Following intense preliminary discussion, the Church at Antioch chose responsible leaders, including Paul and Barnabas. These leaders went to meet with the apostles and elders in Jerusalem about the question at issue.
All these Church leaders gathered for extended debate, public testimony, and reasoned discussion based on experience and scriptural arguments. The leader of the Church in Jerusalem was James , the brother of our Lord. Attempting to mediate between Paul, the missionary among the Gentiles, and those zealots in the Church at Jerusalem, who insisted that all the Gentiles converted to Christianity be circumcised, James did not insist on the full acceptance of all the traditions of Judaism.
But at the same time, he advocated that the Church avert any break between herself and the ancient people of God. In modern society, especially in America, circumcision is fairly common. But, for the Gentiles and many major cultures in AD 49, the idea of circumcision was repulsive and extremely uncommon.
Only Egyptians and some Semitic groups practiced it. In some places, circumcised men even faced persecution. As a result, many Christians, or a gentile seeking to become a Christian, could be subject to persecution. This threat increased following the death of Stephen and many people left Jerusalem for other cities and countries. In those locations they told the people about Jesus Christ. Following Pentecost, when the apostles began to spread the Good News of Jesus, the first converts to Christianity were primarily Jews living in Jerusalem and the surrounding area.
It was Peter who took on the role of preaching to these Jews, and there was an immediate split among the people, because many had no interest in Jesus, the one who had been condemned by the Jews and executed by the Romans.
The apostles, led by Peter, were harassed, jailed and flogged by the Jerusalem Sanhedrin and charged not to speak about Jesus. The apostles continued to preach both in and outside Jerusalem. Most all Bible readers know that Peter is considered the apostle to the Jews and St. Paul the apostle to the gentiles, but it was Peter who converted the first gentile to Christianity.
Peter was on his way to Caesarea, just north of Joppa, when he stopped to pray and had a vision in which an angel told him to eat foods that Peter and all Jews believed to be unclean.
While Peter was trying to understand the meaning of the vision, another angel visit was taking place in the house of a Roman soldier, a centurion, stationed in Caesarea. The centurion was Cornelius, a God-fearing man who constantly prayed to the Jewish God. During his vision, Cornelius was told that God had found favor with him and that he should summon Peter to his home. Later, after his resurrection, he would commission the apostles to preach the Good News everywhere.
Certainly, by these words, Jesus was not limiting the work of the apostles to only the Jew. This expansion of the Gospel to all people, Jew and gentile, was at first not fully understood. Today, all Christians are called to tell the message of Jesus everywhere we can. Once again He sends them into every town and place where He will come cf. When Cornelius told Peter of the angelic visit he had, the apostle further understood from his vision that God did not decimate as to who could be a disciple of Christ.
God made no distinction between those circumcised and those who were not. In other words, God did not restrict his love only to the people of Israel. The circumcised believers who had accompanied Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit should have been poured out on the gentiles also. All those present were baptized and Peter remained with Cornelius and his family for an additional time. At this moment in salvation history, the gates of heaven were opened to not only Cornelius and his household but to all gentiles, to all people.
Later in Church history, Cornelius the Centurion was added to the Church list of saints and is celebrated on each Feb. When Peter returned to Jerusalem, the circumcised Jews challenged him that he had entered the house of and ate with a gentile.
It is interesting that the Jews focused on the fact that Peter ate with a gentile but did not mention that he had baptized a gentile. In the year A. We of course most humbly say these words of the centurion at every Mass as we prepare our hearts for holy Communion.
This was a remarkable incident, a pagan Roman asking a Jewish rabbi to save a life. Just as God was taking Jews to be his special people, he was also taking gentiles. Nevertheless, gentiles can be saved without circumcision. In , James said that the prophets the Septuagint version of Amos agreed with what God was doing.
By quoting Amos, James puts the gentile mission into a new age. Therefore, said James, I decide not to harass the gentiles In contrast to harassment, James decided to tell the gentiles to abstain from four things to be discussed in detail below. The four restrictions are presented as minimal requests, as small, easy-to-comply-with requirements —- perhaps things the gentiles in Antioch were already doing.
This implies that they…would have already been observing them. Why these four restrictions? Because Moses is preached in every city A: God is doing this work. B: Therefore we need a decree. C: Because Moses is preached in synagogues. The decree is needed not only because God is calling gentiles but also because Moses is being preached in synagogues.
The sequence implies a contrast between the decree and the preaching of Moses, as has already been implied in The thought is this: Because God is doing this work , and because we do not want to hinder his work , we should therefore give gentile converts this decree because much stricter rules are being preached in the synagogues James is advocating a contrast, not just a pared-down version of synagogue rules.
We do not want to harass the gentiles, James said. Instead, we should write an easy decree, because Moses is widely preached. This implies that synagogue preaching the laws of Moses as interpreted by Pharisees was a harassment for gentile Christians. The decree is needed to counteract the harassing rules of the Pharisees. This understanding is further supported when we analyze the audience of the synagogue preaching.
Some commentators have assumed without analysis that James is referring to preaching that gentiles were hearing in the synagogues.
But gentiles who attended synagogues had already changed their behavior to be acceptable to Jews; they had little or no need for a decree. Moreover, gentiles were coming into the church who did not have a background in the synagogue There was a synagogue in Iconium , but none is mentioned for Lystra or Derbe, but there were disciples in each city, presumably from pagan backgrounds The decree was needed even by gentiles who did not have a background in Judaism —- even by those who lived in cities that may not have had a synagogue The thought in seems to be that in every city there are Jews who are being instructed in the laws of Moses.
Throughout the book of Acts, Christ is the one who is preached. It was the Pharisees who preached the law of Moses, and the decree was given in opposition to Mosaic law, not as a supplement to it. The Jerusalem sent two men with Paul and Barnabas to Antioch to testify to the truth of the decree These men strengthened the Antioch church and contributed to the sense of unity. The decree was addressed only to gentiles , since the four requirements were not designed for Jewish believers who presumably kept a stricter code.
The letter acknowledged the problem admitting that the troublemakers had been part of the Jerusalem church , praised Barnabas and Paul, and introduced the delegates from Jerusalem The decision was presented as inspired by the Holy Spirit.
The four requirements were necessary, but not burdensome The decree was not a heavy-handed demand for obedience; there was no reference to salvation and no mention of penalties for infraction. The decree told gentile Christians to abstain from four things. The four prohibitions:. Perhaps meat from strangled animals was forbidden because blood remained in the meat, but if that is the only reason, it would not seem necessary to mention strangled things in addition to blood.
Wilson points out uncertainties in the meaning of strangled things. Strangled meat played a role in some pagan cults, and may have been mentioned because of that. Achtemeier notes that some scholars say it means fornication, others that it cannot mean fornication; some say it means incest; others say it cannot; some say adultery, or marriage to an idolater, or ritual prostitution. Incest is included in the meaning of the term 1 Cor. The gentile recipients of the decree would probably have understood it as major sexual misconduct or perhaps more specifically as pagan temple prostitution.
These four laws, of course, are not the only laws that Christians need. Many other Old Testament laws have greater claim to permanent validity. Why are they not mentioned? Does the decree assume that the gentiles know all the valid laws except these four?
Why would it be necessary to list these four laws, but not others? To answer that, scholars have explored some possible literary sources of these prohibitions. What was this collection of restrictions based on? Luke does not tell us. Most scholars have advocated either one or the other, but there are weaknesses with each.
A Noachic theory neatly explains the prohibition of blood and, as a corollary, strangled meat, which contains blood , because Gen. V 13 When they finished, James W spoke up. X 15 The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:. AC 21 For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.
The apostles and elders, your brothers,. AL 25 So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul— 26 men who have risked their lives AM for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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