By R. GINNS, O.P.
§ 744a Bibliography—Commentaries: Origen, P7395G XIII, 1801 ff.; St Cyril of Alexandria, P7396G LX7397XII, 475 ff.; St Ambrose, P7398L XV, 1527 ff.; Ven. St Bede, P7399L XCII, 307 ff.; Lagrange O.P., S. Luc (1921), Gospel of Jesus Christ (G.J.C.), (1938); Knabenbauer S.J. (1896); Schanz (1883); 7400*Plummer, IC7401C (1910); 7402*Edershei7403m, Jesus the Messiah (1886). Introduction: C7404E, St Luke; 7405*Ramsay, Luke the Physician; 7406*Hobart, The Medical Language of St Luke (1882); Burrows, The Gospel of the Infancy, Heythrop, 1940.
§ b Author—‘Thirdly, Luke the Physician, by nation a Syrian of Antioch, whose praise is in the gospel, and who himself was a disciple of the Apostle Paul, wrote (volumen condidit) in the districts of Achaia and Boeotia, seeking material from the ancients (quaedam altius repetens) and, as he admits in his preface, writing rather from hearsay than from eye-witness’. Thus St Jerome in his commentary on Matthew sums up the unvarying tradition traceable as far back as the Muratorian Fragment and the Adv. Haer. of St Irenaeus which date from the 2nd cent. Firm tradition, backed by internal evidence, shows that Luke was also the author of Acts. His name—Lucas, Λουκᾶς—is in all probability an abbreviation of Lucanus or of Λούκιος, the latter being the Greek form of the Latin Lucius, which is the sort of praenomen that would be assumed by a Greek on the acquisition of Roman citizenship. He may have been a freedman if not a full Roman citizen. Some wish to identify him with Lucius of Cyrene, Ac 13:1, in view especially of Cyrene’s repute as a centre of medical study. § c ‘Luke the most dear physician’, Col 4:14, was St Paul’s companion during the Roman imprisonment (61–3), and there is much to be said for Harnack’s suggested translation, ‘the beloved Luke, my doctor’. There is good reason for thinking that the Apostle stood in need of medical attention, and it may have been in such capacity that Luke accompanied him. The attribution of Syrian nationality to Luke should not be exaggerated; it probably indicates no more than the enjoyment of citizen rights at Antioch, the Syrian capital. To all intents and purposes Antioch was a Greek city, owing its foundation to the Alexandrine conquest of the East. Josephus speaks of ‘the Macedonians and Greeks who were the inhabitants’ of the city (Ant. 12, 3, 1), and it became the main channel for Greek culture flowing eastwards. Thus its situation and character were ideal for the spread of the Gospel westwards, for the introduction to a Greek world of a faith which had such origins as the faith of Christ. It was there that the disciples lost their national character and appellation, and under the new Greek title of Χριστιανοί were recognized as a group distinct from the Jews; Ac 11:26. This is in complete accord with the character and spirit of the third Gospel, and it seems likely that its author was one of numerous Greeks who first accepted faith in Christ at Antioch; Ac 11:20. § d We incline to the opinion that Luke was of European origin, perhaps descended from Greek or Macedonian colonists settled in Antioch. He was very familiar with Antiochian events; Ac 11:19–27; 13:1; 14:18–21, 25; 15:22–35; 18:22. Confirmation is added by the manner in which Paul groups him with his Greek disciples (Col 4:14, Phm 24), and by the irreproachable Greek style of Lk and Ac which marks off their author clearly from the other NT writers, all of Hebrew origin (except perhaps the writer of Heb). Luke’s association with Paul and the Apostles is affirmed by Scripture and tradition. Jerome’s words ‘whose praise is in the gospel’ are taken from 2 Cor 8:18, and the nameless preacher (there is no question of a written gospel) is traditionally identified with Luke, who remained Paul’s constant companion from about 50 to the Apostle’s death in 67. § e Their first recorded meeting was at Troas when Paul was about to begin his first mission to Europe, Ac 16:10. Luke goes to Philippi, remains there to carry on the work at Paul’s departure, and is there collected by him on the last return to Jerusalem, 7407c 58; Ac 16:10–40; 20:5 ff. Remaining in Palestine during Paul’s imprisonment at Caesarea, 58–60 (some hold that the Gospel was written at this time) he accompanies him to Rome for the appeal to the imperial law-courts, staying there for the two years while the case awaits trial. On the successful outcome of the appeal it may be surmised that Luke joined him during his few remaining years of apostolic work, for we find him still with Paul during the latter’s second imprisonment at Rome, 2 Tim 4:11, which ended with the Apostle’s martyrdom. A tradition traceable to 7408c 200 states that Luke wrote his Gospel in Achaia, where he had preached, and that he died in Bithynia (probably a mistake for Boeotia). Later traditions make him a painter and one of the Seventy-two, the latter most unlikely.
§ f Date—This may be fixed with reasonable certitude from the evidence provided by Luke himself. He wrote Ac after the Gospel, therefore if we can fix the date of Ac this gives the latest limit for Lk. Now the evidence of Ac forces us to the conclusion that it was written in or shortly before 63. For the chronology of St Paul we base our conclusions on the work of Brassac (Une Inscription de Delphes et la Chronologie de St Paul, R7409B [1913] 36–53, 207–17) who fixes the first Roman imprisonment 61–3. Now it is against all likelihood, and at variance with the known character and style of Lk, that he would have left his reader in doubt about the outcome of Paul’s appeal to Caesar, had he known it when he finished Ac. The arbitrary suggestion that he left the question pending because he had in mind to write a ‘third treatise’ has no foundation. On the contrary, the decision of the Biblical Commission (cf. § 51i) directing Catholic scholars to the evidence in favour of dating Ac towards the end of the first Roman imprisonment has all the reason on its side. Added confirmation is provided by the fact that Ac throughout shows the Roman authorities in an accommodating attitude towards the Church; there is no suggestion of the violent persecution which began under Nero after the fire of Rome, July 64, a persecution which put the faith under the imperial ban and brought St Peter to martyrdom. § g There are two objections to consider, the first hardly meriting serious attention, viz. that Lk shows dependence on Josephus and therefore must have been written not earlier than the end of the 1st cent, but the asserted dependence is unproven. The second, more grave, is Irenaeus’ assertion (Adv. Haer. 3, 1, 1) that Mk did not write his Gospel until after the deaths of Peter and Paul. But as Lk is the third and shows a clear dependence on Mk, it follows that Lk would have to be dated in or after 67, the date of Paul’s martyrdom. Efforts have been made to interpret the words of Irenaeus in a manner more favourable to an earlier date (cf. Chapman, JT7410S [1905] 563 ff.); but with Lagrange we prefer to doubt the unsupported assertion of Irenaeus. Rationalist critics on a priori grounds demand a late date because of Lk’s more detailed description of the destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 70. Our conclusion is that Lk was composed before the end of 63; Harnack said 7411c 60.
§ h Contents and Plan—Lk completes the trio of the Synoptic Gospels and as such follows the general scheme of Mt and Mk: the preaching of John the Baptist, the Baptism and Temptation of Jesus, the ministry in Galilee and the Transfiguration, the journey up to Jerusalem, the ministry in and around the Holy City followed by the Passion, concluding with the Resurrection and Ascension. Such appear to have been the lines of the primitive catechesis of the Gospel indicated by Peter at the first meeting of the Apostles after the Ascension, Ac 1:21–22. Thus most of Mk is contained in Lk; in addition Lk contains much of that which distinguishes Mt from Mk. But further, Lk contains a good deal wholly proper to itself that we owe to Luke’s diligent researches into the origins of the Gospel story; it is twice as long as Mk and considerably longer than Mt. Of its twenty miracles six are proper, as are eighteen of its parables. The long Infancy Narrative, which forms one-eighth of Lk, is completely proper save for a word or two in Mt. Finally the long Journey Narrative, 9:51–18:30, erroneously called the Peraean Ministry, is to a large extent Lk’s own. Like Mt and unlike Mk, he gives a number of the discourses of Jesus; but while Mt prefers to gather the discourses and sayings into a unity, Lk follows a different kind of order, distributing them throughout his narrative and placing them in their suitable settings. ‘In Mk (and in Mt if he knew the whole of it) Lk would find proof of a considerable gap. Mk is not unaware of the fact that Jesus had preached in Judaea, but he chooses to restrict himself to Galilee.… Lk discovered what had happened during a mission of Jesus in Judaea covering several months, and he has given an account of it, but place, occasions, characters, no longer stand out as they would in an account by St Peter … Hence in this whole section, peculiar to Lk and of priceless worth, we do not get the details that characterize the story of the lake-side’ (Lagr7412., GJCI 5). § i The purpose of the Gospel is defined in its opening words which recall Jn 20:30–31; Lk has gone to great pains in searching out the exact origins of the Gospel history and in setting everything down ‘in order’, so that his reader may know the security of the truths in which he has already been ‘catechized’, i.e. instructed by word of mouth; the word plainly suggests the primitive catechesis of the Gospel and, according to Harnack, should here be taken in its strict sense: ‘The third Gospel is, in the full force of the term, an evangelium εὐαγγέλιον, i.e. the announcement of good tidings. These good tidings tell of the Messiah’s coming and of his work, which is to offer salvation to mankind. In Ac Luke has told how these good tidings spread from Jerusalem and, after various wanderings, reach Rome itself. In the Gospel he has shown how the good tidings came down from heaven to Jerusalem first of all, then to Nazareth and eventually to Bethlehem. The word then spreads over all Israel and finally comes back to Jerusalem, where the work of salvation is brought to its fitting completion’ (Lagr7413. Lk xxxiv). Lk falls easily into six clearly defined parts which we follow Lagrange in entitling thus:
(1) The Infancy Narrative, the dawn of salvation, 1:5–2:52.
(2) The investiture of Jesus with his Messianic office, 3:1–4:13.
(3) The manifestation of the Saviour in Galilee, 4:14–9:50.
(4) Insistent preaching on salvation, 9:51–18:30.
(5) Arrival at Jerusalem and the Passion, 18:31–23:56.
(6) The Resurrection and Ascension, 24:1–53.
§ 745a Sources—Luke indicates them himself: first many written accounts of the Gospel history, and secondly those persons ‘who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word’, 1:1–2. Ancient commentators were inclined to interpret ‘word’ as the proper name of the Son of God after the fashion of Jn’s prologue, but Lk and Ac commonly use it to mean the teaching of doctrine. We need not conclude (though some have done so) that Lk disapproves of the written documents to which he refers, hence we need not exclude Mt and Mk from among them. It is antecedently probable that there were a great many written accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus, in whole or in part, during the early years of the Church; it would be surprising if there were not. Knowing Luke as we do from his writings, it is also antecedently probable that such a careful writer and exact historian would neglect no opportunity of familiarising himself with what had been written on a subject he had so much at heart. He tells us, 1:3 that he had been a diligent inquirer ‘from the beginning’ ἄνωθεν—not to be confused with the ‘from the beginning’ ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς of 1:2. Origen says that ἄνωθεν should be translated ‘now for a long time’, i.e. the matter had been a preoccupation of Lk since the time of his conversion years before. § b His opportunities of consulting those who had come into contact with Jesus may be gathered from a consideration of Luke’s own history. He spent long periods in Palestine, Antioch and Rome. It will be observed that whenever St Paul mentions him, Mark is always in the company; Col 4:10; 14, Phm 24, 2 Tim 4:11. Luke mentions others who could have furnished him with information: Joanna, wife of Chusa, Herod’s steward, Susanna, and ‘many other (women) who ministered unto (Jesus) of their substance’, 8:3. With regard to the Infancy Narrative it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the repeated remark of 2:19 and 2:51 is intended to indicate that the Mother of Jesus herself is the direct or indirect source of his information. Some modern scholars maintain that the Semitic character of the Infancy Narrative shows that Luke used an Aramaic written source; it is possible but there are other explanations of Lk’s Semitisms. As Plummer so well says, Lk is the most versatile of all the NT writers. He can be Hebraistic in describing Hebrew society and Greek when describing Greek society. § c His relationship to Mt and Mk in the parts common to him and them is disputed among scholars of the greatest authority. In our opinion the following brief conclusions seem best to account for the facts. First that Lk shows dependence on Mk for much material and order of events, though without any slavish copying. Where the Synoptists march together Lk prefers the order of Mk, omitting however and transposing where his purpose requires. His aim is chiefly to present Jesus the Jewish Messias to his Gentile readers as the divine Saviour of all mankind, and to present him in a manner calculated to inspire confidence in those hitherto considered by the Jews as outside the pale, sinners and objects of divine wrath by their very birth; cf. Eph 2:3; Gal 2:15. This stands out in the sections peculiar to Lk; in parts common to Lk and Mk his omissions create the same impression. He passes over details which tend to leave an impression of severity towards non-Jews, e.g. the incident of the Gentile woman of Syro-Phoenicia, Mk 7:25 ff. For a similar reason he omits things too characteristically Jewish to be of interest to Gentile readers. § d Again it is characteristic of him to pass over details unbecoming to the dignity of Christ, e.g. the attribution of madness by his relatives, manifestations of human emotion (though not always); he omits remarks derogatory of the dignity of the Apostles; he dislikes repetitions and abundance of detail, and finally he leaves out larger passages which would no doubt hinder him from including those proper parts which he intends to add to the narrative of Mt and Mk. His relation to Greek Mt is harder to define, but again, considering the antecedent probabilities, it is hard to believe that a man of Luke’s disposition and opportunities could have remained ignorant of such an important document as Aramaic Mt, the only account at that time known to have been written by an Apostle. § e Official Catholic teaching (cf. § 50e) is that our Gk-Mt is substantially identical with Ar-Mt, but who translated the latter and when is a matter of conjecture. It may not have existed in Greek at the time of Luke’s writing, but there could have been no great difficulty in the way of his learning the contents. As he would have known that its chief advantage over Mk was the fact that it contained a long collection of the discourses of Jesus, there is nothing improbable in the supposition that he may well have obtained or found a Greek translation of these discourses. In the large sections of Mt and Lk devoted to the sayings of Jesus (reckoned as one sixth of each Gospel, though the sayings are scattered through Lk) the similarities are so obvious that there seems to be either interdependence or else a common source for both. In reply to those who maintain that Gk-Mt seems rather dependent on Lk than vice-versa, it may be said that this can be explained by the possibility that the Greek translator made use of Lk in those parts common to Lk and Ar-Mt. For fuller discussion of the relations between Mt, Mk and Lk see article on The Synoptic Problem, §§ 610–5.
§ f Character of the Gospel—Bearing in mind who the author is—not merely a healer of men’s bodily ills but a ‘beloved physician’; a convert from Gentile paganism to faith in a Christ who is a divine healer of men’s spiritual maladies; a devoted follower of St Paul, the preacher of universal salvation in Christ Jesus—this Gospel manifests precisely the character to be expected of it. Plummer points out that its first words recall those with which Hippocrates begins his treatise On Ancient Medicine, and we may note that the benign spirit of Lk calls to mind the old Hippocratic oath taken by medical students. They swore that they would honour and obey their teacher, care for his children in need, help their patients to the best of their ability, never supply them with poison or perform unlawful operations, never abuse their position but always enter a house as a friend and helper. Biblical critics, orthodox and unorthodox, join in praising Lk as the most touching and beautiful book ever written, outstanding for its note of joy at the loving-kindness of God and for its deep sympathy with the sorrows of suffering humanity. But Luke is no mere sentimentalist. He insists with repeated emphasis also on the necessity of absolute self-surrender for all who would profit by the goodness of God and the tenderness of the Saviour. It is a Gospel of renunciation of a most stark character, and the chief example of that is the Saviour himself. § g Attention may be drawn to the following salient points: (1) Luke’s qualities as a genuine historian and literary artist of great merit; (2) his insistence on the joyful character of the good tidings of the Gospel, the solution of both the moral and social evils of the world; (3) his emphasis on the necessity of prayer, exemplified by additional instances in the life of Christ; (4) the important place he assigns to those women who were associated with Christ, to his Mother first of all. Tradition has made Luke the patron of Christian art, and even if he never wielded the painter’s brush, without question he has used his pen with an art that has furnished the chief inspiration of Christian painters all down the ages, providing them with the subjects of which they are fondest: the childhood of Jesus at Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem, the widow’s son, the prodigal, the disciples at Emmaus. In like manner the liturgy of the Church draws largely from Lk: the Gloria in excelsis, Benedictus, Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis, while the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary give us the Infancy Narrative in the form of prayer. Few writers have stood such severe tests of historical accuracy as Luke, yet he comes out triumphant under every test. § h Adverse critics have repeatedly attacked him as unreliable and even dishonest, but in every case it is the critics who are eventually put to shame. Even Harnack has to blush for ‘the truly pitiful history’ of their criticisms and the party prejudice which blinds them to the facts that tell against them. Today every biblical scholar worthy of repute accepts with little reserve the verdict of Ramsay that Luke is a great and accurate historian. Every advance in scholarly research has so far completely justified the claim with which Luke begins his Gospel, that like a good historian he has verified his facts before setting them in order. That order is not a chronological stringing together of unrelated facts, a procedure which would have offended both the canons adopted by the classical historical models which he consciously imitates, and also the spirit of rational philosophy characteristic of the Greek world in which he had received his education. Not that Luke lightly neglects chronological sequence; but what he chiefly seeks is the logical concatenation of events out of which grows the object he always keep in view, ‘that thou mayest know the security of those things in which thou hast been catechized’, 1:4. § i This introduces us to the second point above noted, the joyful character of Lk. It is not mere human history but the divine history of man’s salvation, summed up here in the word evangelium εὐαγγέλιον, a word he never uses, but its verbal form εὐαγγελίζειν is found in such significant places as 1:19; 2:10; 3:18; 4:18, 43; 7:22. εὐαγγελίζεσθαι is the LX7414X rendering of the Hebrew biśśar ‘to gladden with good tidings’, a favourite word of St Paul, Luke’s master. No one can read Lk without realizing that this is the key-note of his Gospel, the gladness that God’s loving-kindness stirs up not only on earth but in heaven also. At the birth of Christ the whole celestial court turns out to celebrate the event; when a sinner turns back to God with repentance there is public holiday in heaven; cf. 15:7, 10. The special note of joy in Lk is due to the fact that the good tidings of salvation are offered to all who are well-disposed, without distinction of race, sex or social standing, to Gentile as to Jew, to slave as to free. It is what we should expect from a disciple of St Paul, for in certain respects Luke stands in relation to Paul as Mark, interpres Petri, stands to the chief of the Apostles. It might be said that Lk is the gospel of Paul with all the asperities taken out of it. § j In Lk as in St Paul the disposition required in those who wish to profit by the Gospel, which is ‘the power of God unto salvation’, Rom 1:16, is that complete self-surrender to Christ which Paul calls faith. Lk continues the development of this theme in his own beautiful fashion; cf. the repetition of ‘thy faith hath saved thee’, 7:50; 8:48; 17:19; 18:42. In heaping up demonstrations of how deep is the love of God’s merciful heart he seeks to give sinners that confidence in approaching God, as the publicans and sinners gladly draw near Jesus, which is essential for their happiness. His Gospel is a long drawn out example of that phrase which appears in the splendid passage from Tit 3:3–7 used in the liturgy of Christmas Day, ‘when the goodness and kindness φιλανθρωπία of God our Saviour appeared’. But the goodwill of God demands a corresponding goodwill on man’s part, and Luke therefore insists even more strongly than his fellow evangelists on the necessity of renunciation of all things to follow Christ’s example. There is no enervating softness here; cf. 9:51–62. In Luke’s teaching ‘there is no room for the flabby-minded in the Kingdom of God’; let each one reckon up the cost beforehand. No other Gospel, for example, insists with such emphasis on the duty of the rich towards the poor; the rich are urged to use their wealth to make friends and patrons among the poor, God’s special friends. Friends are what God desires, and friends naturally turn to one another with confidence in their needs. § k Thus Lk returns continually to the subject of prayer, the soul’s communion with God. The model of prayer, as of all else, is our Lord; Lk adds to the examples provided by the other Gospels, showing how Christ turned to his Father with prayer at all the great crises of his life: at the Baptism, before the call of the Apostles and the founding of the Church, before Peter’s confession, at the Transfiguration and the Crucifixion. Joined to those two proper parables the Importunate Friend and the Pharisee and Publican, we have a regular treatise on prayer, showing that it must be a confident and persevering cry for God’s mercy from the depths of our need, not a declaration of our own self-sufficiency. In speaking of prayer we may note that, though no Jew, Luke shows great appreciation of the purpose and meaning of the temple liturgy with which he shows a remarkable familiarity. Indeed his Gospel begins in the temple and ends there with the characteristic words, ‘they went back into Jerusalem with great joy, and were always in the temple (praising and) blessing God’. In a word Luke betrays a literary art and a sensitive delicacy of feeling which is perhaps demonstrated by nothing so much as the place he assigns to women in the Gospel: § l Elizabeth and Anna the prophetess, the woman who was a sinner, the women from Galilee who followed Jesus and ministered to his needs, the women of Jerusalem who wept over him at the Passion, and most of all the Mother of Jesus. With sublime art he conveys the truth of the virgin motherhood of Mary, telling us more by his silence and delicate reserve than by his words. In accordance with his insistence on the universality of salvation, Luke gives his Gentile readers to understand that from now on women are to receive a new dignity such as the ancient world refused to accord them; a world in which Jewish Rabbis could still seriously discuss the problem of whether women had souls; a world in which the pagan attitude to womanhood bore fatal fruit in that list of anti-social evils drawn up by St Paul, Rom 1:26–32, a passage which ends on a terrifying note: ‘hateful to God, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy’. Of all this the Gospel of Luke the disciple of Paul, is the complete antithesis.
§ 746a Doctrinal Witness—We must recall Luke’s standpoint: he intends to write a well-ordered history of the origins of the Christian faith for one who is probably already a Christian disciple, a convert from paganism like himself. His aim therefore is not to teach the truths of the faith, but to confirm the credibility of the truths his reader has already learned. ‘The sacred text’, writes Cardinal Newman in the Apologia, ‘was never intended to teach doctrine but only to prove it, and if we would learn doctrine we must have recourse to the formularies of the Church, e.g. to the Catechisms and the Creeds’. Lk ought, therefore, to contain clear indications of the faith of the first generation of Christians. Now the central point of the Christian faith is the belief that in the person of Jesus God has become man to save the world by the cross from the consequences of sin, and further to establish on earth the means by which those who accept him as their Saviour may enter with him into God’s kingdom of eternal life. Luke therefore makes an appeal to the prophecies of the OT and to the miracles and supernatural events of the Gospel history as a guarantee of the truth that the coming of Christ was a divine intervention in the world for the good of mankind; ‘God hath visited his people’ is the characteristic note, 1:68, 78; 7:16. Plummer, strangely enough, thinks that Luke is not interested in the fulfilment of prophecy, writing as he does for Gentiles; nothing could be further from the truth. § b Continually Luke insists, in the words of Jesus, that Christ is fulfilling a preordained role clearly foretold by the Scriptures; that is the note on which the Gospel ends with greatest emphasis; 24:20–21, 25–27, 44–46. In that last chapter Luke shows how our Lord had disappointed his disciples in their hopes, hopes which they believed were founded on the prophecies. But he has disappointed them not because he has not fulfilled the prophecies but because he has fulfilled them so perfectly. In other words the Messias they were looking for was not the Messias foretold by the Scriptures; hence ‘he opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures’, 24:45–48. If that is how Luke ends, it is also how he begins. The first two chapters draw largely on the OT in all its parts; but the book of Malachias, the last of the prophets, is most used. Indeed Lk might almost be called the continuator of Malachias: ‘the Old Dispensation runs gently into the New as a river runs into the sea, so gently that one fails to notice where the one ends and the other begins’; cf. Mal 4:5–6 and Lk 1:16–17. In a striking way he shows the continuity of God’s saving work, as though ‘to link the present with the past and future, as with a golden chain of promises that bound the Holy City to the Jerusalem that was above, which in type had already descended and in reality would soon descend from heaven’ (Edershei7415m). § c (1) Jesus the Son of God—It may be said that while agreeing with Mt and Mk in recording the proofs of Christ’s divinity, Lk provides us with further indications of early Christian usage in expressing belief of this truth. He has the habit of giving Jesus the title of ‘the Lord’, reserved to God alone in the LX7416X. It is common enough in St Paul and is found in Jn several times; but its special significance in Lk is seen with reference to the declaration of the angel in 1:34–35, a declaration understood so clearly by rationalist critics that they wish to eliminate it as a gloss or later addition to the original Gospel. There is no doubt that Lk means Son of God in the proper sense of the word, i.e. having one nature with the Father. Indeed he has omitted many details of Mt and Mk which might tend to arouse difficulties about this central truth in the mind of a Gentile reader, e.g. signs of human emotion in Christ, the declaration of his inability to work miracles at Nazareth because of the unbelief of his fellow-townsmen, the ignorance of the Son about the last day, his cry of dereliction on the cross. The critics accuse Lk here of a dishonest attempt to create a false impression, but the accusation takes little account of the fact that the same Lk has allowed his divine hero to be tempted by Satan, to weep over Jerusalem, to sweat blood in human agony, to die on a cross. § d (2) Moreover in Lk, as in Mt and Mk, Jesus is the Son of Man. The reader is referred to the commentaries on Mt and Mk for the discussion of the origin and Messianic meaning of this mysterious title, still a subject of much divergence of opinion (§§ 690a, 740h). Of the eighty times it appears in the gospels Lk comes second to Mt (31 in Mt, 24 in Lk, 14 in Mk, 11 in Jn). In Lk as in the others, the expression is used only by Jesus of himself, never of anyone else. The NT writers do not use the title when referring to our Lord, nor does it seem to have been in use among the first Christians (one exception in Ac 7:55). A comparison of parallel texts in the Synoptists shows that in the mouth of Jesus it is taken as a synonym of ‘I’, though it is on comparatively rare occasions that he employs it. In Lk, as in Mt and Mk, it is found on the occasions where our Lord wishes to lay emphasis on what he is about to say of himself, e.g. that he has authority to pardon sin, 5:24, his authority is higher than that of the Mosaic Law, 6:5, but that he is preordained by his Father to suffer the humiliation of the Passion, 9:22, as a condition of entering into the glory of his Resurrection, 24:7. A good study of its usage will be found in The Study of the Gospels by 7417*J. A. Robinson, pp 49 ff. It is evident then that our Lord uses the title with a Messianic significance, though it cannot be said to have been a traditional Messianic title. ‘When he calls himself Son of Man Jesus simply means “the man that I am” so as to draw attention to his person without assuming the title Messias openly, and so to say officially. It is evident that the most glorious of the Messianic prerogatives are consistent with this title; but, in addition, its unassuming character, which so well lays emphasis on his human nature … agrees admirably with his predictions of the sorrowful Passion … And when he wishes to allude to his triumph, very naturally he may remind his hearers of the words of Dan 7:13 and Ps 109, two texts which indicate a person who is associated with the glory of God’ (Lagrange). The title therefore contains the whole secret of the Incarnation. It is as though Jesus says that he, man as they see him to be, exercises powers which are the prerogative of God himself; but at the same time he is in subjection to God who wills him to suffer and die for the redemption of the world, and so to be glorified. § e (3) The Kingdom of God and the Church—As Luke is also author of Ac where the formation of the infant Church is so evident, we should expect him to keep that in view in the Gospel. With special emphasis he develops the notion of the Kingdom of God as the reign of God’s will over the lives and actions of men here, with a view to their entrance into the perfect Kingdom of God in the hereafter, where complete happiness is found in the restoration of that ideal condition in which God’s benevolent designs are fulfilled without any contrariety of man’s will. Hence the establishment of God’s Kingdom means the destruction of Satan’s kingdom. That is also the work of the Church, which by its organization and supernatural help brings all things into subjection to God through Christ, a theme Luke had so often heard developed by St Paul. He emphasizes the truth that the Kingdom of God is a newly established order in the world, begun in the person of Jesus and completed by his Passion and Resurrection. Among men the Kingdom embraces all those who voluntarily surrender themselves to the will of God as revealed through the life and teachings of Christ. These men, as Luke shows here and in Ac, are not a haphazard group who do not recognize one another, but a visible, organized society with duly appointed leaders whose office it is to rule in the newly established Kingdom as the ministers of Christ. He insists more than Mt and Mk on the deliberate will of Jesus in the choice of the Apostles, an act preceded by a night of prayer, 6:12–13. He adds to Mt and Mk by foreshadowing the development of the hierarchy in recording the appointment of seventy-two additional ministers of Christ, 10:1–24. Regarding the question of Peter’s primacy, if he omits the witness of Mt 16:17–19, he provides equally strong evidence of his own, 5:10; 22:31–32. The latter text is as strong as that of Mt in affirming the infallibility of Peter, and is all the more significant in that it immediately precedes the prediction of Peter’s fall, thus furnishing the reader with no excuse for misunderstanding the precise nature and purpose of infallibility. It carries us back to the opening words of Lk, who writes in order to provide Theophilus with security of faith, which is the purpose of infallibility. § f (4) The Catholicity of the Church—No reputable scholar now seriously calls into question the fact, well-established by sound tradition and internal evidence, that the author of Lk and Ac was Luke the companion of St Paul. It would be strange if there were no reflexion in the Gospel of Luke’s relation to his master. Those who still maintain that the essence of Paul’s doctrine is that the righteousness which comes to man from the sacrifice of Christ is not a real gift, but the mere legal imputation of righteousness which leaves the sinner still buried in his sins, will of course find it hard to see a reflexion of such a doctrine in Lk. On the contrary Lk leaves us in no doubt about the real mind of St Paul: that Jesus, Son of David according to the Flesh and Son of God according to the Spirit, Rom 1:3–4, died for the salvation of every man, Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, slave and free, Gal 3:26–29; that his Passion is the source of pardon for sin and the cause of reconciliation with God for everyone who believes in Christ with a faith that implies total surrender of self to his influence and guidance. This is the faith that saves; Lk 5:20, 7:50, 8:48, etc. Everyone agrees that Lk, much more than Mt and Mk, echoes the teaching of St Paul concerning the universal character of the redemptive work of Christ. Such additions as 3:6 and the omission of incidents like those found in Mt 15:21–28, Mk 7:24–30 which might create a contrary impression on his Gentile readers, serve to emphasize the point. Indeed one might almost say that the impression given by Lk is that if there is any privilege at all it is in favour of the Gentile, the sinner, and the outcast. It must have been after reading Lk that Celsus wrote so bitterly attacking the faith of Christians, whom according to Origen’s Contra Celsum he makes to say: ‘Let no educated person come, none wise, none sensible.… Whoever is a sinner, or ignorant, or a fool or under malign influence, him the Kingdom of God will accept.… Why was Christ not sent to the innocent as well as to sinners? What harm is there in not having sinned?’ Some critics have refused to believe that Luke was the author of the Gospel because it makes no reference to the Judaizing controversy so prominent in Ac, a quarrel that touched so closely this question of the universality of the Church. But Lk is a careful historian who in the Gospel writes ‘in order’ of the origins of the Gospel history; the fact that he omits to speak of a thing that is of much later date merely supports his claim to be an objective historian. Moreover the Judaizing controversy, though of importance for a convert Jew and for convert Gentiles under Jewish influence, was of no importance for Theophilus and his fellow Greeks, the more so in view of the fact that the quarrel had been authoritatively settled at St Paul’s instance a dozen years before Lk wrote his Gospel.