When the book of Acts is mentioned, a cluster of issues spring to mind, including speaking in tongues and baptism with the Holy Spirit, church government and practice, and missionary methods and strategies. At the popular level, Acts is more often mined for answers to contemporary debates than heard for its natural inflections.
Instead of using Acts as a prooftext, this New Studies in Biblical Theology volume brings a biblical-theological framework to the account to expose Luke's major themes as they relate to the book as a whole. With this framework in place, Alan Thompson argues that Acts is an account of the 'continuing story' of God's saving purposes. Consequently we find that Luke wants to be read in light of the Old Testament promises and the continuing reign of Christ in the inaugurated kingdom.
Read in this way as a snapshot of God's dynamic, unfolding kingdom, the book of Acts begins to regain the deep relevance it had in the first century.
Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprising New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles. The NSBT series is edited by D. A. Carson, aiming to simultaneously instruct and to edify, to interact with current scholarship and to point the way ahead.
Alan J. Thompson is lecturer in New Testament at Sydney Missionary and Bible College, Croydon, New South Wales, Australia. He is the author of One Lord, One People: The Unity of the Church in Acts in Its Literary Setting.
