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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