How is disagreement resolved in the Council of Acts 15?
The business relationship of the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 has been fatigued on in a range of situations where Christians have argued for a radical change in our understanding of the church and salvation. Information technology comes up often in the current fence on sexuality, but was cited past Dick France, late Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, in relation to the admission of women to ordination in the Church building of England, and has been drawn on in discussions of the growth of 'fresh expressions' of church in relation to 'inherited' church.
The account of the Council meeting itself forms the climax of an extended department of the narrative that began in Acts x with Peter's rooftop vision and run across with Cornelius, the Roman centurion and 'God-fearer'. The importance of this episode is highlighted by Luke's repetition of it in Peter's recounting the episode in Acts 11. Luke builds the story carefully, noting the development of the distinctive identity of the Jesus-followers in the grade of the name 'Christian' in Acts xi.25, and he so dovetails the story of the beginning of Paul's ministry in Acts thirteen and fourteen before returning to the question of gentile believers in Acts 15.
This is of import, since Luke deliberately structures his accounts of Peter'southward and Paul's ministries to mirror one another, and so Peter's come across with Cornelius is mirrored by Paul'southward habit of preaching to 'Greeks' after he has first preached in the synagogue. And, coming at the mid-point of Acts, the Council and its determination get the turning point in the narrative. Up until now, the main focus has been the ministry of Peter and the growth of the gospel amongst Jewish believers. But from now on, the focus is decisively on Paul and his ministry amongst gentile believers. He heads West over again on his so-called 'Second Missionary journey', and is directed by the Spirit to cross into Europe, where he establishes congregations at Philippi and Thessaloniki, then heads south to Athens and Corinth in Acts eighteen.
Noting this highlights 2 issues of context which we need to consider when reading the Council decision. Get-go, it is hard to underestimate what a seismic shift information technology was for the early church building to come up to terms with the thought that salvation for Jesus was for gentileswho remained as gentiles rather than joining the historic people of God by becoming converts to Judaism. Something of the significance is captured at the starting time of Paul's reflection on the Jews in the purposes of God in Romans 9–xi:
Theirs is the adoption; theirs the divine celebrity, the covenants, the receiving of the police, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen. (Romans nine.4–5)
The Mosaic law, including circumcision and the nutrient laws, were understood to exist the Scriptural commands of God to his people. And so anyone wanting to join God's people needed to take on the 'yoke of the law' and accommodate.
The second question of context is the extent to which Luke is here describing a one-off, historical event, rather than setting out principles for the standing life of the church building. This arises in reading every office of Acts. Was the pattern of the shared life of the early believers, having 'everything in common', a one-off glimpse of an utopian moment, or an example for united states to follow in our church communities? Are the 'signs and wonders' something for the apostolic era alone, or might they persist into the nowadays? Are Luke'southward accounts of the leaders a tape of their actions lone, or an instance for u.s. to emulate? Each needs to exist considered on its own merits, but there is besides a sense in which the reply is 'both/and' instead or 'either/or'. Luke is clearly recording events (like the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost) which are once-for-all; but these once-for-all events are the threshold of a new age—the age of the end-times gift of the Spirit and the preaching of the gospel in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the world before Jesus' return. This is the age in which nosotros continue to live, and so, in terms of 'theological time', nosotros are yet in the aforementioned era.
What of the decision process in the Council itself? The account in Acts 15 has a number of striking features.
Offset, in that location was no endeavour to 'concord to disagree' or seek 'adept disagreement'. As elsewhere in relation to this consequence (for instance, in Paul's correspondence with the Galatians) the clear differences were expressed in 'sharp dispute and fence' (Acts 15.2). Nowhere in the NT is unity sought by avoiding issues or agreeing to 'walk together apart.' If this had happened on the event at stake, we might take ended up with a church of Jewish followers of Jesus, and a church building of gentile followers of Jesus, which would have fundamentally inverse both the nature of the church and the subsequent history of Christianity. All are concerned to exist of 'i listen' which is the 'mind of Christ' (Phil ii.2–5).
Secondly, Luke's business relationship suggests that space was given to hear both sides of the contend. In the text itself, more than space is given to Peter'southward side of things and his business relationship, though I don't recall it is articulate what that signifies. Was the 'new pedagogy' given space because the default option would take been to continue equally they had been, so they needed to mind more carefully to the advocates for change? Or did this new teaching need greater scrutiny and interrogation? I don't think we can know.
Thirdly, it is striking that the new teaching has advocates from two quite distinct perspectives. Both Peter, apostle 'to the Jews', and Paul, 'apostle to the gentiles', who themselves had been on unlike sides and were potentially the focus of rival groupings (see 1 Cor ane.12) testified in harmony about the new thing God was doing. This work of God transcended the natural boundaries or groupings within the early church; this was non a affair of a power struggle between blocs.
Fourthly, the testimony that both Peter and Paul share has such a broad appeal equally the authentic piece of work of God that the response of the whole group is to fall into 'silence'. This isn't just the lack of argument and contention that goes with being teachable, signified by the discussionhesychia (1 Tim 2.11), but the much stronger response sigao of actually saying nothing (as in Luke 9.36). And the silence was not an human activity of respect to give space to Paul and Barnabas's account—information technology was a response to it as they heard what God was doing.
Fifthly, the wisdom of the sage James, brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem church, who might well have been thought to have an interest in keeping the movement thoroughly Jewish, appears to have been decisive in shaping the final decision.
Sixthly, though in relatively abbreviated form, the commendation of Scripture is cardinal. This apparent innovation, this novel act of God, is in fact understood to be something already articulated in the Hebrew Bible (Erstwhile Testament). This is often passed over or misunderstood, since James quotes from the Greek OT, which give an culling reading suggesting the gentiles will come to worship God, instead of the Hebrew which suggests rather the opposite, that God's people will conquer or subdue the gentiles. But such 'alternative readings' of the OT was widespread in Second Temple Judaism, and the idea James cites can be found in many passages in the OT, not just in the early promises to Abraham, merely in the later prophets (particularly the 2d role of Isaiah, chapters twoscore onwards) who express a vision of the whole earth coming to worship the Holy One of Israel who is the creator of and lord over the whole world.
Seventhly, the potential disruption of this new agreement is minimised past the disciplines that the new gentile believers are asked to live under. In that location is a potent consensus that the four rules are fatigued not from the covenant with Noah (which might await similar laws for a universal humanity) but specifically from Torah, rather embarrassingly from Leviticus 17 and 18:
1. No Idols (Leviticus 17:vii-9)
They must no longer offer any of their sacrifices to the goat idols to whom they prostitute themselves…2. No Sexual immorality (Leviticus 18:6-23)
No 1 is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations…[or] your neighbor's wife…[or] with a human being as one does with a woman…[or] with an faunathree. No drinking blood (Leviticus 17:ten-12)
… Any Israelite or any alien living amidst them who eats any blood – I will set my face against that person who eats claret and will cut him off from his peopleiv. No eating strangled meat (Leviticus 17:13-xiv)
Any Israelite or any foreigner residing among you who hunts any animate being or bird that may exist eaten must drain out the blood and comprehend information technology with world, because the life of every fauna is its blood
This confluence of revelation from God, testimony of experience, agreement between those of very different perspectives, the apostolic wisdom of a respected leader, the location of the experience in the scriptural account of the purposes of God, and the minimising of disruption and difference, might then offering u.s. some kind of framework for decision-making in the contemporary context when faced with a sharp difference of view.
[It is rather striking that there is a complete absenteeism of appeal to the instance of Jesus, and this reminds of us 2 things in passing. First, Jesus' teaching in the gospels does look very Jewish, and his mission is consistently portrayed every bit being 'to the lost sheep of the house of State of israel' (Matt 15.24) with only hints that it might in fourth dimension develop further. Given the momentous significance of the decision to recognise the gentile mission, this suggests that the gospel writers were not adapting the stories well-nigh Jesus in order to answer questions that they had. The reference to the laws from Leviticus also undermines the popular notion that nosotros are to ignore the OT law which has been displaced by the grace of God in Jesus. It is articulate in Acts, and the rest of the NT, that we gentiles have been incorporated into the Jewish people of God, even without obeying all details of the Mosaic police force, and nosotros are not displacing them or superseding them.]
But, against that, we also need to note that the admission of the Gentiles was seen to fulfil, in OT terms, the ultimate goal of the eschatological purposes of God, indeed the whole point of the story and history of God's ballot of a special people for himself in the showtime place. They were always to be a calorie-free to the globe, that all people would be drawn to the presence of God enthroned in Zion, and the whole earth filled with knowledge of the glory of God. To that extent, this effect is unrepeatable, then the example hither needs to referred to with caution. In particular, it ways that citing this example as justification for a contemporary change in the church building on a specific issue would require united states of america to fence that our issue was 1 which we can notice expressed in the OT as an eschatological goal of God's purposes in redemption—which is asking rather a lot.
In that location is a good exploration of this episode, as we might expect, in Ben Witherington's substantial commentary on Acts, though the observations above are my ain. Witherington leans heavily on the work in this area by Richard Bauckham.
At that place is a skilful and detailed exploration of this in relation to current debates on sexuality in Andrew Goddard's Grove booklet, E 121 God, Gentiles and Gay Christians: Acts 15 and Modify in the Church, which includes a sympathetic comparison betwixt the two situations before drawing conclusions. He notes the significance of the iv prohibitions on current proposals:
If this is the rationale underlying Acts 15 then the significance for its utilise in the electric current debates over homosexuality is revolutionary. The failure of 'revisionist' advocates to consider the limits placed on Gentiles by the Prescript has always been a problem in their argument. The seriousness of that problem is now deepened if the Prescript is based on Lev 17 and 18 and the prohibition of porneia therefore rooted in Lev 18.26. Amidst the 'detestable things' prohibited past that text are the male homosexual acts described in Lev xviii.22. There is at present strong evidence that viewing homosexual practice every bit acceptable for gay Christians is not just to push the illustration from Acts 15 further than information technology logically can go. To make such a claim would in fact explicitly contradict one of the requirements placed on those Gentiles who entered the church as Gentiles. (p 21)
(First published in 2016)
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