Luke, the Theologian

I had planned to include the following in my Response to Dr. Jim West:

Having said all of the above, I may be an amateur but it is important to state the obvious. “There is no theology of the resurrection without a theology of the cross.”

But I recognized that such a statement would suggest that Luke was not a theologian. Luke believed that Jesus was raised from the dead by the power of God. As I wrote in Something Happened:

This viewpoint concerning the power of God is consistent with Deuteronomy 6:22 wherein it states "the LORD showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes." More importantly, in the Greek language, the word used for "miracle" was dy'na·mis—a word basically meaning "power." Luke is the only NT writer to acknowledge that the miracles performed by Jesus were a manifestation of “the mighty power of God.”

Consequently I have to assume that Francois Bovan was thinking about Christian theology when he said: “There is no theology of the resurrection without a theology of the cross.” If this statement is true with respect Christian theology, then the question left unanswered is this, Can there be a Christian theology of the resurrection without a theology of the cross?

Copyrighted 2006

Religion

Christianity

Gospel of Luke