Church History

What this is

A category of one. Acts is the second half of Luke’s work — the same author, the same dedication, the story picked up where the Gospel left off — and it is the only account the New Testament gives of what happened next.

How to read it

It traces a single movement: from Jerusalem outward, from a Jewish sect to a community including Gentiles, from a room of frightened disciples to Paul teaching openly in Rome. Watch the geography and you have the plot.

Acts also supplies the setting for most of the letters that follow it. Reading Acts alongside Paul’s epistles turns both into something much more concrete — you can see which city, which visit, which argument.