A message to Paul Dohse on my epiphany about why I despise the epistular Paul

I just want to make you aware of a book called The Theology of St. Luke by Hans Conzelmann, who was an eminent scholar on Luke-Acts in the 20th century. I’ve been reading it since late Monday night, and have done two posts on just a few quotes from the book.  In any case its helped me realize by degrees that my opposition to Pauline theology is fueled by the fact that I believe in Lukan theology. Who would have thunk it.  Paul’s biggest buddy, as we generally think he was, disagreed with Paul (the Paul of the epistles anyway, not his own Paul that he features in Acts) on why Gentiles need not be circumcized, and on the terms of salvation.  The reason I can’t stand Paul turns out to be that I agree with Luke and Luke’s Paul against the fake Paul of the epistles.  Luke beleives that the reason Gentiles need not be circumcized is that the apostles determined this under the inspiration of the Spirit that Gentiles only need to keep the moral law, abstain from idolatry, abstain from blood and “things strangled,” and abstain from sexual immorality, and that none of the rest of the Law need be kept by them, whereas the epistular “Paul” (falsely-so-called) argues that the reason is because of a (false) dichotomy between faith and works.  My faith has always been deeply rooted in Acts, and I believe in Luke’s reason for why we need not keep the ceremonial law, as I also believe in Luke’s soteriology which heavily emphasizes repentance and baptism and maintains that salvation mainly consists in forgiveness of sins received upon the terms of forgiveness repentance and baptism, unlike the epistular “Paul” who maintains that salvation consists in a fictional category called “justification” which is based on thin air and a magical faith that God zaps us with like some kind of Calvinist sky fairy.

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A few quotes from The Theology of St. Luke by Hans Conzelmann (Part 2)

As I already said in A few quotes from The Theology of St. Luke by Hans Conzelmann (Part 1), Conzelmann has not taken any interest in this book in harmonizing Luke with Paul’s theology nor his own theology but rather simply in describing Luke’s theology as he understands it from Luke-Acts.

Because he proceeds in this way, he even takes notice in some places of the fact that Luke and Paul do not agree with each other.  Another example of this is on page 228:

The conception of sin [in Luke-Acts], compared with Paul’s, has a strong ethical colouring, and the same is true of deliverance from sin. The idea of ‘forgiveness’, which recedes right into the background in Paul, is predominant in Luke, but repentance is the condition of forgiveness.

My elaboration: Unlike Paul who speaks of justification instead of forgiveness and all but denies the necessity of repentance to ‘justification’. Luke’s theology which emphasizes forgiveness of sins on the basis of repentance clearly calls for repentance, whereas Paul’s justification by faith and not by works deters people from repenting by making them feel that they are justified in continuing to sin even with reckless abandon.

Conzelmann continues:

Forgiveness and repentance [in Luke-Acts] are inseparably connected…The combination which is characteristic of Luke is that of repentance and conversion, which shows that these two go together as the basis for Baptism and forgiveness and indicate a change of attitude in the way of life.

How very different from Paul!  And that is precisely the point.

A few quotes from The Theology of St. Luke by Hans Conzelmann (Part 1)

A few years back now I purchased an old book which I found being constantly referred to in scholarly books on the New Testament. It was frequently cited in footnotes and found in bibliographies, and I wanted to read some of the passages with a bit more context.  So I ordered an old copy on Amazon for pretty cheap, but never sat down and read straight through.  So I decided recently to remedy that situation.

I refer to The Theology of St. Luke by Hans Conzelmann (Professor of New Testament, University of Zurich). It was published in German in 1953 and translated into English by Geoffrey Buswell in 1961.

Its a scholarly work, and Conzelmann is only interested in describing the theology of Luke as found in Luke-Acts, not in harmonizing Luke with an other books of the New Testament, not even the Pauline epistles. Nor is he interested in the question of what the historical Jesus really said, or Jesus’ eschatology, etc. but only in Luke’s interpretation of these things.  The result being that he has no need to grind a theological axe.  He is not telling us what we should believe, only what he interprets to have been Luke’s theology based on his reading of Luke-Acts.

I want to share two quotes that caught my eye reading it today.

From Pgs. 208-209:

The life of the Church in the Spirit, with its fellowship and sacrament, is prayer and endurance in persecution, is illustrated in the descripton of the primitive community. But here again there is a direct awareness of the historial uniquenss of this situation, for this period is the ‘arche’, when the witnesses are still present. The account does not present a timeless ideal for the Church, for the reproduction or conservation of the conditions prevailing then is obviously not required in the present. There is no trace in Luke of the idea which would form a necessary part of such a programme of reform, i.e. an asserton that the Church has declined from its original high ideal. Further, in his account of Paul’s missionary activities he never sets up the primitive community as a model. We can see this in relation to the Law: although the primitive community–including Paul–keeps the Law, Gentile Christians are free from it, and for a reason which is characteristically different from Paul’s.

He recognizes that Luke agrees with Paul in the fact of Gentiles being free from the Law (at least from the ceremonial aspects of the Law) but also openly acknowledges that he sees that Luke believes this for an entirely different reason from Paul.  In other words, Luke’s explanation of why we don’t have to be circumcised, etc. is not Paul’s explanation.  This is massively significant!

He doesn’t elaborate any on the difference between the two (at least not in this chapter), but the difference is obvious to anyone who can read: Paul’s reason, of course, is the boneheaded faith vs works rhetoric.  But Luke’s reason is that the apostles got together in Acts 15 and under the guidance of the Spirit determined that Gentiles need not keep any of the Law but the moral commandments, and to abstain from idolatry, abstain from eating blood/”things strangled”, and abstain from sexual immorality. Could there be any two more different ways to explain the same fact?

From Pg. 218, and remember he is describing his interpretation of Luke’s theology, not his own theology:

In actual fact the unity of the Church of past and present consists in the identity of her message and her sacraments; Baptism confers forgiveness and the Spirit, and the Lord’s Supper continually keeps the fellowship in being. The sacraments are the abiding factor which spans the gulf separating the present from the beginnings.

He recognizes without any struggle that Acts 2:38 says exactly what is says, and unlike the Baptists doesn’t spend his entire life dedicated to convincing the whole world that Acts 2:38 doesn’t say what it says “because it just can’t, because Paul says ‘faith alone’.”  What a waste of life to be a Baptist.  To live your whole life deluded by “Paul says” when what Paul says is not even worth one bean, much less a hill of beans.