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People of the Spirit: Exploring Luke’s View of the Church

Reviewed by Dave Faulkner.

I have had two of Graham Twelftree’s books on my shelves for several years. They are very different from this work: they are collections of sermon illustrations. Reading them paints a picture of a charismatic evangelical who holds to conservative views of Scripture, the atonement and the like. It is apparent from the credits that he is also a scholar, so it was interesting to review a book of his scholarly work, as this is. However, it is something of a surprise for those of us used to his sermon illustration books. It displays a more cautious approach to Holy Writ than I would have expected.

What Twelftree sets out to do here is employ biblical studies in the service of doctrine. He takes Luke-Acts (assuming common authorship, of course) and mines the two books together for their implicit and explicit teaching in ecclesiology. In doing so, he passionately argues against the popular notion that Pentecost is ‘the birthday of the Church’. He wants to give the Church a much more Christological and Christocentric focus. That does not mean he loses sight of the pneumatological dimension, as indeed the title itself suggests.

Who should read this book, apart from Lucan scholars and ecclesiological specialists? If you ever want to hold a sermon series or small group study on this theme, then this book will be invaluable in helping you not fall into common traps, rather like the theological equivalent of the ‘General Ignorance’ section on the TV comedy quiz ‘QI’. If you want to think carefully about New Testament patterns of church, you will find this illuminating. However, do not expect a light read. You should expect to give Twelftree’s arguments close attention to gain the best from this book.