The author of Acts has a right to ... be recognised as the first Christian apologist. The great age of Christian apologetic was the second century, but of the three main types of defence represented among the second-century Christian apologists Luke provides first-century prototypes: defence against pagan religion (Christianity is true; paganism is false), defence against Judaism (Christianity is the fulfilment of true Judaism), defence against political accusations (Christianity is innocent of any offence against Roman law).
Of all the books of the New Testament, the one which has most persistently attracted the label ‘apologetic’ is the Acts of the Apostles. This designation seems to go back at least to 1721, when Heumann suggested that Luke’s work was an apologia, written in defence of Christianity to a pagan official named Theophilus. Since then, the label has recurred in a wide variety of guises, many of which, as Bruce observes, prefigure the concerns of the second-century Christian apologists. But the enthusiasm with which the term has been adopted masks a huge area of disagreement as to how exactly the apologetic situation of Acts is to be construed. The book has been described variously as a defence of the church against political charges, as a defence of Christianity against Judaism or Greek religion, as a defence of Paul against rival theological interests within the church, or even as a defence of the Roman Empire to the church. Part of the problem here is the wide range and fuzzy definition of the term ‘apologetic’ itself, which threatens to undermine its descriptive usefulness altogether: and since this fuzziness constitutes one of our primary difficulties in exploring apologetic within the New Testament, it will be as well to begin by constructing a rough typology of apologetic readings which will make clear just how far the Acts debate does and does not relate to the broader subject-matter of this book.
One essential feature of any attempt at defining a given discourse as apologetic is the question of its implied audience. Even where the implied audience is clearly different from the text’s real audience (and this is a problem of which more recent studies have become increasingly aware), most critics seem to expect an apologetic discourse to be one which adopts a particular stance (self-defence) in relation to a particular challenge or charge and before a particular audience. Accordingly, the simplest way to construct a rough working typology is to classify the apologetic options for Acts by audience, in ascending order of remoteness, thus:
Type I: Acts as internal apologetic: apologia as inner-church polemic. This reading focuses on the large amount of inner-church debate embodied within the narrative, a point made forcefully by Barrett:
[Acts] was not addressed to the Emperor, with the intention of proving the political harmlessness of Christianity in general, and of Paul in particular; a few passages might be construed to serve this purpose, but to suggest that the book as a whole should be taken in this way is absurd. No Roman official would have filtered out so much of what to him would be theological and ecclesiastical rubbish in order to reach so tiny a grain of relevant apology.
On this kind of reading, the book’s primary purpose is the defence of Paul against rival theological interests (‘the circumcision party’), or of apostolic orthodoxy against Gnosticism, and it is addressed not to outsiders but to readers within the church.
Type II: Acts as sectarian apologetic: apologia as self-defence in relation to Judaism. It is not always easy to determine at what point inter-factional polemic within a fragmenting movement becomes inter-sectarian polemic between rival religious communities. In this sense it is not a great step from reading Acts as a defence of Pauline Christianity against Jewish Christianity to reading it as a defence of Christianity tout court before the tribunal of the wider Jewish community. This reading rests on the sound literary observation that a large part of Acts deals with the question of the relationships between emergent Christian groups and the parent Jewish community. Jervell points out that Paul’s defence speeches (many of which deal with his relationship with his ancestral faith) take up as much time in the narrative as his missionary activity; any subsidiary elements of political apology are ‘weak and inconsistent’ by comparison with the book’s main purpose, which is the defence of Paul as faithful to the Law.
Type III: Acts as an apologetic work addressed to Greeks: apologia as propaganda / evangelism. On this view, Luke, like the second-century apologists who addressed their work ‘to the Greeks’, is writing for a pagan audience with a philosophical and cultural interest in Eastern religion. Acts on this reading lies in a line of continuous development from the apologetic narratives of Hellenistic Judaism through to the Christian apologists of the second century. The book’s argument is not defensive but evangelistic;
the success of the church boosts its claim to be the only true religion, as does the frequency of Gentile conversions. Christianity is presented as ‘an ancient and honourable monotheism’, admired by respectable citizens and ‘eminently worthy of their allegiance’. Apologetics and missionary propaganda, on this view, ‘functioned like two sides of the same coin’. Droge, indeed, offers a definition which makes it almost impossible to distinguish between the two:
Apologetic in the New Testament comprises a study of the ‘art of persuasion’ employed by the early Christians. Such persuasion evolved in a context of Jewish and Hellenistic thought and laid a foundation for the second century apologists. . . . Much of early Christian literature, including the New Testament, was written to promote and defend the Christian movement. As the early Christians attempted to appeal to the inhabitants of the Greco-Roman world at large, use was made of the strategies and methods of hellenistic religious propaganda. The appropriation of such apologetic-propagandistic forms was essential if Christianity was to succeed in the face of competition from other religions.
Type IV: Acts as political apologetic: apologia as self-defence in relation to Rome. By far the commonest reading of Acts as apologetic is the view that the book was written to provide a defence against political charges brought before a Roman tribunal. It has indeed been argued quite specifically that Acts was written as a defence brief for Paul’s trial before Nero: hence the narrative’s repeated stress on Paul’s acquittal by successive governors encountered on his travels, and the favourable view of Roman justice presented in the narrative. More generally, many Acts commentators would see the book as a defence of the political innocence of the Christian movement within the Roman Empire.
Both Jesus and Paul are presented as innocent of any charges touching Roman interests; Paul, in addition, is presented as a Roman citizen, moving confidently around the eastern Empire, enjoying the support of the best elements in provincial society, and advocating a politically harmless message with faintly philosophical overtones.
Type V: Acts as apologetic addressed to insiders: apologia as legitimation/self-definition. More recent discussion has effectively created a fifth category with a rather more nuanced perspective on the role of apologetic discourse in creating group identity. Sterling places Acts alongside Manetho, Berossos, and Josephus’ Antiquities in a tradition which he labels ‘apologetic historiography’. Despite the use of such well-known apologetic motifs as the antiquity and political innocence of the movement, the book is addressed to Christians, not to Romans, and offers ‘examples and precedents to Christians so that they can make their own apologia. Luke—Acts is like the Hellenistic Jewish historians who addressed their works to Jews in an effort to provide them with identity in the larger world.’ Esler gives a sociological twist to this perspective. Acts is addressed to second-generation sectarians, and represents ‘a sophisticated attempt to explain and justify Christianity to the members of his own community at a time when they were exposed to social and political pressures which were making their allegiance waver. Luke re-presents traditions . . . in such a way as to erect a symbolic universe, a sacred canopy, beneath which the institutional order of his community is given meaning and justification.’ This reading allows Esler to encompass virtually all the insights of earlier scholarship: Luke’s downplaying of the Peter—Paul divisions, his stress on continuity with Judaism, and his assurance that faith was not incompatible with loyalty to Rome can all be accommodated under the umbrella of ‘legitimation’.