The Character And Purpose Of Luke S Christology

Luke's christology is carefully designed. Luke portrays the exalted Jesus as God's co-equal by the kinds of things he does and says from heaven. Through the Holy Spirit, the divine name and personal manifestations, Jesus behaves toward people in Luke-Acts as does Yahweh in the Old Testament. His power and knowledge are supreme. Jesus sovereignly reigns over Israel, the church, the powers of darkness and the world. Luke deepens this portrait by depicting Jesus as deity who by nature behaves as servant: the earthly Jesus acted among his people as one who serves; the exalted Jesus continues serving his people by strengthening and encouraging them in their witness of him to the world. That the believers in Acts resemble the way Jesus behaved in the Gospel means that they too are now imaging some of his servant-like character in their witness of him.

Despite the striking frequency with which the Greek word kyrios, Lord, occurs in Luke's Gospel, this study is the first comprehensive analysis of Luke's use of this word. The analysis follows the use of kyrios in the Gospel from beginning to end in order to trace narratively the complex and deliberate development of Jesus' identity as Lord. Detailed attention to Luke's narrative artistry and his use of Mark demonstrates that Luke has a nuanced and sophisticated christology centered on Jesus' identity as Lord.

Luke has often been understood to transmit a variety of Christological traditions without reflecting on them in relation to each other. In this study, Daniel Gustafsson challenges such positions and demonstrates that when the Gospel of Luke is approached as a narrative, a different picture emerges. Presentations of Jesus as "Messiah", "Son of God", "prophet", and "Son of Man" are shown to conform to Luke's overall plot and significantly overlap each other. The voices of characters with high authority, the use of Scripture, and Jesus's relationship to the Holy Spirit are examples of other factors that contribute to coherency in Luke's Christology.

The nature of Lukan christology has been much debated in recent years, with scholars claiming the pre-eminence of such categories as Lord, Prophet, Christ, or Isaianic Servant. In the present work the author examines one major theme within Luke's christology, that of the coming king from the line of David. A study of the Lukan birth narrative and the speeches in Acts reveals that Luke shows a strong interest in this royal-messianic theme, introducing it into passages which are introductory and programmatic for his christology as a sermon, portraying Jesus in strongly prophetic terms. The author seeks a synthesis of these seemingly conflicting royal and prophetic portraits in Luke's interpretation of the Old Testament book of Isaiah. When Isaiah is read as a unity, the eschatological deliverer is at the same time Davidic king (Isa. 9.11), suffering servant of Yahweh (Isa. 42-53), and prophet herald of salvation (Isa. 61), leading God's people on an eschatological new exodus. On the basis of this synthesis the christology of Luke-Acts is seen to be both consistent and unified, forming an integral part of Luke's wider purpose in his two-volume work.

Henrichs-Tarasenkova argues against a long tradition of scholars about how best to represent Luke's Christology. When read against the backdrop of ancient ways of constructing personal identity, key texts in the Lukan narrative demonstrate that Luke indirectly characterizes Jesus as the one God of Israel together with YHWH. Henrichs-Tarasenkova employs a narrative approach that takes into consideration recent studies of narrative and history and enables her to construct characters of YHWH and Jesus within the Lukan narrative. She employs Richard Bauckham's concept of divine identity that she evaluates against her study of how one might speak of personal identity in the Greco-Roman world. She engages in close reading of key texts to demonstrate how Luke speaks of YHWH as God in order to demonstrate that Luke-Acts upholds a traditional Jewish view that only the God of Israel is the one living God and to eliminate false expectations for how Luke should speak of Jesus as God. This analysis establishes how Luke binds Jesus' identity to the divine identity of YHWH and concludes that the Lukan narrative, in fact, does portray Jesus as God when it shows that Jesus shares YHWH's divine identity.

As a narrative critical study of the Lukan Infancy Narrative, this is a work which puts new questions to an old and (some would claim) over interpreted text. The work traces through the Infancy narrative two trajectories - one theological, the other epistemological. At the point of theology, Luke focuses upon God and the strange shape of the divine visitation; at the point of epistemology, Luke focuses upon the human being and what is needed to recognise the divine visitation, given its strangeness. The study then shows how the two trajectories converge in the Infancy Narrative's last episode, the Finding of the Child in the Temple. Though often accorded scant attention, this is an episode which, Coleridge argues, is the true climax of the Infancy Narrative, since it is only then that Jesus is born in the narrative as the protagonist he will prove consistently to be and only then that the Lukan Narrative itself is born. It is this rather than any physical birth which most absorbs Luke in the first two chapters of the Gospel. Though a study of the Infancy narrative, this is a work with far-reaching implications for the whole of Luke-Acts

This study uses composition criticism to consider everything that Luke wrote about Jesus. Jesus was a human being and a prophet, yet Luke wished to say much more. He has a very extensive and developed portrayal of Jesus as a saviour. His roles as Servant of Yahweh and Son of Man play a real part in explaining a number of Jesus' experiences and actions, including his passion. Jesus' identification as the Christ can be associated with the being Son of God, but each of these identifications has its own nuances. Luke 1:35 proves crucial for a correct understanding of Son of God and guides the reader's comprehension of Jesus' identity. The OT background of Lord leads to a correct interpretation of this title when applied to Jesus, and Luke willingly predicates similar things of God and of Jesus. Robert F. O'Toole, S. J., was born and raised in St. Louis and entered the Jesuits in 1954. He holds an M. A. in Greek and Latin and he is licentiated in both philosophy and theology. He did his doctorate in Sacred Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome; his director was the then Fr. Carlo Maria Martini, S. J., later Cardinal-Archbishop of Milan. Fr. O'Toole taught at St. Louis University for 17 years and in 1991 moved to the Biblical Faculty at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, where he was also Superior of the community and then Rector of the Institute. In September of 2003, he was named the President of the Gregorian University Foundation. Fr. O'Toole has published extensively. Most of his publications are studies on Luke-Acts, and he has also done numerous book reviews. This, his fourth book, addressed a topic that for years has captured his intellectual interest.

In keeping with the Pillar New Testament Commentary’s distinctive character, this volume by James R. Edwards on Luke gives special attention to the Third Gospel’s vocabulary and historical setting, its narrative purpose and unique themes, and its theological significance for the church and believers today. Though Luke is often thought to have a primarily Gentile focus, Edwards counterbalances that perspective by citing numerous evidences of Luke’s overarching interest in depicting Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s providential work in the history of Israel, and he even considers the possibility that Luke himself was a Jew. In several excursuses Edwards discusses particular topics, including Luke’s infancy narratives, the mission of Jesus as the way of salvation, and Luke’s depiction of the universal scope of the gospel. While fully conversant with all the latest scholarship, Edwards writes in a lively, fluent style that will commend this commentary to ministers, students, scholars, and many other serious Bible readers.