Justin Mihoc: People of the Garden: Towards an Ecclesiology of Acts based on an analysis of its Patristic Reception

This paper attempts to reconstruct an Ecclesiology of the Lukan Book of Acts and to show that its ecclesiological themes are indeed received, incorporated and further developed in the literary milieu of Late Antiquity. I will mostly focus my analysis on the Patristic literature of the first five centuries in the hope of displaying the multi-faceted and complex reception of the ecclesiological tropes found in the Book of Acts, with special emphasis on the life of the first Christians.Firstly, I will make a case for an intertextual reading of Acts, looking at the Lukan book as a new Genesis, one that recounts a new creation of the new people of God. Secondly, I will analyse the Patristic development of this theme, restricting my analysis to a few key interpreters.