In Paul's writing, and particularly in Galatians, we get a glimpse of how difficult and bitter the move to include non-Jews was in the early days of Christian mission. Paul was writing in the thick of it, before all Jewish Christians were equally convinced that non-Jews could be Christians. He saw it as his own particular commission from Jesus to preach to the gentiles, so his whole sense of his purpose in life is bound up with this issue. He bears witness to a time when the decision could have gone either way.
Luke, on the other hand, is writing with the benefit of hindsight, reporting on a period that is now past, but living at a time when the divisions over the issue are largely just a memory. Luke tends to see the spread of the gospel all over the world and through all cultures as inevitable. He sees the seeds of the gentile mission right back in Jesus' own life and work: at the very beginning of Luke's gospel, the old man, Simeon, says, prophetically, that Jesus is given as "a light for revelation to the gentiles". And in Acts, Philip and Peter have already started to preach to non-Jews before Paul gets going at all.
Luke is perfectly clear that the decision to include gentiles in the new Christian community is one forced on the church by the Holy Spirit. In Acts 10, he describes a dream that Peter is reported to have had, in which he is explicitly told that he must eat things that were forbidden by Jewish law. While still puzzling over the meaning of the dream, Peter meets a Roman centurion, Cornelius, who is longing to become a Christian and who has gathered all his friends together to hear Peter. And just to reinforce the point, the Holy Spirit "falls" upon Cornelius and all his friends, and they speak in tongues and praise God. Peter concludes that "God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him."
So as far as Acts is concerned, the spread of the gospel to gentiles is something that happens in an orderly, spirit-filled manner and with the imprimatur of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, as soon as they hear Peter's experience.
Paul, on the other hand, suggests that the situation was rather messier and more prolonged than that. In his letter to the Galatian Christians, he describes a public confrontation between himself and Peter in Antioch, where he accused Peter of hypocrisy. Peter had apparently been happy to waive the Jewish food laws and eat with gentile Christians until a party of Jewish Christians arrived. Paul seems to suggest that there were groups of Jewish Christians who travelled round, trying to enforce circumcision and observance of the law on new converts, and that they were causing considerable division and unrest in the churches.
Acts 15 reflects something of the same situation, and suggests that it was solved by a council in Jerusalem, which heard both sides and then made a considered decision. Luke's intention here is to give a general overview of the process, rather than a detailed blow-by-blow account. As far as he is concerned, the matter is settled.
From the point of view of the modern reader, it is a bit more complicated than that. Although the inclusion of gentiles among the followers of Jesus is not an issue any more, Christians do still have major disagreements, so this early record of how disputes were handled and how boundaries were drawn is still of interest to us. When we read Acts 15 in the light of Galatians 1 and 2, it is clear that the argument was both lengthy and vicious, and that Luke is telescoping the process in his account.
Luke is clear that some boundaries were imposed on gentile converts. They were not admitted without any restrictions. He reports the decision of the Jerusalem council three times (in Acts 15:20, 15:29, 29:25). But that doesn't make its meaning crystal clear. The decree has come down to us in slightly different forms, with different families of manuscripts clearly understanding it in slightly different ways. The New Revised Standard Version translation says that gentile Christians must "abstain from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood." That sounds like a rather odd jumble of Jewish food laws and general morality. Do they still apply to Christians today? The debate rages across scholarly books and anxious websites.
But perhaps one or two things emerge clearly. One is the interesting – and surely not obvious? – assumption that Christians should agree boundaries. It would surely have made as much sense for gentile Christian churches to go one way and Jewish Christians to go another? But no, Paul and Luke agree that this was a matter for consultation. The second is that both parties in the argument were forced to be slightly counter-cultural in their handling of the issue. Their common faith made both Jewish and gentile Christians stand out from their own communities because of a loyalty to something bigger.
This was a matter of absolutely vital self-definition. The whole nature of Christianity was at stake. So it is ironic that we now don't even know quite what measures were taken to resolve it. We only know the shape of the faith that emerged.
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