Re: (Fwd) Coordinate series in Acts 2:42

From: Gregory Bloomquist 3027 (GBLOOMQUIST@spu.stpaul.uottawa.ca)
Date: Fri Sep 20 1996 - 13:20:31 EDT


> It does seem to me that a fuller integration of the message of the
> apostles with the miraculous powers they exercized in the Lord's name
> would be a healthier way of understanding their message than now-prevalent
> ideas that often fail to see the link between the teaching and the
> miracles.

I have no vested interest in showing the connection of 2.42 with
charismatic gifts or not. My desire is to be faithful to the text of
Scripture. And what your exchange has helped me to see is that there
are others who, like me, have seen the possibility of a connection
between 2.42 and what follows AND the implication that apostolic
teaching is more than just "head-knowledge".

As I noted in a posting off-line, this may be the very kind of
example that we need to show a "thaumaturgic" culture in the
background of Lk's mind, a culture, that is, which as Vernon Robbins
describes it "focuses on the individual's concern for relief from
present and specific ills by special dispensations". To give such an
individual with such a series of cultural expectations a sermon instead
of healing, a stone instead of bread, would be meaningless. But, to
give the person healing AND explanation of the source of the healing,
ah, now there could be what the earliest Christians in Acts 2.42
adhered to.

Whether this is the case or not will of course need to be probed
exegetically. I, for one, have noted that we are dealing, in three
of a possible 4 cases of expansion, with expansion on a lexical
basis. This already gives us "one leg up" over those who try to
discuss the passage on a merely thematic basis.

I would want, perhaps now, to examine other progammatic statements in
Lk-Acts to see whether the same practice is found. The obvious
example is of course the very structure of Acts following 1.8, Jesus'
programmatic last words to the 11. (In a recent article I noted that
the "ends of the earth" is a not-so-subtle inversion of the Augustan
imperial rhetoric that saw the periphery -- including Judaea -- as
the ends by making Rome -- the "heart" of the Augustan rhetoric to be
the "ends".)

Does this expansion happen elsewhere? I have a feeling it does and
will explore it more.

Greetings!
GREG BLOOMQUIST, Theology
Saint Paul University / University of Ottawa
223 Main, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 1C4 CANADA

email: gbloomquist@spu.stpaul.uottawa.ca
fax: 613-751-4016
voice: 613-782-3027



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