Is the book of Acts descriptive or prescriptive?

In other words, "is the book of Acts just a history of the early church and thus there is no doctrine to be gleaned from it, or is the book of Acts a book of theology having binding examples that should shape our doctrine in some way?"  I bring this up because I was once told the former.  During a discussion about baptism's role in conversion, a Bible teacher from a Christian school I used to work at told me:  "Acts is merely descriptive, not prescriptive.  No doctrine should be formed from that book."

I believe it is in our human nature to love dichotomies.  We love when a situation is either black or white, good or bad, right or wrong and we can often approach the Bible in this way.  More often than not, the answer to a question is not "either/or", but rather "both/and".  Was Jesus God or man?  Both.  How are we saved, by faith (alone) or through baptism/immersion?  Both.  Do we have free will or does fate/destiny/God's will set the course of our lives?  Both.

To answer the original question of this post, "is the book of Acts descriptive or prescriptive?", the answer is both.  As a good friend of mine described it, it is a "theological history".

I would argue that one of the greatest blunders or errors in Biblical interpretation has been the belief that the book of Acts is merely descriptive and not prescriptive as well.  What this does is lead people to believe that it is merely "church history", and so lots of doctrine is then formed by combining the gospels with the letters, and ignoring the book of Acts altogether or pretending it has no bearing on doctrine.  This inevitably leads to false doctrine and incorrect ideas about conversion (for example , using the Thief on the Cross as a model, or taking Romans 10 out of context).  Remember, each book of the Bible has a specific purpose and/or audience.  Jesus spent 3 years teaching the Apostles and others how to be his disciple and how to make disciples.  Many events from his life on Earth (mainly the last three years) are recorded in the gospels.  In the prologue to Acts, Luke even specifies what his first book (the gospel of Luke) was about:

"O Theophilus, I indeed made the first account concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach," - Acts 1:1, MLV

He wrote about all that Jesus began "to do and to teach", his life and his doctrine, his history and his theology.  Paul later writes to Timothy telling him to watch "his life and his doctrine" and to persevere in them in order to save himself and his hearers.  It can be said that the book of Acts is about the church's life AND its doctrine.

The gospels end with Jesus telling his disciples to go make disciples of all nations, then after his ascension, they went out and did just that:   this is what we see in the book of Acts.  The book of Acts is followed by letters from the apostles (some written simultaneously while events in Acts were occurring) to those folks already converted and living as disciples:  the books of Romans to Revelation.  Each book or letter having a specific audience and/or specific purpose or issues being addressed.

The book of Acts records disciples of Jesus meeting non-Christians and converting them.  Is there a better place in the Bible to find conversion theology and doctrine? Of course not!  Think of it this way, if I wanted to find information on the start of life on earth and creation, what book should I go to?  Genesis, of course!  Now, there are other books that look back at the Creation and talk about it, for example, there are many Psalms  that do so.  John 1:1-5 gives what I like to call an "update" or further explanation of Genesis 1.  When John used the words "En archē", the Greek equivalent of "In the beginning", any Jew reading his gospel would immediately think of Genesis 1.  Paul also mentions creation in his speech in Athens in Acts 17, but that does not mean that the Psalms, John 1 and Acts 17 teach us MORE about creation than Genesis do, or that those texts' purpose is to give creation theology.  The same can be said about the conversion process.  While many of the letters discuss aspects of conversion and often look back at the conversion of the readers/listeners, it is a mistake to form a conversion doctrine based solely on the epistles. Remember, these were letters written to people who had already been converted, not telling them how to convert someone. And while we can gather lots of information about how a disciple of Jesus should live and what it means to be a disciple from the Gospels, there isn't a single conversion AFTER the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus recorded in any of the gospels.  Those conversions are only found in Acts.  This is important to "rightly divide or correctly handle the word of truth".  We know that the New Covenant went into effect with Jesus' death, burial and resurrection, according to the book of Hebrews, so anyone who was saved prior to his death on the cross was in a different situation than those who were saved after Pentecost and the pouring out of God's Spirit.  During Jesus' time here on earth, he would often just say to people "your sins are forgiven", but the Apostles and disciples in Acts NEVER do that.  Time and time again, people are told some variant of "Believe in Jesus, repent and be baptized" for the forgiveness of their sins (Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19; see the connection between these two verses in the previous post, found here. Acts 8:36-39, Acts 10:43, 47-48, Acts 22:16).

The fact that many denominations don't teach from or use the book of Acts for doctrine is not entirely coincidental.  It is a scholastic fact that until about the mid 20th century, Bible scholars didn't do much of any study or publish articles on the book of Acts.  The renewed interest only came after renewed interest in the gospel of Luke and when the question arose "should we read Luke's works as Luke-Acts or Luke & Acts?"  In his book, A Theology of Luke and Acts, Darrell Bock dedicates his entire first chapter to "The Often Lost Importance of Luke-Acts" where he says the following:

"So what causes the neglect of these two volumes, especially as a unit?
First, the gospel gets absorbed in discussions about Jesus and the other gospels.  Luke has always had third place among the Synoptics.  In the early church, Matthew was seen as the lead gospel, having apostolic roots and being seen as the first gospel to be written.  In the last two centuries, Mark has taken this central role.  Now seen as most likely the first gospel to be written, this gospel now becomes a key point of focus in the study of Jesus.  Its outline is the lens through which discussion of Jesus, especially the historical Jesus, is often conducted.  John has always had a prime position as the "spiritual" gospel, a description that goes back to Clement of Alexandria in the second century.  So Luke got lost in the shuffle.
Second, Acts got separated from Luke as the canon distinguished between gospels and the history of the early church.  This severed the two volumes, and people read the works as separate pieces.  This has caused readers to lose the links between the two volumes and the theological story that both volumes together tell.  The gospel of Luke was related to the other gospels, while Acts was left to itself on a genre island telling the story of the early church.  The continuity between Jesus and the launching of the early community was lost in the shuffle."

I myself discovered so many of those links between the two volumes (and have since begun to think of them as one story with two parts) after I read Robert Tannehill's The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, volume 1: The Gospel of Luke and volume 2: The Acts of the Apostles.  Most people don't understand that Luke & Acts are really two parts of one work: Luke-Acts, and they both portray one big theme: God's going to do something with/to "All Flesh". Luke's gospel is about "All flesh will see God's salvation" (Luke 3:6, quoting Isaiah 40:3-5). The book of Acts is all about "God will pour out his Spirit on all flesh" (Acts 2:17, quoting Joel 2:28). So, understanding this we see that Luke's gospel is about the Father and the Spirit sending the Son to "all flesh", that's why Luke's gospel contains stories about Jesus interacting with all types of groups and people: Jews, Samaritans, Gentiles, women, the poor; there are several stories that only appear in Luke and not in the other gospels. The book of Acts is about the Father and the Son sending the Spirit to "all flesh". That's why the Spirit is really the main protagonist in the book, it's really not the Apostles, but the Spirit directing the mission (there was a time when many called the book the Acts of the Spirit rather than the Acts of the Apostles. I too, see the former as a more fitting title). We see the following groups all immersed in water in the name of Jesus and receive forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Spirit: Jews, converts to Judaism, Samaritans, God-fearers/Worshippers of God, pagan Gentiles and remnant disciples of John the Baptist.  Luke's two-part story goes from the center of Jewish life (the temple in Jerusalem) to the center of Gentile life (Rome).  No one would dare to say that the Gospel of Luke is merely history and doesn't contain theology, so it should be equally as heretical and wrong to say so about the book of Acts: the book of conversions.

Be strong in the grace,

Fenton