In 177 CE Christians in Lugdunum and Vienna in Gaul were persecuted, and some were martyred. The survivors sent a letter by Irenaeus to the churches in Asia and Phrygia describing what happened. Among other things, they complained that they were excluded from the baths (βαλανεῖα). Later in his Adversus haereses (ca. 190 CE) Irenaeus referred to a story he claimed stemmed from Polycarp of Smyrna, who died ca. 156 CE, about John the disciple going to the public baths (βαλανεῖον) in Ephesus where he saw Cerinthus. Tertullian of Carthage in his Apologeticum (197 CE) claimed that the Christians were no different from other people: they went to the forum, the food market, and the baths (balneia). These three passages, among the earliest references to Roman baths by Christians, suggest no ethical reservations about going to the baths. An interesting question arises: Were there women in these baths?

In the last twenty years, Joachim Jeremias's interpretation of the word abba has become a focus of theologies that attempt to base themselves on the Jesus of history. In the face of feminist critiques of the use of “father” for God, Robert Hamerton-Kelly reiterated Jeremias's case for Jesus' supposedly unique usage of both abba and “father,” asserting its revelatory status and its freedom from and even opposition to patriarchy. Some feminist scholars have attempted to incorporate Hamerton-Kelly's description of Jesus' use of abba into feminist understandings of God, based on reconstructions of Jesus' teaching.

Let me begin with a personal note. Three experiences in my work on Luke-Acts will explain both the selection of the topics I shall discuss in this article and my view of the present situation in the study of Luke-Acts.

(1) After ten years of reading the recent studies of Luke-Acts and then working on the text itself, I made the observation that the general understanding of the theology of the Gospel of Luke on the basis of its redactional elements was rarely helpful in my effort of writing a commentary on this Gospel. Just as contributors to the more recent volumes of the Theological Dictionary to the New Testament no longer propose interpretations generally applicable to all three synoptic Gospels, the exegete working with a particular pericope can no longer be satisfied with generalizations about Lukan theology. Indeed, such general assumptions may actually be impediments rather than useful tools for the understanding of a particular text. This is not universally recognized because the attention of scholars has been held by another problem, namely, the substitution of a diachronic redactional interpretation of the Gospels by a synchronic literary interpretation. The underlying dilemma is, of course, the old question of the connection between exegesis and biblical theology. A promising solution might be to immerse oneself into a single relevant text, as Odette Mainville has done in her recent dissertation on Acts 2:33, and to obtain universality through the understanding of particularity—in other words, to follow Kierkegaard rather than Hegel.

Can the sacred texts of non-Christian religious traditions be revelatory for Christians in a fashion that is more than vague and merely theoretical? This question is central within the larger project of understanding the significance of the various world religions for Christians, and the effort to answer it must proceed according to three specific tasks.

First, it is necessary to describe the ways in which the Christian tradition predisposes and constrains Christian believers on the issue of whether non-Christian texts can be revelatory words of God for non-Christians, for Christians, or for both. The formulation of this description requires reflection on the Christian tradition and its sources: Christian ideas of revelation, scripture, the Word of God, and possible words of God.

Charles Chauncy (1705–1787), for more than sixty years the pastor of the influential First (“Old Brick”) Church in Boston, was a leading participant in many of the greatest controversies of his century. Best known for his opposition both to Jonathan Edwards and to what he regarded as the emotional excesses of the Great Awakening, he is also well remembered for his vigorous protest against Anglican efforts to establish bishops in America. He became such an ardent champion of the colonists in their struggle for a free and independent nation that above all others he deserves the title “theologian of the American Revolution.”