The Lucan Portrait Of Christ

Extract

The object of this study is to inquire into the nature of Luke's theology, and in particular to see whether we find in his writings a distinctive presentation of the Person and work of Jesus. This is not an easy task. Even if we could readily isolate Luke's own theological outlook from that of the sources which he was using, the fact would remain that the thought of the Lucan writings is seldom clear-cut. The author does not follow any one line of interpretation to the exclusion of all others; on the contrary, he prefers to make a synthesis. Nor does he press any one idea to its ultimate conclusion or content himself with drawing out the significance of a single scriptural image. He prefers to hold a large number of threads in his hand at once, introducing first one and then another into a somewhat untidy and ill-defined pattern, without allowing any one of them so to predominate over the rest as to give unity and coherence to the whole. This tendency is perhaps especially marked in his presentation of the Person and work of Christ, and it is no easy matter to determine how far the looseness and variety of his thought is due to his own cast of mind and how far it is due to the intractability of his material and the difficulty of adapting it to serve the purposes required by his own theological outlook.