The way of imagination

        What’s in a name?   How would you describe your identity as a believer in Jesus without using the word “Christian”?    The New Testament book called The Acts of the Apostles uses many “labels” to refer to this weird group of people who burst onto the Mediterranean scene in the fourth decade of the first century – “disciples (of Jesus)”, “Jewish heretics” (Ac. 24.14), “Nazarenes”, “the brothers”; indeed, the moniker “Christian” (i.e. “little Christ”) was first applied to the Jesus followers in the city of Antioch in Syria (cf. Ac. 11.26).   Each of these names tells us something of how the early Christians understood themselves, or at the very least, of how Luke – the author of The Acts – understood the members of this strange new community.      “The way” of virtue.   Yet another manner of describing the early Christians was as “followers of the Way ” (cf. Ac. 9.2, 22.4, 24.14, etc.).   This is interestin...