A canonical performance, however, is neither strict replication of a prior blueprint nor application of a principle. It is rather a lived demonstration of theodramatic understanding. The story in Acts 16 shows us the kind of world we live in and the kind of thing God does in the world and the kind of people we are to be in response. To read this passage wisely is not to apply but to appropriate its message and hence “of being transformed by watching/hearing it properly, as a word about who this God is that we are trying to know and love.”
