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Divine Forces
Jesus Christ
Christ
See also: The Four Gospels
- Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: At the beginning of Acts.
- Back from the Dead: "But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him."
- Humble Hero: Shows this in many ways.
- Jesus Was Way Cool: Even after He goes back to heaven, thousands of people are converted to His message just by the apostles retelling what He said.
- Messianic Archetype: The Trope Maker.
- Posthumous Character: Zig-Zagged, more of a post-Ascension character. He ascends up to heaven at the start of the book but the story centers around the spread of his mission.
- Scars Are Forever: He still had the scars from His crucifixion after He rose from the dead, probably because the Apostles would not believe unless they felt them.
- Team Dad: For His Apostles.
The Holy Spirit
- Divine Intervention: The Holy Spirit regularly works through the Apostles to help them spread the Gospel, granting them spiritual gifts.
- Dub Name Change: Zig-Zagged. Translations often vary between calling him "Holy Spirit" and "Holy Ghost". However that's just because 17th-century English had two words ("spirit" and "ghost") for the same concept while it's the same word in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin.
- Translator Microbes: At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit gives the Apostles the ability to speak in tongues in order to speak to the multinational community in Jerusalem.
Christians
Christians in general
- Appropriated Appellation: "Christian" was originally a slur against Jesus' followers and meant "Christ-wannabes". The Christians (who'd called themselves "followers of the Way") realized that being a "Christ-Wannabe" was pretty much the point, and ran with it.
- The Atoner: "Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness."
- Heel–Face Turn / Heel–Faith Turn: It's emphasized that you have to repent and turn from your sins to follow Jesus.
- Humble Hero: Christians must be humble if they ever hope to see the kingdom of God.
- Multinational Team: Beginning with Pentecost, the book of Acts describes the Christian message spreading "to the uttermost ends of the earth."
- Pals with Jesus: Literally!
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?/Heart Is an Awesome Power: There was—and still is—considerable controversy over the Sign Gifts and the gifts considered to be more mundane. Paul called the early church out on this bickering. To translate his words into an analogy: if all TV Tropes pages related to a work, where would the trope pages be? If all were trope pages, where would the Useful Notes be?
Simon Peter/Cephas
"And I name you Peter, for you are the rock from which I will build My church".
- Character Development: Post-Pentecost, Peter becomes the new leader of Jesus's movement and gains maturity from it.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: He was crucified. Upside down (and this last detail was Invoked by himself).
- Decoy Protagonist: Of Acts.
- Glamour Failure: He sees through Simon Magus' scams.
- Hot-Blooded: He's matured a bit since The Four Gospels, but you can still see traces of this.
- The Lancer: Jesus left Peter in charge of the movement he started. According to the Catholic Church, the whole "I'm giving you the keys to my kingdom" scene represents Peter becoming the first pope.
- Living Lie Detector: One incident in Acts has a guy named Ananias attempting to commit fraud, but Peter sees right through the con. Ananias dies on the spot. A few hours later, Ananias's wife, Sapphira, tried to do the same and suffered the same fate.
- Noble Bigot: Like many Jewish people, he harbored prejudice against Gentiles. In the book of Acts, God calls him out on this and he helps Cornelius come to faith. Later on, while he is willing to speak with Gentiles on his own, he ignores them when Jewish Christians are around. Paul calls him out on this.
- One-Steve Limit: Enforced. Since there was another Simon among the twelve, Jesus gave him the Peter nickname instead.
- Red Baron: Jesus gave him the name "Kephas", which is from the Aramaic word for stone, "kepha" ("Peter" is the English version of "Petros", from Greek word meaning the same thing, petra). How cool must that have been to have Jesus call you "Rock"? (However, Jesus was also quick to point out when he wasn't living up to the name.)
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Initially, Peter was the hot blooded foil to Jesus's calm demeanor, but post-Pentecost, he got better and became Paul's foil.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Got this from Paul in Antioch when he started to disassociate himself with the uncircumcised and thus not be honestly forward with the Gospel truth, even to the point where Barnabas was led astray by the hypocrisy.
Paul (Saul) of Tarsus
"Saul, Saul, why persecute thou me?"
- The Atoner: When he had an epiphany on the road after witnessing Stephen's stoning, which inspired him to spread Christ's teachings.
- Badass Preacher: Fighting wild beasts in Ephesus; being stoned, dragged out of the city, and left for dead only for his followers to find him very much alive later on.
- The Call Knows Where You Live: Jesus personally visited Paul while the latter was on the way to persecute Christians.
- Celibate Hero: He himself. Also, he encouraged celibacy as a better way to be close to God and as to avoid the big burdens of marriage. He was not against marriage.
- Crippling Castration: In his letter to the Galatians, he sarcastically suggests that those who would stir up trouble to make the Galatians turn to "another gospel" by having themselves be circumcised would go all the way and castrate their own selves.
- Deadpan Snarker: Probably comes with the territory of having been in rabbinical studies.
- Determinator: Just read through the Books of Acts or read Paul's Badass Boast in 2 Corinthians about the things he went through in order to follow the Great Commission.
- Heel–Face Turn: Saul on the road to Damascus, who quite literally "saw the light". In fact, in the German translation this became De.Vom Saulus Zum Paulus - "from Saul to Paul", a common German figure of speech.
- Heel–Faith Turn: Some interpretations speculate he was struck by lightning.
- Knight Templar: Before his Heel–Faith Turn, Paul persecuted and imprisoned many Christians, and was complicit in the stoning of Stephen.
- The Mentor: To Timothy, for whom he wrote... 1 and 2 Timothy.
- Off with His Head!: Being a Roman citizen, he had the right to die in a way seen as dignified instead of the very humiliating crucifixion.
- One-Steve Limit: Unusually for someone who lives in the times of the New Testament, no-one else shares his name - although he does notably share a name with Israel's first king in the Old Testament. Given how attentive Jews were (and to a large degree still are) to their history and heritage, this likely wasn't a lucky accident.
- Pragmatic Adaptation:
- Paul's interpretation of the Bible was that that most of the laws the Jewish people followed were not essential to salvation, so whenever he preached the Gospel he didn't make becoming Jewish a necessary part of becoming a Christian and won Gentile converts everywhere he went as a result; the other disciples eventually agreed with him, on the condition that the Gentiles were also considerate of a handful of Jewish taboos. Paul would spend the rest of his life fighting for the Gentiles to have the right to live by their conscience rather than by the law.
- In 1 Corinthians, Paul mentions that he is "all things to all people" in order to properly contextualize the gospel message to non-Jewish cultures.
- Sixth Ranger: Thought himself as one of the Apostles.
- Self-Restraint: Was once in jail with Silas when the wall miraculously collapsed - they stayed put.
- Troll: It's subtle, but Paul seemed to somewhat live up to his reputation of being a rabble-rouser—in the book of Acts his mere presence sets off a riot (the Jews thought he was bringing a Gentile into the inner Temple, where Gentiles where forbidden), he triggers an argument between Pharisees and Saducees by shouting that he believed in the resurrection (a point of contention between the two factions), and in the book of Galatians he sarcastically suggests those pushing circumcision for Gentiles to "go all the way and emasculate themselves".
- Unwanted False Faith: Acts 14, Paul and Barnabus are witnessing in one Greek city and performing some miracles while they were at it. The citizens of the city were convinced that they were the Gods, Hermes and Zeus respectively and set up a whole procession to sacrificing to them as such. The apostles had to go to considerable lengths trying to make them to stop. This, in turn, made it easier for troublemakers to convince the very same citizens to attempt stoning Paul and Barnabus to death.
Others
The Pharisees
"Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone."
- Dramatically Missing the Point: See quote. They followed the ceremonies of the law to a T, but (the Christians argued) they completely over looked the more important spirit of the law.
- God Never Said That: Literally In-Universe - God gave a number of general rules, but by Jesus' time these had been analyzed and quantified into strict rules by the Pharisees. When the Pharisees tried to call Jesus on his "rulebreaking", He often explained that they had over analyzed the letter of the law and missed the spirit completely. For example, the Pharisees said He violated the Sabbath's ban on work by healing someone; He explained that while the Sabbath is a day of rest it's never against God's law to help a person or show mercy on them (See Matthew 12).
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: "If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent."
- Greed: They turned the temple into a bank.
- Holier Than Thou / Pride: Very much so.
- Hypocrite: Their religion was more to make then look good in front of men then out of any real love for God. For example, they got mad at the disciples for eating with unwashed hands, but they themselves plotted murder and stole from people.
- Irony: They had a reputation as being very religious. They also were some of Jesus's worst enemies.
- Knight Templar
- Lawful Stupid
- Malicious Slander
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Jesus called them out not only for being holier-than-thou, but for putting unnecessary restrictions on the average folk.
- Rules Lawyer: And really didn't like it that Jesus' Rule Fu Was Stronger.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!
- Token Good Teammate: Gamaliel, who spoke out in the defense of the apostles when they were first arrested. His argument was to let them go, because many false teachers had come and gone and likewise the apostles would do the same if they were just regular rabble-rousers; on the other hand, if their words turned out to be truthful, then the Pharisees would only be fighting a futile battle against God. Gamaliel was also said to be the teacher of Paul.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: They will often do the worst things to protect their community. Remember that last time Israel strayed from God's commands their kingdom was destroyed and their people scattered, so of course they don't take kindly to Christianity.
- What the Hell, Hero?: They were not really heroes, they only claimed to be, but the Pharisees made the temple into a den of thieves and Jesus rebuked them for this.
