Luke

Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible

Justo L. Gonzalez

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781611640731
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Ministerio cristiano

The volumes in Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible from Westminster John Knox Press offer a fresh and invigorating approach to all the books of the Bible. Building on a wide range of sources from biblical studies, the history of theology, the church's liturgical and musical traditions, contemporary culture, and the Christian tradition, noted scholars focus less on traditional historical and literary angles in favor of a theologically focused commentary that considers the contemporary relevance of the texts. This series is an invaluable resource for those who want to probe beyond the backgrounds and words of biblical texts to their deep theological and ethical meanings for the church today.

1:1–4:13 Preparation and Early Ministry

1:1–80 The Setting

1:1–4–The Prologue

Although this section has traditionally been called the “prologue” to Luke’s Gospel, it is much more than that. In it Luke tells us much about his methodology and about how he understands the task he has undertaken. His “prologue” is similar to many others in his time. In many ways, it is also similar to what one would write today in an introduction to any book on history. It acknowledges his predecessors, says something about his research, and sets forth the purpose of his writing—“so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.”

Note that Luke does not say that he is writing his Gospel because other accounts are inaccurate. We tend to read this into the text, because in our time it is customary to justify the writing of an historical monograph and other similar material on the basis that one’s predecessors have been wrong. But there is nothing of the sort in Luke’s prologue. Although his words in Greek are not exactly the same, the NRSV is justified in translating what “others” have set out to produce as “an orderly account,” and then to use the same words for what Luke himself proposes to write. He is not correcting others; he is simply telling the same story from a different angle and using some different materials. In this sense, he is more like a sportswriter who sets out to tell the story of the same game about which many of her colleagues are also writing. Others have reported on the same game. This particular sportswriter might even look at what some of those other colleagues have written. She will also follow certain stylistic conventions for this sort of article. Still, her story will differfrom theirs. She may not claim that it is better; but it is still different, and worth telling. Thus news reporting makes clear what historians know, but their readers often forget: that the telling of events always reflects the perspectives of both the eyewitnesses and the narrators themselves. News, like history, can always be told anew and differently, and still remain the same news or the same history! This is crucial for our understanding of Luke’s Gospel and of our own task in proclaiming the “good news” of Jesus Christ.

That Luke is not writing on the basis that the others are wrong is crucial also for understanding the nature of the Bible as Word of God. Almost certainly one of those other writings to which Luke refers is the Gospel of Mark. Luke is not claiming that Mark is wrong—not even that his story is better than Mark’s. He is simply telling the story as he sees it and wants Theophilus to hear it. Since we do not know much about Theophilus, it is impossible to tell to what degree Luke’s presentation of the story is geared to a particular audience. Some years after Luke wrote, the church began putting together various books into what we now call the New Testament. People were well aware that the four Gospels that we now have did not agree on every detail, yet they put them all together in one canon of the New Testament! By that time, some other documents were circulating, each of them claiming that it was the true story of Jesus and his teachings. They presented Jesus as far more “spiritual” and less physical that did our present Gospels. (One of those was the Gospel of Judas, whose relatively recent publication made headlines.) Yet the church rejected all those other documents and their claims to be the sole and absolute truth. Instead, it formed a New Testament including four Gospels that, while agreeing on the essentials, were written from different perspectives and even disagreed on a number of points. What was important was to affirm that Jesus Christ was indeed born, that he suffered and died on the cross, that he was raised from the dead, that all this was done for our salvation, that it is the fulfillment of God’s ancient promises to Israel. The rest—how many people Jesus fed, what were his exact words from the cross, and the like—was secondary. As with sportswriters, there might be differences in interpretation and on details; but still all would agree on what team won, by what score, and other essential items. And, as in the task of writing on sports there are certain canons that reporters follow, so does Luke follow the canon of historical writing in his time.

This may be a problem for absolute literalists, who would have to claim, for instance, that Jesus taught his disciples two different versions of the Lord’s Prayer. But in truth it is a boon for all of us, for it forces us to focus our attention on the central tenets of the Christian faith, and it also means that we can read the same story from four different angles—and then tell it ourselves from our own angle!

The foregoing does not mean that we are free to make up the story as we please. Luke is not making up his story out of whole cloth. He is very clear that he is writing “after investigating everything carefully from the very first.” This is not fiction. Luke is not telling us what he thinks Jesus should or could have done or said. He bases his writing on the testimony of “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.”

This notion of “witnessing” will appear repeatedly in Luke’s two books, the Gospel and Acts. Events can be known only through those who have witnessed them. We know of past events because there are witnesses who tell us about them. Others after us will know of the same events because we and other generations have witnessed to them. The knowledge of historical events is possible only through an unbroken chain of witnesses, some oral and some written. Luke knows that the story he is telling has come to him through witnesses. Now he is witnessing to Theophilus. The implication (seen more clearly in Acts) is that Theophilus and others like him will join the unbroken chain of witnesses.

As to who “Theophilus” might have been, the truth is that we simply do not know. The title Luke gives him, “most excellent,” was usually reserved for certain fairly high echelons in Roman society. Most likely he was a believer, perhaps one who was undergoing preparation for baptism. The name itself means “friend of God,” and for that reason after about the year 200 it was often said that “Theophilus” is anyone who loves God. This is probably not true historically, and there was a Theophilus to whom Luke addressed his two books. But in another sense it is true: the book is addressed to all of us who, like Theophilus, need to “know the truth concerning the things about which [we] have been instructed.”

On the other hand, we must see our task as parallel not only to Theophilus but also to Luke, who seeks to provide “an orderly account” from his own perspective and experience. Just as Luke does not deny the validity of those who have written before him, our affirmation of our own perspective is part of our witnessing. I witness to Jesus Christ as who I am (an elderly Hispanic Protestant church historian, and many other things!) or my witness is not authentic. Witnessing is always contextual—as is theology. Rather than decrying the wide variety of contextual theologies that have emerged in our time, we should rejoice in it, as we rejoice in the grace of God that has provided us with four Gospels to witness to the eternal gospel.

1:5–25 John the Baptist Is Announced

The rest of chapter 1 tells the parallel stories of the annunciations of John the Baptist (1:5–25) and of Jesus (1:26–38), whose mothers then come together in the visitation (1:39–56). The chapter then ends with the birth of John (1:57–80), thus setting the stage for the birth of Jesus in chapter 2.

Unfortunately, there is a tendency in religion to make things sound strange and archaic. This is why we often speak of “the annunciation” and “the visitation,” when we simply mean the announcement and the visit. What we have here are parallel announcements to Mary and to Elizabeth, who then come together when Mary visits Elizabeth.

Immediately after his prologue, Luke gives us the historical setting for the story he is about to tell: “In the days of King Herod of Judea.” He will continue this practice throughout his two books, for instance telling us who reigned at the time of the birth of Jesus (2:1–2). This is important for him not only as an historian, but also as a theologian. There were circulating at the time many stories of the seasonal death and resurrection of gods. Such myths sought to explain the apparent death of nature in winter, and its rebirth in spring. Some of the religions based on these stories claimed that the god actually died—or was sorely weakened—at the beginning of every winter, and then came back to life in spring. Others saw these myths as ancient events, before the beginning of history, which then were reflected in the cycles of the seasons. Very soon after the time of Luke’s writings, some people would seek to interpret Christianity in similar fashion: the death and resurrection of Jesus are an eternal myth that explains and is reflected in the cycles of life. Others, without going that far, would claim that what was important about Jesus was not who he was or what he did, but what he taught. For them, the story of Jesus was only the means whereby his teachings were offered to humankind—or, most often, to that small portion of humankind that was privy to his secret teachings.

Luke will have none of that. The story he is telling is not about recurring phenomena, nor about mythical explanations for the way the world functions, nor even about the great teachings of Jesus. The story he is telling is about this person Jesus, the Christ, whose power extends even over natural phenomena, and whose teachings are indeed great; but who is above all an historical figure, who was born during the time of Herod, Augustus, and Quirinius (2:1–2), who lived during the reign of Tiberius (3:1), and who was crucified and raised from the dead when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea.

The significance of all this for today should be obvious. Once again, some would turn the story about Jesus into a mystical and mythical explanation of the nature of life, depriving it of its essential character as an historical event. Much more commonly, many—perhaps even the majority in many traditionally Christian nations and cultures—would reduce the significance of Jesus to his teachings. For such persons, to be a Christian is to follow the teachings of Jesus, teachings that are often watered down and turned into generally accepted principles for social life within the existing values of the culture. In contrast to such views, Luke’s book is not primarily about the teachings of Jesus, but about the story of Jesus. The teachings of Jesus are important, not simply because they make sense or are useful, but rather because they are his teachings. At the very center of Luke’s understanding of the gospel stands this historical figure, this man of flesh and blood, whose life is part of history and yet has marked all of history.

That history, however, did not begin with Jesus. Here again, there would soon be Christians who claimed that nothing that happened before the time of Jesus was of any significance. Some would reject what we now call the Old Testament as the Word of God. Some would say that it was the word of a lesser god, an ignorant or misguided deity who made this world and ruled it with an iron hand until Jesus came to free us from the tyranny of that god of creation and of history. This too Luke would reject. For him, the story of Jesus is the fulfillment of the long course of human history and of God’s dealings with humankind, a history reflected in the Old Testament.

This is the significance of the story of the announcement of the birth of John the Baptist. Those of us who are not steeped in the religion of Israel may find the story about Zechariah and Elizabeth confusing, or even distracting or irrelevant. Some scholars tell us that one of the reasons why Luke introduces this story here is to make clear that John the Baptist and Jesus were not two competing figures, but rather that the former was the herald of the latter. This is true. But the story of the conception and birth of John the Baptist also has another function: it serves as a bridge between the story of Israel in Hebrew Scripture and the story of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel. As one reads the story of the announcement of the birth of John, one is immediately reminded of the birth of Samuel. The theme of the barren woman appears repeatedly in the Scriptures of Israel. Among the matriarchs, Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel were all sterile; yet by the grace of God the lineage of Abraham was preserved through them. Samson and Samuel were also born of barren women; indeed, the birth of Samson is announced to his mother in terms that remind us of the announcement of the birth of John (Judg. 13:1–5). The way Luke tells the story of the birth of Jesus makes clear that Jesus himself is part of that history. That Jesus is born of the sterile woman par excellence—a virgin—makes him the fulfillment of the entire history of Israel (to which we shall return when commenting on Luke 2).

It was a great relief to Zacharias to hear this, to know that the faithfulness of God is not made of no account by his short-coming, but indeed falls out all the greater at last. It happens sometimes, that the Lord offers and fulfils what He has promised to the unbelieving in spite of their resistance.

—John Calvin

A Harmony of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke, eds. David W. Torrance and Thomas P. Torrance, trans. A. W Morrison, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, 12 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 1:17.

Finally, one element we often miss when reading the Gospel of Luke is how he weaves subthemes that appear more than once. In this passage, for instance, Zechariah loses his speech; later (11:14) Jesus will cause the mute to speak. Note also that when Zechariah sees and hears the angel, he is overwhelmed with fear, but the angel tells him not to be afraid, for he is the bearer of good news—a detail that immediately reminds us of the reaction of the shepherds when the angel appears to them in 2:9, and the words of the angel in the next verse: “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy.”

1:26–38 Jesus Is Announced

The parallelism continues between John and Jesus. At the very beginning of this section, Luke again gives us a chronological reference, now linking the announcement to Mary with the announcement to Zechariah: “In the sixth month.…” Here too it is the angel Gabriel who is the bearer of the news of the unexpected birth. And once again the theme appears, of moving from fear—or in this case, perplexity—into joy. Just as Zechariah asked, “How will I know that this is so?” Mary asks, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” And, just as he did with Zechariah, Gabriel now tells Mary about the greatness of her promised son.

Those parallelisms, however, make the contrasts starker. Zechariah asks for proof that what Gabriel says is true. Mary simply knows that it is impossible, and asks for an explanation. In her case, the miracle is even greater than in Zechariah’s. John “will be great in the sight of the Lord.” But Mary’s child “will be called Son of God.”

The one who, being begotten of the Father, created all ages, consecrated this day by being born of a mother. In that [eternal] birth he could have no mother, and in this [temporal] birth he needed no father. One may say therefore that Christ was born from a father and a mother, and yet without father nor mother: as God, from the Father; as man, from a mother; as God, without a mother; and as man, without a father.

—St. Augustine

Sermon 184, On the Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ 3, my trans.

In this combination of parallelisms and contrasts, Luke is telling us that the Jesus whose story he is now telling is both the continuation of the history of Israel and much more than that. Like other great leaders of Israel, he too will be the son of a barren woman—but this one a virgin! His reign was foreshadowed by David and his kingdom; but, in contrast with David, “He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Jesus was born to be a marginal person. He was conceived by Mary when she was unwed .… Thus, while the birth of Jesus to Mary was divinely justified, it was nevertheless socially condemned. Jesus, as well as his parents, was marginalized from the time of his conce...