Abstract
It isn’t often that the appearance of a new Bible commentary makes publishing news, but the first volume of Steve Walton’s new Acts commentary does just that. The book of Acts is one of the last to be completed in this long-running series: John Nolland’s companion commentary on Luke’s Gospel (also in 3 volumes) came out in 1991-93. Once again, the publishers have sensibly decided to let Walton publish each volume as it is ready, without waiting for the full set — though this does mean readers will have to wait for the third volume to read Walton’s mature reflections on such ‘Introductory’ issues as the author and date of Acts (p. 88).
The first volume has all the virtues of the old Word Bible Commentary format, but without its drawbacks. Each section of text is given in the author’s own translation, with a Pericope Bibliography giving a comprehensive guide to scholarly literature on the passage. This is followed by detailed Notes (in small print) on language and text, and an overview analysis of Form/Structure/Setting. The core of the commentary comes in the verse-by-verse Comments on the Greek text, capped by a more succinct Explanation of Meaning of the passage as a whole. Despite the familiarity of the Word format, the page layout and feel of this volume come as a pleasant surprise: a new publisher (Zondervan) has achieved a welcome lightness in both look and feel. The volume is surprisingly light to hold (it does make a difference!) and easy on the eye, with a move away from the dense and heavily-accented print of the older volumes in the series. Careful use of typefaces and running heads makes it reasonably easy to identify the verse you want to find (few people read commentaries from beginning to end!) — though (paradoxically) I sometimes felt that a more judicious use of bold type could make it easier to locate the comments on a particular verse.
It is the final Explanation section which Walton recommends as the best place to start for readers looking for an overview of the passage and its key emphases (p. 87). Far from being a hermeneutical afterthought, Walton conceives the Explanation as the focal point of the exposition: ‘my focus in writing is on the interpretation of the message of Acts’ (p. 87). ‘Other things’ — like textual criticism, social and cultural settings, and historical issues — are of interest only as they contribute to the interpretation of the text (ibid.). This is an important feature of the commentary, and expresses Walton’s growing conviction that Acts is first and foremost ‘a book about God’ (p. 88). It enhances this commentary’s potential usefulness for preachers: the Explanation is a good starting-point for readers to identify what Walton sees as the significant point of a given passage, before turning to the Comments on specific verses to check out the details of the argument. (I particularly appreciate the slow and painstaking way in which Walton talks us through the multi-fold historical and linguistic complexities that encrust the text of Acts.) On this basis, the message of these opening chapters of Acts would look something like this:
Acts is a narrative of restoration and salvation. It deals with the fulfilment of biblical promises by the God of Israel who is also the ‘Sovereign Lord’ of time and eternity.
Jesus in Acts is a heavenly figure, absent in body, but very much an active and powerful presence in the narrative. Just as Luke’s Gospel narrates what Jesus ‘began to do and teach’ (1.1), Acts narrates what Jesus continues to do and to teach through the testimony of his followers.
The Holy Spirit is the gift of God, dispensed through Jesus to all those who call on his name.
Acts presents the early Christian community as a renewal movement from within Judaism, marked by prayer, authoritative teaching, radical holiness, shared meals, shared possessions, inclusivity and signs and wonders.
Conflict and persecution raise the question: who speaks for the God of Israel? The early chapters of Acts depict a progressive displacement of Israel’s political leaders by the ‘illiterate Galileans’ inspired by the Holy Spirit as authoritative speakers of God’s word.
In principle, I am wholly in favour of this emphasis on the theological message of Acts. It is all too easy for the scholarly guild to forget that the primary users of our text are interested in it as a religious text — that is, as a text which has significance within a faith community. The message of the text can all too easily disappear from view, overlaid by the weight of linguistic, historical and sociological learning which has always dominated the commentaries. The question of the religious significance of our texts is equally appropriate in an academic environment, for students and teachers of NT texts who would not identify with any religious viewpoint. Understanding how our texts work as religious texts is just as important for the historian, the sociologist, or the literary critic as it is for the theologian or the preacher. Arguably you can’t understand the history of these texts — or their reception history — without paying proper attention to their theological significance.
My question though is: whose theology are we talking about here? You’ve only to look at Jaroslav Pelikan’s commentary on Acts in the Brazos series 1 to see how two theologians from different traditions can come up with very different theological readings of the same book. This is particularly the case with ecclesiology. As Käsemann once said, the book of Acts is appealed to by every kind of church as a foundation document for its own particular understanding of the nature of the church. The early chapters of Acts are particularly rich in such controversial passages, from the Presbyterian understanding of elders and deacons (chaps 6, 11), to the Episcopal understanding of ordination and confirmation (chaps 1, 6, 8) or the Pentecostal understanding of Spirit-baptism and ‘second blessing’ (chaps 2, 8). For a theological reading of the text, it seems to me that the discussion can only be enriched by a more explicit engagement with a wider range of ecclesial traditions.
At the very least, we need a sense of what Anthony Thistleton used to call the ‘two horizons’ of our texts — the potential gap between the authorial audience and the Bible readers of today. Walton is of course perfectly aware of development and variation in theological ideas: his treatment of the Christology of Acts, for example, helpfully points to developments within Christian thinking ‘on the way to Nicaea.’ The book of Acts, with its dramatic narrative punctuated by speeches, also requires (I would suggest) a third horizon: the distinction between the dramatic (intradiegetic) audience of a speech (e.g. Stephen’s speech to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem) and the rhetorical (extradiegetic) setting of Luke’s finished work, in a very different time and place. Even at this very basic level, thinking about readers and audiences problematizes the concept of identifying the ‘theological meaning’ of the text. Are we talking about the theology of Peter, Paul, or Gamaliel? Or the theology of Luke and his original audience? Or ‘our’ theology (whoever ‘we’ are)? Unless we ask these questions, there is a danger of flattening out the ‘meaning’ of the text into a kind of ‘Lowest Common Denominator’ of generic North Atlantic Protestant theology which limits Luke’s capacity to surprise us. In particular, there is a danger of missing the theological dynamism and jeopardy built into the text through Luke’s dramatic construction, the possibility of growth and change within the internal theological landscapes inhabited by Luke’s characters.
It is a tribute to any commentary that it draws the reader in to ask such profound questions. I hope I have said enough to whet listeners’ appetites to explore the richness of this commentary for themselves. I look forward to seeing the second and third volumes, hopefully not too far hence.