John Kilgallen, «‘With many other words’ (Acts 2,40): Theological Assumptions in Peter’s Pentecost Speech», Vol. 83 (2002) 71-87

The complete effectiveness of Peter’s Pentecost speech implies that the Lucan audience, if not that of Peter, knows at least three assumptions that are needed to make the speech as logically convincing as possible. These three assumptions are: (1) that Jesus is physically Son of David; (2) that the kyrios of Ps 110,1 is the Messiah; (3) that only the titles ‘Son’ and ‘Father’ should be used when describing that it is Jesus who poured out the Spirit. As for Peter’s audience, the fact that Peter supported his speech with ‘many other words (arguments)’ might argue that his audience were introduced to these three assumptions. As for Luke’s audience, Luke 1,35 and its context play a major role in justifying the logic of this Pentecost speech.

knowledge of the Father and of the Son is reserved. Apparently, this gift of all things and this unique knowledge are not what can be expressed as shared by ‘God’ and Jesus. To learn certain things about Jesus, one must think of him as Son of this Father and of God as Father of this Son³⁴.

        Could there lie behind this peculiar Lucan indication of Jesus’ relationship to God some reference to Jesus’ being Son of God, by virtue of the Power of God and the Spirit of God? Luke is insistent that Jesus be called Son of God as the logical (Luke 1,35) effect of what caused him to be. Once the child of this conception can speak for himself, he calls attention, not to ‘my God’, but to ‘my Father’ (Luke 2, 49). Though our thoughts remain fragmentary, because our data to work with is quite limited, it seems that Luke has left us enough material to understand rudimentarily that indeed there is a mysterious relationship among Father, Son and Spirit, which is not foreign or contradictory to such as expression as we have in Acts 2,33.

        The closeness in phrasing between Matthew (11, 25-27) and Luke (10, 21-22) in regard to the Son known only by the Father and the Father known only by the Son suggest that Luke is drawing from a tradition, and not from his own unique way of understanding Jesus, when Peter suddenly, in mid-speech so to speak, shifts his terminology, vis-à-vis the gift of the Spirit, from ‘God’ and ‘Jesus Messiah’³⁵ to Father and Son.