| Part 1 The Theory of Faith | Hirohumi Hoshika |
Now, however, this "isolation" will be ended up overcome. We learn this from the portrayals of the apostles in the Acts, which followed the Gospels. The characters who appear there already have a different aura than those of the Gospel era, possessing a certain dignity.
As mentioned in Chapter 2 - Easy Study 2-3, this transformation of the apostles has long attracted the attention of theologians. As one reads from the Gospels to the Acts of the Apostles, many are surprised by the transformation it witnesses.
This indicates that at some point between the conclusion of each Gospel and the Acts, Jesus' "isolation" was overcome. However, how that is not at all clear. We simply suddenly encounter them, who seem to have overcome the isolation.
Some interpret overcoming this "isolation" as mere one process in the faith within the disciples' coming-of-age story. That is to say, it means that while they were still immature when they were with Jesus, their faith grew through Jesus' death and resurrection, and they ultimately reached the state of mind that Jesus demanded.
However, I believe that summarizing the changes in the apostles' faith in this way overlooks something crucial about their "faith" that led to the emergence of the first church.
This is because passing over the emphasis on the apostles' transformation here would mean viewing their final state of faith as merely an extension of their faith during the Gospel period. This would be equivalent to seeing nothing new about the "faith" described in their Acts.
The disciples of the Gospel era had faith in Jesus based on what they saw and understood from their encounters with him. It was a kind of spontaneous faith; even though it occasionally manifested itself in moments of sudden elation, such as Peter’s confession of Christ, it was still nothing more than a reaction prompted by Jesus’ appearance and actions at that particular moment. Therefore, in situations like the time of Jesus' execution, their faith crumbles.
On the other hand, the Christian faith that is passed down to the present day is not like this. Our faith includes not only what we know from Jesus' actions, but also judgments about him as the "Son of God," "Savior," and "Christ," which we shouldn't be able to know even if we had seen him up close.
While the apostles of the Gospel era judged Jesus based on his works, from the time of the Acts onward, they came to understand Jesus’ former works through their faith in him. This is the fundamental difference between Christian faith in the Gospel era and Christian faith after the Acts of the Apostles. I would like to call this faith after the Acts "Apostolic Faith".
In other words, modern faith originates not from the apostles of the Gospel era who were with Jesus, but from the apostles of the Acts era, after Jesus' death. If we were to summarize the new nature of this "Apostolic Faith" in one word, it would be "conviction (1 Thes. 1:5)". It's not that one's faith in Jesus grew stronger during the course of their spiritual development, but rather it's more accurate to describe it as a state where they gained a clear conviction in Jesus due to some kind of trigger.
This "conviction" is a new characteristic that was added to the faith of the apostles in the Gospel era. To disregard this change in the Book of Acts and simply view it as a growth in their faith would mean overlooking the nature of this new faith they attained.
We learn from the Book of Acts that the apostles overcame Jesus' "isolation" and the results of that overcoming. They are convinced that Jesus is the Christ. In addition, they are even more convinced that their faith is correct. However, how they arrived at that conviction remains a mystery.
The question, then, is how this “overcoming of isolation”—which gave them such confidence—was achieved. It is important not to accept their changes as natural and ignore them, but rather to frame them as problems that need to be solved.
This is because elucidating this issue clarifies the faith that Jesus demanded of his disciples, and it should also lead to a path toward realizing the ultimate task of theology: "establishing the faith that once existed, in the modern age."