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When you've wandered around the Catholic Church long enough you learn that one of the systemic ways of dealing with problems is by not dealing with them. If a complaint comes in, and you're in a position of responsibility you simply ignore it. Dr Ian Elmer's exploration of the very unclear outcome of the first Council of the Church at Jerusalem might suggest we learned this institutional behaviour a long, long time ago. The written records we have are confusing, even conflicting, as to what was resolved at this first Council. Today's commentary is a prelude to next week's commentary where Dr Elmer will look at the practical outcome of the Council — which is easier to discern.

Unfinished Business…

We return again to the proceedings of the Jerusalem Council (c. 48 CE) as we continue to explore Paul's early years at Antioch. We discussed last week how Paul's account of the council between the Jerusalem and Antiocnene churches (Gal 2:1-10) appeared to be somewhat short of details vis-à-vis the result of the deliberations.

We noted that if Paul was to be believed that, if the Jerusalem Apostles offered the "right hand of fellowship (koinonia)" thereby allowing Antioch to pursue a Law-free mission amongst the Gentiles, then there remained a great many unresolved issues.

Eucharist and Mission…

Philip Esler (1998: 134) has argued that the term koinonia (fellowship), which Paul uses to describe the accord, must in this situation be equated with its use in 1 Corinthians 10:16, where it specifically refers to Eucharistic table-fellowship. On this reading of koinonia, Paul claims that the Pillar Apostles agreed that, despite the separation of missionary foci, the members of the disparate communities could share the communal fellowship meal that set them apart as followers of Jesus Messiah. This explains why Titus was not compelled to be circumcised, and why Peter will later join in freely with the communal meals at Antioch.

One might wonder, however, how such a compromise would work out in practical terms. It is not entirely clear how Law-observant Christian Jews were to enjoy fellowship or worship with Law-free Christians if the Law forbade observant Jews from sharing a common table with apostates and uncircumcised Gentiles. Clearly some sort of accommodation would have to be made to allow the two groups to share a common table. But given what would later occur at Antioch, when the people from James arrived to find Peter "living like a Gentile" (Gal 2:14), it seems unlikely that any such accommodation was worked out in Jerusalem.

The only other possible alternative is that the Gentiles who converted to the Jesus movement would be expected to either become Jewish proselytes or adopt some measure of Law-observance, which in effect meant that they would retain the status of God-fearers and mere associates to the full members of the Christian community.

Following the same line of argument, we must also ask, would James and others of the pro-circumcision putsch in Jerusalem have even agreed to the legitimacy of ethnic Jews like Paul and Barnabas conducting Law-free missions, not only in Antioch but also further afield where their mission might come into contact with other Diaspora Jewish communities?

Surely, the Pillar Apostles must have argued that this would brand Paul, Barnabas, and any other Jew who joined a Law-free community as apostates. Moreover, if they did sanction this move, it would have led to the incredible situation where the Christian Jews in Jerusalem would have been required to adhere strictly to the Mosaic Law, while ethnic Jews engaged in the mission to the Gentiles were freed from any such restrictions. This would not only compromise the integrity of the entire Christian movement, but also threaten the Law-observant mission to the Jews (Watson, 1986: 54-55).

We must imagine that the Christian Jewish movement would not have continued to be attractive to observant Jews if it were widely known that its leaders had countenanced a sister mission that stood outside the Law. Indeed they might even have risked outright hostility, which could have led to the same fatal consequences that earlier had brought the accused apostate Stephen to his untimely demise.

In Galatians (6:12), Paul implicitly confirms this possibility by accusing his opponents of preaching circumcision so as to escape persecution. With the memory of the more recent oppression that resulted in the execution of John's brother James fresh in their minds, the Jerusalem leadership would have been little inclined to court a recurrence of Jewish antagonism by extending the hand of fellowship to the Law-free mission.

If Paul is to be believed then the delegates at the Jerusalem conference agreed to go their separate ways and completely overlook the plethora of problems raised by an agreement that constituted in all practical terms a segregation of the two missions in their respective locales. Luke, on the other hand, demonstrates an awareness of the inherent weaknesses of such an agreement.

The Apostolic Decree…

According to Luke's version of the Council a compromise is suggested by James and accepted by all the delegates, whereby Gentile converts to the movement, while no longer required to undergo (male) circumcision or observe the whole Law, must adhere to a number of minimal rules. These were akin to the Levitical laws (Lev 17-18) regulating the behaviour of foreigners in the land of Israel, and were clearly aimed at facilitating ready commerce between the Jewish and Gentile members of the Christian movement (Taylor, 2001).

This information, however, goes against Paul's assertion that the Pillars added nothing to him except the injunction that he, and by implication Barnabas and the Antiochene community, should continue to "remember the poor" (Gal 2:10).

It is sometimes argued that Paul's awareness of the agreement worked out at Jerusalem is reflected in 1 Corinthians (8:1-13; 10:14-33) where he makes a number of rulings concerning food sacrificed to idols, but the evidence is far from convincing.

Similarly, supposed echoes of the so-called Apostolic Decree in later canonical (Rev 2:14, 20) and extra-canonical literature (Didache, 6:2; Justin, Dial.,34:8; Tertullian, Apologia, 9:13; Eusebius, H.E. 5:1:26) add nothing to the argument, and may be attributed to the authors' pre-existing knowledge of Acts 15.

In any event, it seems highly unlikely that Paul would have been inclined to accept the terms of this agreement. To do so would have amounted to a clear diminution of the "truth of the gospel" (Gal 2:5, 14) as he saw it; which amounted to freedom from Law (Gal 3:10; 4:8-11; 5:2-4; 6:12-15; 1 Cor 9:2; Rom 7:4-6) and the demolition of all barriers between Jew and Gentile (Gal 3:28; 6:13-15; Rom 1:16; 2:9-10, 28-29; 7:6; 10:12; Phil 3:3). It was in defence of this "truth" that Paul would later at Antioch accost Peter for siding with the people from James, who were demanding that the Gentiles "live like Jews" (Gal 2:14).

Various attempts have been made to deal with this problem. The most prominent theory is that Luke has collapsed the records of two meetings into his account in Acts 15 (Haenchen, 1971). The first parallels Galatians 2:1-10 and describes a conference there the delegates from Antioch and Jerusalem agreed that no restrictions be placed on the Gentile converts. The second, occurring at some time after the initial Jerusalem Council, was presided over by James who promulgates the terms of the decree described in Acts 15.

P. J. Achtemeier (1987) presents a variation of this theory by postulating that the second meeting transpired between the Jerusalem Council and the dispute in Antioch, and thus precipitated the problems that arose in Antioch after the issues had apparently been settled at Jerusalem.

This is an attractive line of argument and goes a long way towards accommodating the disparate accounts of the Jerusalem conference. However, again the problem is that nowhere in Paul's letters does he demonstrate an awareness of the terms of the accord as they are described in Luke's Apostolic Decree. Even more crucial, it seems improbable that the decree would have been acceptable in either Jerusalem or Antioch.

We noted above the possible adverse reaction of Paul to such a proposal. But the same must surely be said of James and his Law-observant supporters at Jerusalem.

Given what we know of the Hebrew remnant at Jerusalem and their leader James, it appears incredible that they would have acquiesced to anything short of strict adherence to the whole Law on the part of any converts to the movement, be they Jew or Gentile.

To argue otherwise requires that we accept an unbelievable level of perfidy on the part of James and the Christian Jews at Jerusalem who, on this line of argument, must have wavered between outright rejection, complete support, and qualified acceptance of the Law-free mission.

Whatever the origins of the Apostolic Decree, it is probably correct to assume that James was neither its author nor was it penned in Jerusalem during this period. To suggest the contrary would require us to ignore all that we know of the rigid Law-observant policy of James and the Jerusalem church and, more importantly, overlook the total lack of evidentiary support from Paul.

What Transpired at the Council?

We return to the question with which we began this discussion. What transpired at the Jerusalem Council? The only honest answer we can give is that we simply do not know. Neither Paul nor Luke is telling us the whole truth; both have their own agendas and have shaped their accounts of the Council accordingly.

Consequently, it is difficult to determine the immediate outcome of this meeting. Given the understanding that Paul and the Hellenists' delegation saw their mission as a Law-free outreach amongst the Gentiles in Antioch, it is difficult to accept that James and his Law-observant supporters would have readily sanctioned the Antiochene initiative.

In any event, it does not matter that we are unable to determine the exact details of the deliberations at the Council. Paul's account of the subsequent incident at Antioch (Gal 2:11-14) provides us with clear indications of what the outcome of the Council meant in practical terms. And it is this event that we shall examine next week.

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Bibliography and Further Reading:
For those who are looking for resources on Paul that are both reliable and readable, I can recommend the following:
P. J. Achtemeier (1987), P. J., The Quest for Unity in the New TestamentChurch. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
P. F. Esler (1998),Galatians. NTR; London & New York: Routledge.
E. Haenchen (1971), E., Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary, tr. B. Noble and G. Shin. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.
J. Murphy-O'Connor (1996), Paul: A Critical Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
J. Painter (1997), Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition. SPNT; Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
J. Taylor (2001), "The Jerusalem Decrees (Acts 15:20, 29 and 21:25) and the Incident at Antioch (Gal 2:11-14)", NTS 46: 372-380.
F. Watson (1986), Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach. SNTSMS 56; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Photo Credits:
The headline image of St Paul has been sourced from an icon which you will find at: www.airmaria.com. Clicking on the other images will take you to the original source.

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©2008 Ian Elmer

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