I was studying the Acts of the Apostles with my friends at the local church. Acts appears to be written to a single individual rather than to a community, unlike many of the other epistles. My question is: Who is this recipient, Theophilus? Why did Luke address the work to him? From the name, it seems Theophilus was a Greek man, perhaps under the influence of Greek philosophy and its reasoning. In Acts 1:3, Luke writes, "he showed himself alive … with many proofs." This suggests that Theophilus may have had questions or doubts about the resurrection of Jesus.

In Luke 1 : 1–5, the author clarifies that Theophilus had already heard about Jesus, perhaps from Christians who were not highly educated and, therefore, could not fully satisfy the recipient’s desire for knowledge about Jesus’ life and work. Paul’s epistles describe Luke as a physician and an intellectual of that era, which would suit Theophilus’ need for a more informed explanation. So, Acts seems to be Luke’s written effort to persuade Theophilus. This connects to a memory from a university course I took about Introduction to Logic about twenty years ago. The teacher presented a classic example of logical justification of a truth — say, about John’s mortality: “John is mortal.” Premises: Man is mortal; John is a man; therefore, John is mortal. Similarly, the author of Acts offers a set of premises to support the claim that Jesus is alive in Acts 1.