The Construction of Christian Identity

In Acts, the good news is proclaimed to rich and poor, slave and free, high and low, Greek and Roman, Jew and gentile. Evidently Luke sought to portray the gospel as available to all peoples (cf. Gal. 3:27–28), an agenda expressed most vividly in Acts 2:16–21—a passage that advances the imperative of Acts 1:8. Luke describes the day of Pentecost as the fulfillment of the prophet Joel’s prophecy regarding the descent of the Holy Spirit; indeed, that prophecy expresses the “grand narrative” in Luke by promising universal inclusion of all peoples into the covenant people Israel. Through the proclamation and promise of the gospel, the former barriers of age, race and ethnicity, class, status, and gender were eradicated by the coming of the Holy Spirit, thus grounding the new movement’s identity and purpose (Williams 2009, 289–93). Although the Pentecost event, like Joel’s prophecy, describes the experience of “ethnically diverse” Jews, in Acts the event foreshadows the eventual integration of gentiles in the promise of the Holy Spirit—a theme that receives significant development later in Acts (see 8:26–15:35), perhaps signifying a protracted struggle in the church. The integration of gentiles depends on the giving and receiving of the Holy Spirit (10:34), who also functions as the “eraser” of ethnic difference (15:8–9).

Because Luke also believes that God is faithful to God’s promises, however, and that certain patterns in history indicate the regularity of divine providence, the early part of the narrative depicts the work of mission and evangelism as restricted to Palestinian or Hellenistic Jews. Missionary activity is carried out by Jewish figures like Peter, Philip, Barnabas, and Paul (and a few “minor” missionaries like the Hellenist Jews in Acts 11, Priscilla and Aquila, and the Alexandrian Jew Apollos, whom they “instructed more accurately in the faith,” 18:1–2, 24–26). Luke never recounts the missionary activity or preaching of any non-Jewish convert. “This ethnic monopoly (a kind of ‘glass ceiling’ for Gentile followers?) may explain why Paul circumcises Timothy, who has a Greek father and a Jewish mother (16:13).… What distinguishes him is that Paul desires to make him a missionary partner (16:3)” (Liew, 422).

In addition, one observes that Luke does not depict the Holy Spirit as bestowed on all converts without distinction. In Acts, faith in Christ without reception of the Holy Spirit represents only incomplete or partial integration into the community (8:14–17; 18:24–19:7). “The presence of the Spirit is seen as the distinguishing mark of Christianity—it is what makes a person a Christian.… The Spirit, then, is the sine qua non for being a Christian, not merely a means by which one gets a spiritual booster shot subsequent to conversion” (Witherington, 140). The Samaritans experience a delay between their baptism and their receiving of the Holy Spirit (8:16); the Ephesians receive the Holy Spirit closely following their baptism (19:5–6); and the Holy Spirit comes upon the centurion at Caesarea, Cornelius, and his household even before they are baptized (10:44–48; Liew, 420–21), causing some scholars to term this event “the Gentile Pentecost” (Witherington, 134). There is no mention of the Ethiopian convert in chapter 8 receiving the Holy Spirit, however; the Spirit instead moves on Philip as he and the Ethiopian are rising from the baptismal waters, transporting Philip to a new locale (8:38–40). Accordingly, the black Ethiopian’s incorporation into Christ appears incomplete, while the nonblack European’s incorporation is complete. This may be (as some contemporary scholars have suggested) because Luke seeks to complete the “Acts of Philip” before moving to his next subjects, Paul’s “conversion” (ch. 9) and Peter’s initiation of the gentile mission (ch. 10; Haenchen, 309–17). Or perhaps Luke used the Ethiopian eunuch positively to express the fulfillment of Isaiah (56:4–5, 8), which promises God’s salvation and honor to the eunuch (González, 117–18). Or perhaps we see here an aspect of Luke’s ideology regarding authority: although Philip initiated the Samaritan mission, the Holy Spirit was not given until Peter arrived (ch. 8); likewise, although Philip baptized the Ethiopian eunuch, he was not authorized (according to Luke) to transmit or confer the Holy Spirit. These explanations may not mitigate the impression that Luke values the conversion of a European—a Roman centurion—over a black African who presumably “outranks” him—an official of the Candace.

The issue of gender offers another example of Luke’s inconsistency. The quotation from Joel names “prophesying daughters,” but neither the prophesying of non-Jews nor of women is narrated in Acts; only that of sons of Israel. Luke and Acts are generally held to be the New Testament writings most affirming of women, but as Beverly Roberts Gaventa asks, “What ever happened to the prophesying daughters?” Several women are mentioned by name, like Tabitha, Mary (mother of John Mark), Lydia, and Damaris, among the believers; but they are not given voice. The first woman to speak in the narrative, Sapphira, is also the last (Acts 5:8; Gaventa, 49). When we at last encounter Philip’s four unmarried daughters (21:9), we are told that they prophesy, but hear not a word from them; instead, we hear from Agabus, who has come down from Judea, some distance away, to warn Paul of the danger awaiting him in Judea (Acts 21:11). The silence even of prophesying daughters subtly reveals Luke’s views of masculinity (Gaventa, 56–58). Women are not independent missionaries and preachers; rather, they support the male apostle’s missionary activity as coworkers and patrons (even Prisca/Priscilla must accompany her husband: Schüssler Fiorenza, 161).

Nor does Luke narrate prophesying slaves (the last element in Joel’s prophecy). Twice, female slaves are given voice, although briefly. Rhoda, a house slave, encounters Peter, but her testimony about him is initially rejected by those in her owner’s household (Acts 12:6–17). Paul exorcizes a spirit of divination from an unnamed slave girl (who stands outside the circle of believers), who declares the truth about his mission and message (though this is not described as prophecy); but she too is silenced and is not offered the message of salvation after the exorcism (Acts 16:16–18). Thus, while Luke includes several accounts of women and of slaves in Acts, his narrative effectively suppresses roles that conflict with his own treatment of the church and his understanding of authority. For him, “male characters circumscribe female identity in the text, developing the ‘domestic’ characterization of women whereby premium Roman imperial values are demonstrated for leadership” (Penner and Vander Stichele, 198).

A postmodern reading of all these issues recognizes that Luke utilized Joel’s prophecy to express his grand-narrative that the bestowal of the Holy Spirit on “all flesh” embraces all racial and ethnic diversity, without regard to geographical location, language, or nationality (Witherington, 71–72). This promise of universal fulfillment nevertheless masked certain inconsistencies: Luke did not understand it to eliminate or radically to realign sex and class barriers, but only to validate the incorporation of gentiles into the covenant promises of the people Israel. In the end, a postmodern reader might critique such inconsistencies by observing that Luke’s idea of embracing all ethnic diversity accorded with the values of the Roman Empire: it embraced ethnic diversity without demolishing Roman social convention or the hierarchical ordering of society (Williams 2009).

Luke’s project, then, might be described as attempting to redefine and rebuild the people of God after the distress of the first Jewish-Roman War; he attempted to establish the church as the newly constituted Israel, composed of believing Jews and gentiles as the true heirs of Israel (Pao). He pursued this goal by using Joel’s prophecy as his grand-narrative. In this endeavor, he also had some other scriptural precedents, for example, Isaiah 40–55. Thus one could also describe Luke’s efforts as attempting to present his version of the fulfillment of the promises of Isaiah, which resulted in two distinct social/religious entities called Judaism and Christianity. Although according to Acts 11:26, believers are called “Christian” for the first time in Antioch during the apostolic age, the absence of the term Christianoi in any literature, from within or without the Jesus movement, until the early second century leads most scholars to conclude the term was not a common name for members of the movement before that point. Luke’s effort is an early endeavor to form a distinct identity that will not be firmly established for some centuries (S. Matthews, 7).