Conversion in Luke-Acts: Divine Action, Human Cognition, and the People of God

by Joel B. Green

Publisher:

Baker Academic

, 2015

Overview

Repentance and conversion are key topics in New Testament interpretation and in Christian life. However, the study of conversion in early Christianity has been plagued by psychological assumptions alien to the world of the New Testament. Leading New Testament scholar Joel Green believes that careful attention to the narrative of Luke-Acts calls for significant rethinking about the nature of Christian conversion. Drawing on the cognitive sciences and examining key evidence in Luke-Acts, this book emphasizes the embodied nature of human life as it explores the life transformation signaled by the message of conversion, offering a new reading of a key aspect of New Testament theology.

Key Features

• Applies modern psychological studies to the texts
• Clarifies common misunderstandings about the original setting in Scripture
• Emphasizes the embodied nature of human life

Contents

• Questioning Conversion in Luke-Acts
• Conversion and Cognition
• Orienting Conversion
• Texts and Metaphors
• Community, Agency, and Apostasy

Top Highlights

“Fifth, we have found that Luke draws on conversionary metaphors (e.g., seeing and hearing) and on conversionary movement (e.g., from darkness to light) that both emphasize the embodied nature of conversion and identify conversionary rhetoric with somatic markers that positively influence (but do not compel) people down a conversionary path.” (Page 120)

“We are reading not so much ‘into’ the Lukan text as we are reading ‘from’ a committed position that predetermines what we allow ourselves to see.” (Page 20)

“With conversion, people undergo relational reformation and full-bodied transformation of their most basic patterns of believing, thinking, feeling, and behaving. For Luke, conversion places all of life in fresh perspective, with a concomitant reevaluation of one’s past, one’s possessions, and one’s network of friends and family. Conversion entails autobiographical reconstruction, embracing new belief structures by which to make sense of reality, and incorporation into a new community, including adopting the rituals and behaviors peculiar to or definitive of that new community.” (Pages 123–124)

“Accordingly, gentile conversion in Acts is less movement from one religious affiliation to another and more movement more deeply into faith commitments already embraced.” (Page 51)

“Conversion thus refers to an ongoing journey on an obstructed path requiring ongoing roadwork. CONVERSION IS A JOURNEY.” (Page 67)

Praise for the Print Edition

Joel Green offers a provocative and uncommonly helpful analysis of a subject that has become increasingly important. This challenging topic requires command of multiple disciplines, and Green draws skillfully and wisely from an array of exegetical methods and the cognitive sciences.

—John T. Carroll, Harriet Robertson Fitts Professor of New Testament, Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, Virginia

Joel Green offers a fresh account of conversion in Luke-Acts that is exegetically fruitful and eminently readable. Green’s cognitive approach expertly explores the communal, embodied nature of Lukan conversion and examines passages both expected and unexpected along the way. Students and scholars alike will find Green’s navigation of Luke’s narrative theology of conversion a welcome read.

—Brittany E. Wilson, assistant professor of New Testament, Duke University Divinity School

Joel Green shows that Luke’s understanding of what we call ‘conversion’ involves not merely a change in thinking or of opinion but an entire reorientation of life, connected both with God’s summons to his people in earlier biblical history and with a need for perseverance. This is a decisively fresh work on a vital topic.

—Craig Keener, F.M. and Ada Thompson Professor of New Testament, Asbury Theological Seminary

Product Details

• Title: Conversion in Luke-Acts: Divine Action, Human Cognition, and the People of God
• Author: Joel B. Green
• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Print Publication Date: 2015
• Logos Release Date: 2016
• Pages: 207
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Conversion › Biblical teaching; Bible › Psychology; Bible. N.T. Luke › Criticism, interpretation, etc; Bible. N.T. Acts › Criticism, interpretation, etc
• ISBNs: 9781441220974, 9780801097607, 1441220976, 0801097606
• Resource ID: LLS:CNVRSNLKCTSPPGD
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T22:54:03Z

About Joel B. Green

Joel B. Green has been associate dean for the Center for Advanced Theological Studies since 2008 and professor of New Testament interpretation at Fuller since 2007; prior to that, he served for 10 years at Asbury Theological Seminary as professor of New Testament interpretation, as dean of the School of Theology, and as provost.

Green has written or edited 30 books, including four that have won awards: In Search of the Soul: Four Views of the Mind-Body Problem (with Stuart Palmer), Introducing the New Testament: Its Literature and Theology (with Paul J. Achtemeier and Marianne Meye Thompson), The Gospel of Luke, and Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (with Scot McKnight).