ABSTRACT
Christology has to do with an interplay between assertions which "fit" states of affairs and changes in states of affairs to make the "fit" a promissory word. Christology in the New Testament represents an affirmation of the former and a denial of the latter, and it is this which gives rise to reticence if or when Jesus asserts propositions about himself, ratter than acts and speaks as himself. In Luke, however, J. R. Searle's notion of a certain category of speech-act which operates with a "world-to-word" direction of fit touches a central nerve of Christology and perhaps allows some progress toward softening the problem of dualism in modern Christology. Speech-act theory in the tradition of J. L. Austin and Searle draws a careful distinction between what is "said" as a propositional content and the illocutionary force of an utterance in which an act is performed in the saying of the utterance or in the writing of a text.
