God's Plan in Luke-Acts

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Daniel Lanzinger
• Subject Area: Roman Catholic Theology
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 430899569

This project aims at a comprehensive elaboration of a central theological motif in Luke-Acts, i.e. the plan of God. Methodologically, the examination shall advance in two steps. Drawing upon the insight of previous research that Luke’s predominant way of doing theology is by narrating, the first step will be a close reading of the text by applying the methods of narratology. The working hypothesis is that dramatic irony, which is understood as a difference in either knowledge or comprehension between the characters of a text and its readers, is Luke’s narrative key technique to elaborate his concept of a divine plan.In a second step, the results shall be contextualized by a comparison with exemplary texts of different narrative genres. The working hypothesis is that the author of Luke-Acts avoids the term “providence” but uses narrative structures that ancient readers would typically relate to the idea of a divine guidance. In contrast to much previous research, the aim is not to uncover literary dependencies, but to appreciate Luke-Acts as an original work with its own literary and theological perspective within a contemporary discourse.In conclusion, the study aims at a critical reassessment of the notions “salvation history”, “providence”, and “plan of God”, and shall eventually lead to a re-description of the same phenomenon in terms of the cultural context of the first-century addressees, and not in terms developed from theological preconceptions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants