POST OVERVIEW. An investigation into how to correctly understand the identity of this person Luke calls “most excellent Theophilus” (Luke 1:3; also Acts 1:1).

AN OFFICIAL OF PROMINENCE?

Luke, the beloved physician and the author of both the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, dedicates both of his divinely inspired books to “most excellent Theophilus” (Luke 1:3). This prompts the question that I want to address, namely, “Who is this person Theophilus?” The common teaching that I have heard most often is that Theophilus was an official of some prominence and, from the context of Luke’s dedications, a personal acquaintance of the beloved physician. But before we agree with this idea that this description applies to an individual named Theophilus, we must first resolve a number of problems that are raised by this idea.

PURPOSE. The purpose of this article is to present the difficulties with the common teaching that Theophilus was “an individual official of some prominence” so that it becomes apparent that Luke is addressing his two great works to anyone and everyone who is a “lover of God” through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, Theophilus, the person addressed in Luke and Acts, is any and every believer.

THE DIFFICULTIES PRESENTED

Before stating the difficulties, let me make a few comments. First, the correct identity of Theophilus is not a major issue. I am writing this article more as an exercise in thinking biblically than as a matter of great importance. Second, these difficulties are not presented in any particular order. Some points may be “thornier” than others, but the fact that there are many difficulties with “Theophilus as a specific official” gives evidence that there is a genuine weakness with this interpretation. Third, there is some overlap between these points that I am making and this overlap may lead to a feeling of redundancy. I apologize in advance if it seems that I am making the same point multiple times. So, on to the difficulties.

THEOPHILUS IS UNKNOWN IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. Other than Luke 1:3 and Acts 1:1, there is no mention of this person in the New Testament. There is no record of him and no reference to him. Also, Luke gives no information about him to suggest he is a specific individual. Luke is an historian of the first rank and, when he is relating the events of his gospel or the events of Acts, he usually provides detailed descriptions of virtually every character in these stories. For example, note the descriptions of Barnabas (Acts 4:36), of Lydia (16:14), or of Apollos (18:24). Yet with Theophilus, Luke provides no information at all except to indicate that Theophilus “has been taught” (Luke 1:4) and is, therefore, a believer. Even the assumption that Theophilus is some sort of official is based solely on Luke’s appellation of “most excellent Theophilus.” The only thing we know about him for sure is that he is a believer in Jesus.

THE AUDACITY OF THE PARENTS. Theophilus is a Greek word that means “lover of God.” We can deduce that his parents were certainly Gentiles and not Jews since they gave their son a Greek name. Imagine the audacity of naming your son “lover of God.” If they were pagans, then you would need to wonder, “Lover of which god?” On the other hand, if they were God-fearing Greeks, they would never have had the nerve to name their son, “lover of Elohim.” What would their Jewish friends at the synagogue think of that? All this means that it is very unlikely that there was an official of some prominence who had the actual name Theophilus.

THE PROBLEM OF DATES. There is the problem of the timing of these events. Let’s assume that “most excellent Theophilus” was thirty-five years old when Luke began writing the gospel of Luke to him. Scholars believe Luke’s gospel was written around AD 60. That means that his parents named this “official of some prominence” “lover of God” around AD 25 (AD 60 minus 35 years old), which was two or three years before Jesus began His earthly ministry. Thus Theophilus’ parents could not have been believers in Jesus Christ when they named their son. We thus need to ask why a Greek couple living in AD 25 would name their son “lover of God?”

This “date problem” is related to the next problem.

THE ASSOCIATION/RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM. Luke was a physician (“the beloved physician” Col. 4:14), which I assume means he was a doctor of some sort. Based on what we read in Acts, he probably was from the city of Troas. Luke’s main “claim to fame” was his close friendship with the apostle Paul. He traveled with Paul on the apostle’s second and third missionary journeys. As far as we can tell, there was nothing else special about Luke as a person. This, however, raises some questions when we consider the personal relationship that needs to have existed between Luke and “most excellent Theophilus.”

• Why would “an official of some prominence” befriend a random physician from the town of Troas?
• For that matter, why would Luke, a simple physician from Troas, befriend some random “official of some prominence?” It just seems hard to imagine the circumstances of their meeting. Doctors and prominent officials rarely travel in the same circles today, and I suspect it was the same in the mid-first century.
• When would Luke have had time to make the acquaintance with this Theophilus and then have had more time to establish a fairly close relationship with him? We have no reason to believe that Luke met Theophilus before he met and joined Paul as the apostle took the gospel to Europe (Acts 16). We can be confident that Luke did not meet Theophilus during his missionary journeys with Paul, for Luke would certainly have mentioned such a meeting in the book of Acts to give a connection to Theophilus. Therefore, Luke and Theophilus must have met and become close acquaintances AFTER the events of Acts 28. But this, too, seems difficult to imagine. How would their meeting come about and why would Luke feel he wanted to dedicate his books to him?
• In the first century, people did not travel much and distances were much greater than they are today. Practically speaking, this means that Theophilus would have needed to be geographically near Luke. Daniel developed a relationship with Nebuchadnezzar because he was his advisor for fifty years or so and lived in the king’s court (Daniel 1-4). Paul was acquainted with Felix because Paul was his prisoner and they chatted from time to time (Acts 24). If it had not been for these God-ordained circumstances, Daniel would never have known Nebuchadnezzar and Paul and Felix would never have known one another. In the same way, Luke and Theophilus must have been located near one another. Was there a prominent official named Theophilus near Troas in AD 60-65 who wanted to get to know a believing physician? Seems unlikely.

ANOTHER POSSIBILITY TO CONSIDER

Perhaps no single one of these difficulties is enough to discredit the notion that Theophilus was a flesh-and-blood acquaintance of Luke, but the cumulative effect of all these questions suggests that, if there were another possible understanding of Luke’s intended audience for his gospel and for Acts, we should explore that possibility.

And there is another possibility that is so apparent that it might be overlooked. What if Theophilus was not the proper name of a little-known official in mid-first century Asia Minor who was acquainted with Luke the physician, but instead “theophilus” was the word that Luke chose to describe every one of his intended readers? In other words, what if Luke carefully researched all the details of his gospel and organized all the events of Acts so that every “lover of God,” every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, “may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught” (Acts 1:4)? What if Luke’s intended audience was not one specific believer named Theophilus but was instead any and every believer who identifies himself as a “lover of God” through Jesus Christ? I believe this is the correct way to understand Luke’s dedications.

As we consider this second possibility, we notice that all the difficulties and problems associated with the first view disappear. If Luke is writing to all lovers of God everywhere, then we no longer need to search for an individual with a highly unusual name. The fact that Luke gives no personal information about “Theophilus” now makes perfect sense, because “theophilus” now includes the three thousand people on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2) and includes Samaritans (Acts 8), an Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8), Cornelius and his family (Acts 10), Lydia and the jailer (Acts 16), barbarians, Scythians, slaves and freemen (Col. 3:11), Paul and Peter and the rest of the apostles, and the hundreds of millions of lovers of God who have been taught (Luke 1:4) about Jesus and who have believed since Christ rose from the dead in AD 30. We now understand that theophilus is not a proper name but is rather a description of every disciple of Jesus whom the Lord will raise up on the last day (John 6:39, 40, 44, 54; 11:24).

CONCLUSION

After considering the difficulties presented by the view that “Theophilus” (Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1) was the name of a specific individual who lived in the mid-first century, and after investigating the other possibility that “theophilus” (translated “lover of God”) was the way Luke described any and every believer who would read his gospel or the book of Acts, we have concluded that Luke addressed his great works to all believers in the Lord Jesus. If you are a lover of God through faith in the Lord Jesus, Luke wrote his gospel and Acts for you “so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught” (Luke 1:4).

Soli Deo gloria            rmb                 12/22/2023                 #685