(b) The words of Stephen are addressed to One who has the power to forgive ; and the title of ' Saviour ' is no empty form. That ' salvation,' which, whatever be the precise contents of the term, always stands for the highest good, can be obtained through Him, and through no other. In 4^^ ('there is no other name,' etc.) St. Peter is pro- bably contemplating Jews only, and salvation as conceived by them, i.e. as the Messianic deliver- ance of the future. This Jesus, who is the Christ, is to return, after ' seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord ' at ' the time of the restoration of all things' (3-^). That return will prove the cul- minating and final fulfilment of predictions made by Moses and the prophets who followed him, con- cerning both the glories and the judgment of the Messianic times.
For, (c) when He comes, Christ will fulfil the function for which He has been destined by God ; He will act as Judge of quick and dead (lO'*^).
These last are the only references in the early chapters of Acts to the Parousia of Christ and its attendant circumstances. We have to observe therefore the sobriety and the reticence of the ex- pectation, especially when compared with the exu- berance of earlier and contemporary writing on the subject. There is no reference to the restora- tion of the Kingdom to Israel, or to the humiliation and destruction of Israel's foes — features of the future which were part of the common form of Messianic ex])ectation. In fact, the tone of these speeches is strangely different from what we should have expected from a Jew speaking under tiie con- viction tliat tlie ilessiah had been manifested in Jesus, and would shortly return to fulfil the Divine programme. We miss even the eschatological scenery connected with the Return, with which the apocalyptic sections of the Synoptic Gospels have made us familiar, and also that emphasis on the imminence of the Retuin which appears in the early Epistles of St. Paul. And yet, in the an- nouncement that Christ comes to judge the quick and the dead, St. Peter ascribes to Him a function which sets Him on the plane of God (see Scheel in
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EGG i. 1743, foot). The exalted Jesus, despite the clearness with which He is defined as a man, is yet One to whom men pray, One who exercises the Divine functions of forgiving, saving, and judging. And ' what is honoured in worship stands wholly and without qualitication on the side of God ' (Bousset, Kyrios Christos, p. 185).
(vi.) Further light is shed upon the conception of Christ held by the primitive community by the significance assigned to His death. It is true that the references to this subject are unexpectedly few, brief, and general. The early chapters of Acts present a very exact reproduction of the natural situation in which the death of Jesus was a fact known to all, one which called for explanation, and, in the absence of explanation, was without re- ligious value ; but one for which an explanation was emerging under the guidance partly of the OT, partly of reminiscences of the Master's teaching, and partly of the spiritual experience of the disciples. The following points are to be noted.
(a) The death of Jesus was very definitely referred to ' the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God' (2-^). Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the Jews as a people had only carried out what had been ordained to happen by the hand and will of God (4-^). In this there is nothing that goes beyond the Jewish doctrine of the Divine fore- knowledge ; but the statement of it involved a prob- lem which was calling for solution. To what end had God ordained the death of the Messiah ?
(/3) This death, though the fact had hitherto been ignored, had actually been predicted by the prophets of the OT. ' Those things which God before showed by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ should suffer, did he thus fuUil ' (3'8; cf. 10«, 1 P 1'", Lk 242«ff- *'«■). The repeated emphasis on 'all the prophets' (cf. S^'') is not to be explained as due merely to hyperbole. It arises from, and illustrates, the conviction that Christ was the goal and the fulfilment of the whole pro- phetic anticipation of redemption ; though St. Peter might have found difficulty in quoting many prophetic words directly bearing on the death of Christ, the conviction he expresses is that that death must now be recognized as an essential element in the working out of the redemptive purpose.
(7) The disciples commemorated the death of Jesus by a frequently repeated eucharistic meal in which they ' showed forth the Lord's death.' That this practice began so promptly after the birth of the community (2^'') is a fact which must be due to recollection of the Last Supper, and so involves conscious remembrance of the significance Avhich the Master had attached to the breaking of the bread, at least according to the shortest form in which the words are reported : ' This is my body which is on your behalf (1 Co 11-^). Behind that would lie recollections of other things He had said bearing upon His death which had been vague and cryptic at the time.