Paul on Trial: The Book of Acts as a Defense of Christianity

Paul on Trial: The Book of Acts as a Defense of Christianity. By John W. Mauck. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001, xviii + 236 pp., $14.99 paper.

John W. Mauck, a seasoned attorney, has written Paul on Trial to prove that the book of Acts is a pre-trial brief written by the "attorney" Luke to defend Paul, and consequently Christians in general, from the charge that he is introducing a new and illegal religion, which would come under proscription by Rome. Instead, Christianity is a Jewish sect, which is protected by Roman law, and the struggles of the apostle Paul are due to Jewish leaders who are acting in a hostile manner toward this messianic Jewish sect. The author believes, however, that Acts has an evangelistic thrust at various points, which seems at times to be incongruent with the purpose of a brief. In order to make his argument, Mauck attempts to present evidence of such pretrial briefs in ancient Rome and attendant Roman prosecutorial practices, including possibly the work of someone like Theophilus, to whom would be given the responsibility of evaluating arguments as to their merits before they were presented to the emperor. In order to set forth his pretrial brief thesis, the author then examines the book of Acts in order explaining how each of the accounts given by Luke contribute to this defense.

I immediately found this well-written treatise to be of interest since I have been a professor of law or theology for nearly thirty years. The thesis of Acts, at least in some manner, performing as Paul's legal defense before the Roman court appealed to me. I am still convinced that aspects of Acts serve that purpose to some degree, but consider that Mauck has not made his case. This is so for a number of reasons, of which only a few will be given in this brief review: (1) Not in one instance can Mauck provide a legal brief of the Roman period to compare with Acts to see if the book fits the legal genre. He simply assumes that it fits the pattern of brief writing done by lawyers today. (2) He too conveniently solves all problems in Acts and fits every element of Acts into the alleged legal form. (3) His arguments that Theophilus is not a believer or even an inquirer of Christianity are unconvincing. Without any evidence whatsoever, he considers Theophilus a Roman official who evaluates legal cases before they are sent to the emperor. (4) Mauck does not adequately explain why Luke would send the massive Gospel of Luke to provide information about Jesus to this legal clerk of Nero. We are not talking about "brief" briefs. (5) He assumes that pagan Romans would be impressed with theological events and ideas and thinks that Nero would have read Luke and Acts. The idea that Nero would read two books which comprise more space in the NT than all of Paul's epistles is fanciful. (6) He reads the present into the past-but even as a present-day brief Acts would be in an unacceptable brief form. (7) Mauck is very imaginative, so that every item of Acts, no matter how small, is made to serve the theory, though each is subject to another explanation. (8) Acts concerns the spread of the gospel beyond the Jews to the whole world so that Christianity is not just a Jewish sect. This defeats Mauck's argument that Acts was written to show that Christianity is legal, since it was Jewish.

The book provides an innovative but unconvincing thesis. I believe, however, that the charts in the book give some helpful breakdowns of Paul's various trials and defenses that would benefit the reader.

H. Wayne House

Faith Seminary, Tacoma, WA

Copyright Evangelical Theological Society Dec 2002
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