The sea change in God’s relationship with humanity becomes readily apparent in Luke’s tale of the many acts of the Apostles. There are a plethora of examples of God’s insistence and assistance during this fairly short period ( 15 years?)following the ascension of Jesus; so many in fact that Luke may have become frustrated in how best to describe them. The Holy Spirit comes upon those whom Peter and John lay hands (8:17). An angel of the Lord appears to Philip, sending him on the road to Gaza (8:26), where the Spirit tells him to go speak to the man in the chariot (8:29), after which the Spirit snatches Philip away where he finds himself in another town (8:39). But when the light flashed on Saul, blinding him, and Paul responded to the voice with “Who are you?”, the response was, “I am Jesus” (9: 3-5). No angel or Spirit in this case. And it was the “Lord” who spoke to Ananias in a vision, telling him to go to Saul and lay hands on him to fill him with the Holy Spirit (9: 10-17). Angels and visions return in the story of Peter and Cornelius in Chapter 10 with the Holy Spirit poured out on the Gentiles to whom Peter was speaking (10: 44-46). When Peter recounts these events he says the “Spirit” told him to go with Cornelius’ men (11:12). It was an angel of the Lord who escorted Peter out of prison (12:7), but the Holy Spirit instructed the church in Antioch to “set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (13:2).
In Luke’s account of these activities, God appears to humanity in visions during times of rest, by voice during consciousness and in the form of angels. God also enables the apostles to perform miraculous healing (9:34; 14:9)) and suffering (13:11). Most of all, God provides God’s Holy Spirit to those to whom the Apostles bring to faith. Clearly, in all these actions, God is the actor. God is the protagonist. As we read these various manifestations of God’s action, are Luke’s descriptions the result of his poetic literary license as author, or accurate accounts of the witnesses? And does it matter?
In the Jewish tradition, there is much evidence of God speaking directly to humans in their consciousness (Abraham, Moses, Elijah) and to the prophets in visions. The Holy Spirit was a new development embraced first by Luke, the Gentile. In the three synoptic gospels, the Holy Spirit arrives in John’s ministry as one baptizing with water in preparation for the one coming who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descends on Jesus and leads him into the desert (Mk. 1:8,10,12; Mt. 3:11,16; 4:1; Lk. 3:16, 22: 4:1). But in Luke’s gospel, the Holy Spirit was an active force before Jesus was born. The Angel Gabriel tells Zechariah that his son John with be filled with the Holy Spirit (1:15), and Gabriel tells Mary that the Holy Spirit will come upon her (1:35). Both Elizabeth and Zechariah were filled with the Holy Spirit (1:41,67). The Holy Spirit rested on Simeon who identified the baby Jesus as the Messiah (2:25).
It occurs to me that Luke’s Gospel descriptions were likely influenced by the knowledge he gained from his experience with the Apostles after the ascension of Jesus. Luke knew there was a powerful, invisible force at work in the world that spoke to humans, directed humans, and caused humans to possess certain extra-human powers. Luke’s understanding was later confirmed in John’s Gospel reflections (Jn. 4:23-24; 14: 16-17). Luke may well have concluded that this invisible force would have been active in the parents of John and Jesus. Perhaps then, Luke’s seeming poetic license is more an attempt to describe God’s incredible continuing presence in the lives of humans through some indescribable force to which we would feebly ascribe the word “spirit.” And in the Jewish tradition, since this spirit is of God, the spirit is holy. Our God then is (1) God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, (2) Jesus the eternal Son who we knew on earth as man, and (3) the Holy Spirit that is with us forever as an invisible force. I’m not sure why it took 400 odd years for the Patristic Fathers to work this out.