The Theology of the Third Gospel

Beneath the narrative surface of Luke’s Gospel lies a coherent theological architecture: a vision of salvation history unfolding in stages, a sustained portrait of Jesus at prayer, a pervasive note of joy and praise, a universal horizon that gathers in Gentiles, Samaritans, and women, and a Christology of Jesus as Savior, prophet, and Lord who sets out on his “exodus” to Jerusalem. This file surveys that architecture, presenting the classic redaction-critical reading of Luke’s salvation history and the debate it provoked, and locating the Gospel’s theology within the Orthodox confession of Christ.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)

Salvation History and the “Middle of Time”

The most influential modern reading of Luke’s theology fixed on its sense of history. In Die Mitte der Zeit (1953; English The Theology of St Luke, 1960), Hans Conzelmann argued that Luke, unlike the earlier evangelists, no longer expected the imminent end of the world and so re-conceived the whole of God’s dealings with the world as a continuous Heilsgeschichte — a salvation history — divided into three epochs: the period of Israel and the Law and the Prophets (closing with John the Baptist); the period of the ministry of Jesus, “the middle of time” (die Mitte der Zeit), a sabbath-rest at the center free of Satan’s assaults; and the period of the Church and the Spirit, the present age that runs on toward an end no longer thought to be near (Conzelmann, The Theology of St Luke, 1960). On this reading the very existence of a second volume, the Acts, is evidence that Luke has settled in for a long age of the Church, replacing the early expectation of an imminent parousia with a theology of the Church’s ongoing mission in history.

Conzelmann’s scheme became the classic redaction-critical account of Luke and is still the natural starting-point for any treatment of Lukan theology — but its central claim has been vigorously contested. [Disputed: Conzelmann (*The Theology of St Luke*, 1960) reads Luke's three-epoch scheme as a response to the *delay of the parousia*, with the Church's long age substituted for an abandoned imminent expectation; I. Howard Marshall (*Luke: Historian and Theologian*, 1970) accepts that Luke writes a salvation history but argues that its organizing theme is *salvation* itself — the saving act of God in Christ offered to all — rather than a periodizing reaction to a failed eschatology, and notes that Luke retains genuine future expectation (e.g. Luke 12:40; 18:8; 21:27–28) alongside his sense of an unfolding history. Many subsequent scholars (e.g. Bovon, Green) follow Marshall in softening Conzelmann's sharp tripartite divisions while granting that Luke does think in terms of an ordered history of salvation.] What is not in dispute is that Luke, more than the other evangelists, presents the gospel as the climax of a long story — the fulfillment of “everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44) — and as the opening of a new chapter that the Acts will carry forward (on Luke as historian and his sense of an ordered history, see Luke the Historian).

The Gospel of Prayer

A theme that the redaction-critical debate brought to light, and that the Church had always cherished, is Luke’s portrait of Jesus at prayer. Repeatedly Luke notes — where the parallels do not — that the Lord prayed at the decisive turning-points of his ministry. He is praying when the heavens open at his Baptism (Luke 3:21); he withdraws to pray before choosing the Twelve (Luke 6:12); he is “praying alone” when he asks the disciples who they say he is, just before the first Passion prediction (Luke 9:18); he goes up the mountain “to pray” and is transfigured “as he was praying” (Luke 9:28–29); it is when the disciples see him praying that they ask, “Lord, teach us to pray,” and receive the Our Father (Luke 11:1); and on the Mount of Olives he kneels in the agony of prayer before his arrest (Luke 22:41–44). Luke alone adds two parables explicitly about persistence in prayer — the friend at midnight (Luke 11:5–8) and the unjust judge, told “to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1–8) — together with the contrasting prayers of the Pharisee and the publican (Luke 18:9–14). The Gospel thus presents the Lord as the man of prayer and makes prayer the disciple’s path, a portrait the Orthodox tradition of unceasing prayer has always loved (see The Spirit and the Poor on the link of prayer to the Spirit).

Joy, Praise, and the Universal Horizon

Bound up with prayer is the note of joy that pervades the third Gospel from beginning to end. The infancy narrative is a tissue of canticles — the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Gloria, the Nunc Dimittis — and the angel’s announcement of the Savior’s birth is “good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10). Joy is the keynote of the central parables of recovery in Luke 15, where the shepherd, the woman, and the father each call neighbors to “rejoice with me,” and heaven itself rejoices “over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:6–7, 9–10, 23–24). And the Gospel ends as it began, in joy and worship: after the Ascension the disciples “returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God” (Luke 24:52–53). This rejoicing is inseparable from Luke’s universal horizon. He alone carries the genealogy of Christ back past Abraham to “Adam, the son of God” (Luke 3:38), making the Savior the head of all humanity (see The Third Gospel); he alone gives us the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) and the grateful Samaritan leper (Luke 17:11–19); and he gives more prominence than any other evangelist to women — Elizabeth and Mary and Anna, the women who follow and provide for Jesus (Luke 8:1–3), Martha and Mary, the women at the cross and the empty tomb. The salvation Luke proclaims is for “all flesh” (Luke 3:6), for the outsider and the lowly as much as for Israel (on this inclusion see Women in Orthodoxy; on the early Church that received it, Pre-Schism Church).

The Christology of Luke

All of this serves a Christology. Luke’s favorite title for Jesus is Savior: the angel announces, in words found in no other Gospel, “unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11), and the Gospel makes salvation — release, forgiveness, healing, the seeking of the lost — its governing concept (“the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost,” Luke 19:10). Jesus is also the prophet like Moses and Elijah, “a great prophet” raised up among the people (Luke 7:16), whose rejection at Nazareth he interprets by the prophets’ fate (Luke 4:24); and he is Lord (kyrios), a title the narrator applies to him freely throughout. These strands are gathered into the structuring image of the Gospel’s central section: at the Transfiguration Moses and Elijah speak with Jesus of “his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” — his exodos (Luke 9:31) — and from that point “he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), so that the long travel narrative becomes the journey of the prophet-Savior toward the “exodus” of his Passion, death, and ascension. Luke frames the saving work of Christ as a new Exodus, the deliverance accomplished at Jerusalem and extended, in the Acts, to the ends of the earth. The Orthodox confession of Christ as true God and true man, Savior of the world, finds in this Christology of Savior, prophet, and Lord a Gospel wholly congenial to it (see Christology; on the canonical reading of the Gospels, Holy Scripture).

References

The Gospel According to Luke (Luke 2:10–11 “great joy” and the Savior; 3:6 “all flesh”; 3:21 prayer at the Baptism; 3:38 the genealogy to Adam; 6:12 prayer before the Twelve; 7:16 “a great prophet”; 9:18, 9:28–29 prayer at the confession and Transfiguration; 9:31 the “exodus”; 9:51 “set his face”; 11:1 “teach us to pray”; 15 the parables of joy; 18:1–14 the parables on prayer; 19:10 to seek and save the lost; 22:41–44 Gethsemane; 24:44, 24:52–53 fulfillment and the joyful return to the Temple). Cited by chapter and verse.
Conzelmann, Hans. The Theology of St Luke. Trans. Geoffrey Buswell. London: Faber & Faber, 1960. (German original Die Mitte der Zeit, Tübingen: Mohr, 1953. The three-epoch scheme, the “middle of time,” and the delay-of-the-parousia thesis.)
Marshall, I. Howard. Luke: Historian and Theologian. Exeter: Paternoster, 1970. (Salvation as the organizing theme of Luke’s history; the critique of Conzelmann’s periodization and his eschatology thesis.)
Bovon, François. Luke 1: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 1:1–9:50. Trans. Christine M. Thomas. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002. (Lukan theology after Conzelmann.)
Green, Joel B. The Theology of the Gospel of Luke. New Testament Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. (Salvation history, prayer, joy, and the universal horizon in Luke.)
Fitzmyer, Joseph A. The Gospel According to Luke. 2 vols. Anchor Bible 28, 28A. New York: Doubleday, 1981–1985. (The Christological titles and the structure of the central section.)