Final Exam Answer Key – PRBL 230 Fall 2025.
Here are the answers to the short- and long-answer final exam questions for
PRBL 230 F23. Some of you may have lost points because you just copied
directly from the text. The purpose of a final exam is to show what YOU have
learned, not how well your copying skills have developed. Therefore, you are
expected to answer in your own words. If you just used a short, let’s say 2-
word phrase from the text, then that is fine, as long as you use quotes and
gives the page number, that is fine. But if you gave your entire answer as a
direct quotation from the source, you received 0 points on that answer.
The questions were shuffled electronically in the exam, so you would have
been given the questions in a different order.
1.
According to Powell, what is the “basic and obvious goal” of the book of
Acts
ANSWER:
to tell the story of the church’s beginnings to inspire and challenge
his readers (Powell, 212)
2.
According to Powell, how does Luke’s Gospel portray salvation?
ANSWER: it is to be experienced in the present; it also is to be
experienced in the future—life before and after death; as a form of
liberation—being set free from things in this life, including illness,
demon-possession; not necessarily connected to Jesus’ death on the
cross (Powell, 177-179)
3.
According to David deSilva, how is the New Testament’s portrayal of God
different from the cultural expectations of God as patron (in the patron-client
dynamic)?
ANSWER: God gives grace even to the ungrateful (Heen, 454)
4.
According to Powell, what is the expectation that shapes Paul’s ethics?
ANSWER: “the expectation that believers will imitate Christ” in
“sacrificial humility,” recognizing “the good in others rather than
what benefits them (Powell, 267)
5.
Why does Powell compare the opening of Luke’s Gospel to a musical?
ANSWER: “Every time something important happens in the
prologue, a character seems to burst spontaneously into song”
(Powell, 170)
