As Jesus was a disruptor of his cultural, religious, economic, political environment, to adopt the name Christian implies a deliberate reflection of him.
I’ve wondered if the significance of that first use of the term had to do with outsiders making sense of that newfangled multilingual/-cultural group of Hellenists and Hebrews come together in Antioch in an unprecedented unity (cf., 11:20), especially given the cotext (w/ the Holy Spirit recognized as being “poured out even in the Gentiles,” 10:45) and its placement in the literary development of the book. In other words, could the sense of it be that at this point in Acts we’ve arrived at the formation of a new kind of community with no other obvious organizing principle than the name in which they gathered?
Well said, JD, though I might amend your "organizing principle" to read "identifying principle." It's worth reflecting on how this sort of move is already at work in Acts 2, where people from multiple geographical settings and speaking multiple languages have this in common: baptized in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:38).
Definitely. What got me thinking about it is (what I regard to be) the significance of the peculiar unity / community represented in original use of the term *by outsiders identifying what held together a diversity of insiders* in contrast to the individualistic way we use it as a *self-designation* associated with a certain set of beliefs. (I’m currently working on an essay on the problem of religious self-designation in America, so it’s fresh in my mind!)
As Jesus was a disruptor of his cultural, religious, economic, political environment, to adopt the name Christian implies a deliberate reflection of him.
I’ve wondered if the significance of that first use of the term had to do with outsiders making sense of that newfangled multilingual/-cultural group of Hellenists and Hebrews come together in Antioch in an unprecedented unity (cf., 11:20), especially given the cotext (w/ the Holy Spirit recognized as being “poured out even in the Gentiles,” 10:45) and its placement in the literary development of the book. In other words, could the sense of it be that at this point in Acts we’ve arrived at the formation of a new kind of community with no other obvious organizing principle than the name in which they gathered?
Well said, JD, though I might amend your "organizing principle" to read "identifying principle." It's worth reflecting on how this sort of move is already at work in Acts 2, where people from multiple geographical settings and speaking multiple languages have this in common: baptized in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:38).
Definitely. What got me thinking about it is (what I regard to be) the significance of the peculiar unity / community represented in original use of the term *by outsiders identifying what held together a diversity of insiders* in contrast to the individualistic way we use it as a *self-designation* associated with a certain set of beliefs. (I’m currently working on an essay on the problem of religious self-designation in America, so it’s fresh in my mind!)