Abstract
Beware, Baptist readers: this book is not your grandfather’s revivalist, “born again” treatment of conversion. In fact, at first blush it may seem like its opposite—a con-version, if you will. But upon careful reading, it becomes clear that this work more fills out than throws out common views of salvation. And the last charge any critic could level against this book is that it lacks solid biblical foundation. Arguably the dean of evangelical Lukan scholars since his magisterial commentary on the Third Gospel in 1997, Joel Green (who also happens to be the current academic dean at Fuller Seminary) offers a rich, rigorous exposition of an array of passages in Luke’s two-volume narrative pertaining to conversion. Moreover, Green continues his deep engagement with cognitive science, deftly incorporating key insights from linguistics and neurobiology into his exegetical analyses.
I sketch five principal threads about conversion which Green weaves throughout his book in tight linkage with the text of Luke–Acts. I cast the categories in oppositional form (versus) for the sake of effect, though acknowledging some overlaps and nuanced connections:
Transformation of life patterns vs transfer of religious membership. Ingrained in popular and professional notions of conversion has been a radical removal from one religion (faith-tradition, denomination) to another, amounting to a repudiation of the old in favor of the new. But Luke’s narration of Peter’s “conversionary” progress, for example, through periods of faith, doubt, denial, renewal, and reorientation, takes him further into his Jewish faith, not outside it. As Green states: “Peter never ceases to be a Jew. Conversion for him is not a transformation from one religion to another. It is, rather, a journey by which he [becomes] … more and more deeply embedded in a particular way of tracing God’s agenda with Israel” (pp. 98–99). The same came be said for Saul/Paul: the “light” of Jesus Messiah exposes the full story of Israel in which the Christ-commissioned apostle to the Gentiles continues to live and work (Acts 13:47; 26:12–18; cf. Luke 2:29–32).
Processional vs punctiliar. Though various Lukan characters have watershed moments of life-changing encounter with Christ, to reduce them to point-in-time (“when did you get saved?”), “once-for-all” experiences is to miss the bigger point of life as a journey in Luke’s double volume—not simply as a geographical plotting device (Jesus’ trek to Jerusalem in Luke 9–19; Paul’s missionary journeys in Acts), but as a controlling metaphor of spiritual formation. In Peter’s case again, though hitting the road with Jesus early in Luke, he continues “converting,” “repenting,” changing his attitudes and actions, culminating in his coastal passage from Joppa to Caesarea, which more significantly constitutes his conversionary pilgrimage from pride and prejudice against faithful Gentiles toward acceptance and affirmation (Acts 9:36–11:18; cf. 15:7–11). Such lifelong cognitive and behavioral development is buttressed by recent research in neural-plasticity and -genesis (our brains keep moving and changing). But, as Green stresses, such movement is not always forward and positive. Pilgrims may regress as well as progress. The cases of Judas, Ananias and Sapphira, and Simon Magus provide cautionary tales of “deconversion” (pp. 142–59; see Luke 22:3–6; Acts 1:16–20; 5:1–11; 8:9–24; and the foundational soils-parable in Luke 8:1–15) or what we might call disastrous “backsliding” challenging facile “once-for-all” notions of “eternal security.” In sum, “conversion is not easy … the conversionary journey may include its stops and starts, its detours. Conversion is a process of reformation” (157).
Holistic-embodied vs dualistic-“soulish.” The common evangelistic understanding of conversion as “winning/saving souls” implies a rescue operation of some essential “spiritual” part of a human being from its enslavement within a sinful body and evil world, thus insuring the “soul’s” heavenly destiny. Moreover, the primary means of this salvation typically focuses on a mental “decision for Christ” evidenced in a “statement/profession of faith” affirming a set of beliefs or doctrines (“spiritual laws”). But biblical anthropology, remarkably supported by modern neurobiology, rejects a sharp ancient Greek and Cartesian body-soul/mind dichotomy in favor of dynamic, integrated systems of cognitive, affective, and active life within a bodily network (see, further, Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008]). Accordingly, “conversion is embodied religious experience … that could never be consigned to the ethereal or the ‘spiritual.’ ‘Spiritual conversion’ is nothing less than human transformation … in its most integrated sense of personal and communal life. With conversion, people undergo relational reformation and full-bodied transformation of their most basic patterns of believing, thinking, feeling, and behaving” (pp. 123–24). Such a perspective fits a richer meaning of “save/salvation” (σῴζω/σωτηρία, sōzō/sōtēria), one of Luke’s favorite terms, as “making whole, restoring, healing.”
Communal vs individualistic. The citation above already introduces the vital “communal”/“relational” dimension of conversion, but it is worth a separate point, given Western Christianity’s (not just Baptist) penchant toward individualistic experience. Embodied human beings inextricably associate with and inexorably affect and are affected by other embodied persons (indeed, the whole environment/creation, to which Green gives less attention). The ministry of John the Baptist in Luke 3:1–20, meticulously analyzed by Green (pp. 53–86), demonstrates that repentance and forgiveness of sins, though personal (involving each person), are by no means private and exclusively inward experiences. “Conversion” involves public commitment to ethical economic treatment of others (no exploitative surcharging [tax collectors]; no extortion [soldiers] [3:10–14]), signifying nothing less than the restoration of the faithful, fruitful people of God, the (true) family of Abraham (3:7–9), a fresh and final realization of prophetic hopes for Israel’s “new exodus” and return from exile.
Habit-nurtured vs “heart”-warmed. This dichotomy is too sharp, as conversion touches the “heart” intensely (cf. 24:32), particularly in the biblical understanding of “heart” as the center of desires and intentions (will), thoughts and perceptions (mind), as well as feelings. As emotion is embedded in the totality of human experience (see point #3), it would be strange indeed for a person not to feel something when undergoing a “radical makeover of … patterns of life and thought” (p. 126), not to have one’s “heart strangely warmed” (a little nod to Green’s own Wesleyan tradition). But, too often in “free church” congregations, matters of the “heart” are opposed to habitual practices, which come perilously close to “works” of righteousness or, God forbid, “ritual” observances, automatically supposed to be perfunctory and empty. Of course, baptism is fine, even necessary (though not meritorious), along with the occasional Lord’s Supper, but we must never stand on routine, religious ceremonies (I admit to some caricature here, though I have heard all this many times and once believed it myself!). Again, however, Luke does not share these sensibilities. Communal, conversional life is unthinkable in Luke’s view apart from living out that life in concrete, consistent—even “daily” (another key Lukan word)—disciplines of prayer, Scripture-study, bread-breaking in worship and fellowship, care for the needy, and other acts of hospitality, as highlighted in the summaries of Acts 2:41–47; 4:32–35; 5:42; and 6:7 (capping off 6:1–6) and detailed in numerous incidents throughout Luke–Acts. And as an apt summary of Green’s thesis: “Behavior is not an add-on to conversion … not even an important one. Rather, conversionary practices are constitutive of conversion. This is because conversion refers to transformed patterns of human life, that is, to transformed patterns of thinking, feeling, believing, and behaving” (p. 77).
Beware again: this carefully argued book on conversion might just change (convert!) your views on the subject! In any case, it promises to challenge constructively perspectives and practices regarding Christian evangelism and ministry in our world today.