ST. LUKE.
"CAN it be possible that Luke, the Greek physician of Antioch, the companion and fellow-worker of St. Paul, composed the Third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles P " This is the question which Professor Harnack asks at the beginning of his new book, " Luke the Physician " (Williams and Norgate, 6s.) He answers himself at length, and in the affirmative. He is absolutely convinced that the Luke who appears in Paul's Epistles, and who "stood in intercourse with the first generation of Christians," wrote the two books assigned to him not much after the year 80 A.D. The Acts and the Gospel, he argues, are written in excellent.Greek. The writer is evidently a man of cultivation, using his native tongue. Moreover, he translates and explains Hebrew words and customs, and his sympathies are openly with the Gentiles. His work abounds in medical and scientific phrases. In many instances, when following St. Mark word for word, he substi- tutes, while narrating a miracle of healing, the scientific name or description for the popular one of the disease in question. Throughout long stretches of his narrative where it concerns St. Paul the author of Acts speaks of " we" to indicate that he was an eyewitness. Any other explanation of the " we portion" Professor Harnack regards as a far-fetched invention to fit a theory. Moreover, he finds it difficult to imagine that such a portrait of St. Paul as that given in Acts was drawn by any but an intimate friend.
All this, of course, suggests that Professor Harnack has thrown the great weight of his learning and authority on the side of conservative criticism. This is in a 'measure the case. Day by day, he tells us, the critics are abandoning their old hypothesis that the Christian tradition was not formulated for a hundred years. " We can now assert," he writes, " that during the years 30-70 A.D., and on the soil of Palestine— more particularly in Jerusalem—this tradition as a whole took the essential form which it presents in its later development." But Professor Harnack defends himself from his friends-in the matter of conservatism. His conservatism, he scrupulously explains, concerns dates rather than dogmatic deductions. "In regard to the chronological framework, the majority of the leading personages wbo are named, and the scene of action, the report of ancient tradition stands firm ; but when we proceed further—i.e., when we attempt to realise historical situations—we are thrown back upon our own groping judgment, and are often unable to accept the concep- tions and explanations of the primitive annalists." The fact that Professor Harnack is not seeking to prove a hard-and-fast theology by his research can only strengthen
his influence as a witness, even in the eyes of the most dogmatic theologian.
But to return to St. Luke. Can we from his books deduce anything of his character P So few figures stand out in the earliest Church that we would gladly add one to the short list. Professor Harnack thinks that we can. He believes it possible, indeed, to reconstruct in some degree his personality. Here are the outlines of Professor Harnack's sketch. Luke possessed "the mind and sense of form of a Greek," and consequently he was a Paulinist only in a measure. He was deeply convinced that Christianity was a universal faith ; but " St. Paul's doctrine of sin and grace lies far outside his sphere of thought." He bad, Professor Harnack goes on, "a boundless—indeed, a paradoxical—love of sinners, together with the most confident hope of their forgiveness and amendment,—an attitude of mind which is only tolerable when taken in connexion with his universal love for mankind. This is quite un-Pauline." His Gospel has been called the gospel of philanthropy, and there can be no doubt that he has a bias against the rich. For him " Christ is the superhuman Physician," healing the disease and casting out the devils which afflict humanity. As compared to St. Paul, Professor Harnack regards the mind of St. Luke as superficial, though "be can reproduce the deeper things which he had learnt from others, from our Lord and St. Paul." As we think of the two men; he writes, " how deep and precious appears that cumbrous gnotiis of the Cross of Christ which occupied the mental energies of St. Paul, how profound and worthy his difficult doctrine of Justification by Faith, of Spirit and New Life." " The gulf," he goes on, " which divides St. Luke as a Christian from St. Paul shows him at a disadvantage." Yet he was " the first to cast the Gospel into Hellenistic form and to bring the clarifying influence of the spirit of Hellenism to bear upon the evangelic message. This would be evident even if he had written nothing else than St. Paul's discourse at Athens." And in virtue of these qualities of mind this "first historian of primitive Christendom" has become, through his writings, " an architect of that Gentile Church which has conquered the world and has spiritualised and individualised religion."
Are all these dicta with regard to character to be upheld by reading the books in question ? The ordinary reader may well feel himself bound to accept Professor Harnack's opinion in matters of learning; but he must feel at the same time that if he accepts the Professor's premisses he stands in an equally good position so far as criticism of character goes. That St. Luke had the sense of form in its highest—that is, in its Greek—degree no reader who has an ounce of literary appreciation can for one instant doubt. What could be more beautiful than the canticles which occur in the first chapters of his Gospel ? The substance of each may have been delivered to him orally, or from some Aramaic written source ; but as they stand they are, Professor Harnack tells us, too full of Lucan words and phrases not to be by Luke. But, apart from these great poems, take the exquisite picture be brings before his readers of the early Church, when, full of the spirit of renunciation and hope, they defied the evils of poverty and danger. They " sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need," and " breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart." Take, again, the epitomes he has given us of St. Paul's sermons and defences. These do not claim to be verbatim reports, and they lack much we should have supposed St. Paul would have said ; but they are in character, and contain what struck Luke as most important, and, short as they are, each one is perfect in itself. It is impossible not to see that they were put down by some one who bad a strong sympathy with the classical religions, who regarded those who devoutly held them as "feeling after" a God who is "not far from every one of us," and as worshipping ignorantly the Being of whom Christianity was but a further declaration. Or turn to the picture of St. Paul himself, which is not a eulogy, but an historical portrait. St. Luke says few words in direct praise of his hero ; yet largely because of St. Luke, he is still the hero of one half of Christendom. No doubt St. Paul told us more of himself in his Epistles than any third person could ever tell; • but without Acts his character would want outline. The man whose masterly character and indomitable courage put him in virtual command of the ship in which he was a prisoner, whose exquisite courtesy turned the humiliation of the penal chain into an occasion for dignity and grace, who concerned himself about the safety of his jailer when an opportunity of escape offered itself, who gloried in being a Roman citizen only less than he gloried in being the slave of Christ, whose humility is
as splendid as his pride and whose impulsiveness as marked a characteristic as his strength,—is shown us by the beloved physician who alone stood by his Master till the last. His arguments, his discourses, his confidences, boasting, self- abasement, and inspired spiritual utterances do but colour the picture St. Luke drew. The smaller silhouettes remain types for all time,—the wise Gamaliel ; the haughty Gallio ; Felix trembling as he thinks of justice, temperance, and judgment to come; Agrippa, who was "almost persuaded " ; Stephen, whose face appeared to the onlookers as the face of an angel, dying with forgiveness upon his lips. It is difficult also to deny that St. Luke presents our Lord to us as the Divine Physician. Luke with his doctor's eyes looked upon sin and disease as the two great evils, and as both somehow outside of the real personality. It is evident that the words he put into the mouth of Peter convey his own impression of the mission of Christ. He "went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil." Luke's interest in cures, both physical and moral, is intense, and his belief in their possibility boundless. It is from St. Luke alone that we learn that there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. The other Evangelists have not reported the saying. It is Luke who tells us of the shepherd who leaves the ninety-and-nine in the wilderness to search till he finds it for a missing sheep. It is he who describes the publican's justification, who relates the story of the son who " came to himself." It is be who has preserved for us the tradition of the penitent thief and the prayer of Christ upon the Cross for the forgiveness of the Roman soldiery. It is Luke who has puzzled Christendom and comforted the hearts of the contrite by preserving that strange sentence of Christ: "To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." Without Luke Christianity would have presented a sterner attitude in all but one particular. He adds to the blessing upon the poor a denunciation of the rich: " Woe unto you I for ye have received your consolation," and has written down in terrible terms the judgment of God upon the man who gave his whole mind to the making of money. " Thou fool," wrote St. Luke,—and we feel that he took pleasure as he added to his " Treatise" this fragment of the precious tradition. As we have already said, he writes with delight of the communistic Church, and tells us nothing of its later financial developments. The next we hear about that is from St. Paul, who made a collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem, and urged his converts to do their utmost to help the temporal needs of those to whom they owed their spiritual welfare.
So far we cannot disagree with Professor Harnack ; but why does "St. Luke as a Christian compare unfavourably with St. Paul " ? As a theologian, as a statesman, as a thinker, perhaps, but why as a Christian ? True, he had no sense of the fearful inherence of sin, but looked on it as some- how parasitic to human nature. He regarded repentance and amendment as sufficient reparation for all finite offence against the infinite. But does not St. Luke's teaching on the subject come more directly from Christ than that of St. Paul ? The prodigal son offered remorse alone. He knew nothing of Paul's philosophy, or what his followers have called the plan of salvation. Paul's picture of the fearful struggle which goes on for ever in the dual nature of man, and his longing for a reconciliation which he feels himself insufficient to bring about, may go deeper than any teaching we find in Acts. For all that, it must, we think, be admitted that St. Luke's teaching touches this generation more nearly as, with holden eyes and burning hearts, like the disciples Luke tells of on the Emmaus road, they seek, not to realise the pro- pitiatory sacrifice, but to recognise the immortal Christ.
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