahrbiicher fur wissenschaftliche Kritik, 15 (1841), cols. 369-375. Among other things, Baur judges Acts to be "keine objective, sondern nur eine durch ein subjectives Interesse alterirte Darstellung".
171 See the section on "The Development toward the Ancient Church", in Bultmann's Theology of the New Testament II, London, SCM Press Ltd (1955, 116-117).
172 E. Kasemann, "Paul and Early Catholicism", in New Testament Questions of Today, 231, n.l.
173 See E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles (1971), and his "The Book of Acts as Source Material for the History of Early Christianity", in L. Keck & J.L. Martyn (eds.), Studies in Luke-Acts, 258-278.
47 too sympathetic response to them.174 H. Talbert delivers a telling caveat when he says:
Lukan studies in the last twenty years have been like shifting sands. At present, widespread agreement is difficult to find, except on the point that Conzelmann's synthesis is inadequate.175
But what, precisely, was Conzelmann's "synthesis"?
2.2 Hans Conzelmann
Briefly stated, Conzelmann's thesis is that the delay of the Parousia is the key to Luke's theology and plays a critical role for our general understanding of Luke-Acts.
In order to explain this delay and fill in the void left by it, Conzelmann divides salvation history (or what he calls the Heilsgeschichte) into three distinct periods or stages: (1) the period of Israel which extends from creation to John the Baptist, (2) the period of Jesus from his baptism by John to his ascension, the period which, for Conzelmann, is the 'centre of time', and (3) the period of the church under tribulation (ecclesia pressa), which was the period from Jesus' ascension to his Parousia, an event that Conzelmann places at some distant and indeterminate future point. In this way, the delayed parousia ceases to be an issue both for Luke and for his community.
Conzelmann basically based his periodization of salvation history176 on his interpretation of Luke 16:16 ("The law and the prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached...") which for him marked a clear temporal caesura (turning point) separating the time of Israel (up to John the Baptist) from the time of Jesus. If the combination of the words |i£Xpi 'Itodvvou and duo TOT6... are really taken to signify, in the mind of Luke, the separation of two periods, then Conzelmann's three-tiered view of history is in trouble, for the words in their
174 I.H. Marshall, "Shifting Sands, Int 30 (1976), 381-395.
175 I.H. Marshall, "Shifting Sands", 395. So also W.C. Robinson, Der Weg des Herrn: Studien zur Geschichte und Eschatologie im Lukas-Evangelium, Hamburg, H. Reich, 1964, and H. Flender, Heil und Geschichte in der Theologie des Lukas, Milnchen, Kaiser Verlag, 1965.
176 Conzelmann was, in fact, not the originator of this picture of salvation history. He developed his thesis from the work of H. von Baer, {Der heilige Geist in den Lukasshcriften, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1926), in which the concept appears to have been put forward for the first time. The proposal has however been associated almost completely with Conzelmann because he was the first to systematically elaborate on it, and his book Die Mitte der Zeit (1953, 1957), translated into English as The Theology of St. Luke (1960) has probably generated more scholarly debate on the theology and purpose of Luke-Acts than any other.
context undoubtedly allude to two periods of salvation history: the time up to John the Baptist, and the time after him. This apparent absence of a third period of salvation history has brought Conzelmann under fire from scholars like W.G. Kummel, C.H.
Talbert, and F. Bovon,177 to mention only a few. These scholars, with Kummel leading, prefer to think of Luke's salvation history in two stages, namely a period of promise and a period of fulfillment. However, as other scholars have been quick to point out, promise and fulfillment are hardly unique to Luke-Acts: one finds promise and fulfillment in both Matthew and John.
Conzelmann is not as clear regarding where he draws the line separating the time of Jesus from the time of the church under stress. He appears to make the re-appearance of Satan, the beginning of the passion, as well as the Ascension the points of separation between the two periods of salvation history. In a sense, Conzelmann is forced by his own interpretation of Luke 22:3 ("Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve") to make the passion narrative the caesura between the time of Jesus and the time of the church, because the passion begins almost simultaneously with the end of the "Satan-free" period, and this is when Satan leads Judas to betray Jesus.
How does Conzelmann come to this conclusion?
According to Conzelmann, one of the distinctive characteristics about the period of Jesus is that it is "Satan-free". It is a period in which Satan is absent from the life of Jesus, his last appearance having been in Luke 4:13 ("When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time"). However, it is in Luke 22:3, very much during the period of Jesus, that Satan enters into Judas and makes him betray Jesus. Thus Conzelmann's interpretation of the presence or absence of Satan, and the significance of that fact, is surely not correct. The following statements represent some of the weaknesses of Conzelmann's thesis, and the rather clumsy way in which he situates the division between the period of Jesus and that of the church on the basis of the absence and later presence of Satan.
177 See W.G. Kummel, "Current Theological Accusations against Luke", ANQ 16 (1975), 131-145, particularly p. 137; "Promise and Fulfillment in Lucan Theology" in C.H. Talbert (ed.), New Perspectives from the Society of Biblical Literature Seminar, New York, Crossroad, 1984, 91-103; F.
Bovon, "Luc: Portrait etprojet",Z,w/«F/e 153-154 (1981), 9-19, particularly p. 13.
The temptation is finished (iTama), and the devil departs. A question of principle is involved here, for it means that where Jesus is from now on, there Satan is no more - aXpt Kocipou period free from Satan is now beginning, an epoch of a special kind in the centre of the whole course of redemptive history178
When Jesus was alive, was the time of salvation; Satan was far away, it was a time without temptation (cf. Luke iv, 13 with xxii, 3 and xxii, 35). Since the Passion, however, Satan is present again and the disciples of Jesus are again subject to temptation (xxii, 36)179
Between the 'Temptation' and Passion he [Satan] is absent, then he re-appears (Luke
180
xxii, 3) and the 'temptations' are back again
In, other words, Luke 4:13 marks the end of Satan's rule (the end of Jesus' temptations), and with Satan's re-appearance in Luke 22:3 a new period of temptation, a new epoch in the history of salvation begins. Thus, the end of the
"Satan-free" period inaugurates a new page in the history of salvation.
Conzelmann's position becomes especially awkward when it is kept in mind that elsewhere in his book he speaks of the Ascension as the point of separation between
1 0 1
the second period of salvation and the third.
2.3 Responses to Conzelmann
Because it is not clear where Conzelmann places the second caesura that separates the time of Jesus from the time of the church under stress, some modern scholars who continue to regard Conzelmann's proposal as basically sound (with some adjustments in detail), have stepped into the breach and, like J.A. Fitzmyer, have made a concerted attempt at identifying the second turning point in salvation history, even though Fitzmyer basically relies on what would appear to be an argument from silence:
one cannot ignore the further periodization that is implicit in Lucan thinking when one considers Acts as the sequel to the Third Gospel. Only Luke has composed such
H. Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke, 28.
179 H. Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke, 16.
180 H. Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke, 156.
181 In his enumeration of the three stages of salvation history, Conzelmann says of the third period (the period of the church) that it is: "The period since the Ascension, on earth the period of the ecclesia pressa, during which the virtue of patience is required...", The Theology of St. Luke (:16-17). He
further says, "the Ascension does not form the conclusion of the first, but the beginning of the second volume of Luke's historical account" (:204).
182 J.A. Fitzmyer, Luke the Theologian, 158-159.
a sequel, and indeed with an explicit reference to a new period in the context of the
• 183
ascension...
According to Fitzmyer, therefore, the second turning point in the history of salvation that separates the time of Jesus from the time of the church under stress is to be seen especially in the fact that Luke presents the account of the ascension twice: Luke 24:50-52 and Acts 1:3-6.
In the view of Fitzmyer, Conzelmann understood this (the Ascension) as referring to the conclusion of one period, that of the prophets up to and including John the Baptist, and the beginning of another in which the central figure was Jesus. The fact remains, however, that Conzelmann is rather muddled on this point.
Another important point on which scholarship has not forgiven Conzelmann is his total exclusion of the infancy narrative (Luke 1-2) which he did not consider to be an integral part of the Gospel. The voices against Conzelmann tended to be louder and more insistent than those in his favour, though some attempts were made at vindicating him on some points of his argument by scholars such as I.H. Marshall,185
H.H. Oliver,186 J.A. Fitzmyer, W.B. Tatum,187 and others who found no fault with the general scheme of Conzelmann's Heilsgeschichte. They attempted, instead, to make up for his exclusion of Luke 1-2 by trying to fit the birth narratives into Conzelmann's scheme. But is it possible, in any case, to talk of a period of salvation history that runs from creation to John the Baptist while some of the most crucial elements in the life of John the Baptist are ignored altogether? Can the story of Jesus, at least from the Lucan perspective, be told without the story of John? We will argue that the infancy narrative and John the Baptist, especially, play more integral roles in the Lucan writings than Conzelmann accords them.
183 J.A. Fitzmyer, Luke the Theologian, 62.
184 J.A. Fitzmyer, Luke the Theologian, 18, n.l; 75, n.4; 118; 172. Though Conzelmann {The Theology of St. Luke) does concede that there is "a strong argument in support of the view that the prologue formed an original part of the Gospel", he dismisses the infancy narrative: "we shall not discuss it"
(:18, n.l), and "We are not taking the prologue into consideration here" (:22, n.2). See further, 24-25;
75, n.4; 72; 174, n.l; 193, n.5. Scholarship has in general crucified Conzelmann for this stance.
185 Though he is critical of the details, for example in Acts (Leicester, Inter-Varsity Press, 1998), Marshall accepts the major theses of Conzelmann (:22-24).
186 H.H. Oliver, "The Lucan Birth Stories and the Purpose of Luke-Acts", NTS 10 (1964), 202-226.
187 W. B. Tatum, "The Epoch of Israel: Luke 1-2 and the Theological Plan of Luke-Acts", NTS 13 (1967), 184-195.