Hearing and Doing: The Speeches in Acts and the Essence of Christianity

In reading Scripture, we encounter not only the living God, but an invitation to the mysteries of the text itself. As readers dig through the soil of the text, they eventually discover living water-a wellspring of life. The speeches of Acts offer an accessible entry point into this life, eloquently demonstrating what Calvin calls the sum total of Christian faith.

In Hearing and Doing, Christopher Holmes invites us to feast upon the speeches of Paul and Peter. As a work of constructive theological exegesis, he engages Aquinas and Calvin and some of the most important theologians of our day, notably Rowan Williams and Katherine Sonderegger. At the heart, Holmes aims to draw us to the speeches themselves so that we might become encompassed in their divine beauty. By the same token, he treats the doctrine of God and that of the church, articulating something of what the speeches urge us to say regarding God and the shape of life in relation to God.

In sum, Holmes argues that the speeches provide a window into the faith’s essentials, inspiring reverence and obedience toward God. Hearing and Doing submits to divine tutoring via the speeches, passing on the fruits of that contemplation to the reader with nuance and clarity, unfolding in an exegetically charged fashion the Christian faith’s horizon.