Friday, October 20, 2023

Steven Nemes on Acts 20:28

  

Paul tells the elders gathered in Ephesus: “Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God (την εκκλησιαν του θεου) that he obtained with the blood of his own Son (ην περιεποιησατο δια του αιματος του ιδιου).” The significance of this text is that it can also be read as follows: “that he obtained with his own blood.” This reading makes “God” (ο θεος) the subject of the verb “obtained” (περιεποιησατο). Paul would thus seem to be making a reference to Jesus’ own blood as if it were God’s own blood. But this reading is highly implausible insofar as Luke-Acts from beginning to end clearly distinguishes between God and Jesus. This very book begins with Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost in which Jesus is presented as “a man attested to you by God” (Acts 2:22). So also, to the gentiles in the household of Cornelius he brings the message that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power,” so that “he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (Acts 10:38). It was argued above at great length that these texts push against the idea that Jesus has the divine nature. Apart from the possible case of this incidental slippage, the identity between Jesus and God is never asserted in any clear or explicit manner in Luke’s writings. If Luke did in fact believe that Jesus simply is God himself, one might have expected this point to be expressed more clearly and explicitly in a greater proportion of the apostolic discourse. For this reason, it would seem preferable to opt for an alternative interpretation.

 

As far as this text is concerned, there are at least a few options. One reading attested to in the manuscript record speaks of “the church of the Lord” (την εκκλησιαν του κυριου) rather than “the church of God.” This would make it possible to identify Jesus with “the Lord” (ο κυριος) and assert that Jesus obtained it by his own blood. Alternatively, one may take “the Holy Spirit” here actually to be a reference to the resurrected Christ and the subject of the verb. Luke does speak elsewhere of “the spirit of Jesus” (το πνευμαΙησου) not allowing Pual and Timothy to go into Bithynia (Acts 16:7). So also, to refer to a passage already mentioned earlier, Paul says that after his resurrection Christ became a “life-giving spirit” (πνευμα ζωοποιουν, 1 Cor 15:45). It could be that Luke is referring to Jesus as “the Holy Spirit” at Acts 20:28 as well. He is the one who appointed these Ephesian men to be overseers of the church of God/the Lord, which he (the Holy Spirit, i.e., Jesus) bought with his own blood. Alternatively again, one may take του ιδιου as a substantive, interpreting the phrase as: “with the blood of his own [Son].” This is the reading preferred by Harris (Jesus as God, 141) and by Richard Pervo (Acts, 523). Finally, one may say that “his own blood” (του αιματος του ιδιου) is in fact a reference to Jesus’s blood, not God’s, and that Luke has simply communicated this point poorly by failing to make Ιησους explicit as the subject of the verb “obtained” (περιεποιησατο). In any case, there is no need to find here a reference to “God’s blood.” Chalmer Faw for example does not even consider any further possibility than that the church is said to be bought with the blood of God’s Son. (Acts, 235) (Steven Nemes, Trinity and Incarnation: A Post-Catholic Theology [Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2023], 196-97)