Chapter 6 Notes from How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
Though rules from the previous chapter apply, most Christians don't read Acts the same way they read Judges or 2 Samuel, even if they are not fully aware of it. The underlying question that needs to get answered to provide clear hermeneutical precision is "What is Acts trying to teach?" The interest that brings people to Acts (whether historical, devotional, etc.) typically develops a great deal of selectivity to take place in what's studied.
A few observations about Luke's possible purposes with Acts:
- Interest in showing the movement of the gospel, starting from a Jerusalem-based, Judiasm-orientated beginning to a Holy Spirit led worldwide phenomenon.
- Interesting in what he doesn't tell us, including biographical information of individual lives, little to no interest in church organization and polity, and other gospel expansion beyond a direct line from Jerusalem to Rome.
- Fails to standardize or bring things into uniformity
- Shows to be a model, but a model of the overall picture rather than specifics
The large discussion arises between people asking "should we do this?" as described in Acts, or "can we do this?"
A generally shared rule is that: Unless Scripture explicitly tells us we must do something, what is only narrated or described does not function in a normative (i.e. obligatory) way - unless it can be demonstrated on other grounds that the author intended it to function in this way.
Do we have to follow what Acts states? Maybe not... but one must ask that if such a procedure makes good sense, why anyone would fight it.
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