This is my reply to an article from "Tough Questions Answered" entitled
Posted: 18 Aug 2017 06:00 AM PDT
In AD 48, some Jewish Christians from Jerusalem come to Syrian Antioch, Paul and Barnabas’ home church. These men from Jerusalem argue that Gentile Christians must be circumcised and adhere to the Mosaic Law if they want to be truly saved.Which raises legitimate questions such as:
If Paul was the inerrant truth-robot today's fundamentalist Christians think he is, how could his own churches produce legalists of such significant popularity that it took a meeting of Christianity's finest to answer them? Could it possibly be that the arguments of the Judaizers were far more difficult to answer, than what we can infer from the NT rebuttals to them?
Was Paul such a dolt that despite his establishing churches, he couldn't say enough to keep in check the kind of theological aberration today's inerrantists think is "obviously" heretical?
Paul and Barnabas disagree, so the church in Antioch appoint Paul and Barnabas to go to the mother church in Jerusalem, where they will convene with the apostles and elders there.
Barnabas was personally selected by the Holy Spirit to assist Paul in the Gentile ministry (Acts 13:2), so if a person whose knowledge of Paul was more intimate than anything we could have today, wasn't convinced that Paul had the truth, it is rather immature and presumptuous for today's fundamentalist Christians to act as if the truth of Paul's doctrines is a foregone conclusion.
Paul's stories of conversions need not be considered any more authoritative than the same reports coming from Benny Hinn or Bill Graham. Smart people realize perfectly well that most such alleged converts aren't true converts. Paul's admission that most of his churches were constituted of intellectually ignorant people and other lower social classes (1st Cor. 1:26) increases the likelihood that something other than appreciation for Paul's intellectual justifications of doctrine is what motivated them to convert. And Paul explicitly admitted God did not want him to preach the gospel in ways the world would deem skillful or wise, because academically persuasive preaching would void the power of the cross, 1st Cor. 1:17.The journey to Jerusalem probably takes a month or more, so Paul and Barnabas stop along the way and visit several churches in Phoenicia and Samaria. At each stop, they relay the news that Gentiles are converting in high numbers, and the news is met with great joy.When they arrive at Jerusalem, they meet with the apostles and elders of the Jerusalem church, along with several other members of the Jerusalem church. Paul and Barnabas describe in detail the conversion of Gentiles during their first missionary journey into Asia Minor.
After they finish speaking, a group of Christians who were formerly Pharisees rise to argue that these Gentile converts must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. John Polhill, in vol. 26, Acts, The New American Commentary, writes:It should come as no surprise that some of the Pharisees had become Christians. Pharisees believed in resurrection, life after death, and the coming Messiah. They shared the basic convictions of the Christians. Because of this they are sometimes in Acts found defending the Christians against the Sadducees, who had much less in common with Christian views (cf. 5:17; 23:8f.). A major barrier between Christians and Pharisees was the extensive use of oral tradition by the Pharisees, which Jesus and Paul both rejected as human tradition. It is not surprising that some Pharisees came to embrace Christ as the Messiah in whom they had hoped. For all their emphasis on law, it is also not surprising that they would be reticent to receive anyone into the fellowship in a manner not in accordance with tradition. That tradition was well-established for proselytes—circumcision and the whole yoke of the law.
On the contrary, if we assume Paul's version of the gospel is what Jesus and James also taught, it is an eye-popping mystery how legalistic Pharisees who think Gentiles must be circumcised to be saved, could possibly be genuine converts to a religious system that preaches the exact opposite. This is how you solve that mystery: Christianity in the first century consisted of at least two competing factions; the legalistic Judaizers headed by Peter/James/John, and the non-legalists headed by Paul. Inerrantist attempts to reconcile NT statements about some apostles' legalism, with Paul's law-free gospel, are laughably trifling word-games played by inerrantists who live under a childish sense of black and white certainty.
What would your opinion be of an atheist who wrote up an online review of an atheist-Christian debate not otherwise recorded, wherein the atheist reporter represents the Christian position with two sentences, but spends the next few pages giving numerous details for the atheist arguments and how these were approved by other atheists?A lengthy debate ensues, although Luke leaves out the details.
Would you say such a reporter appears more interested in spinning history than in fair and balanced reporting? Luke says nothing more about how the Judaizers argued their case, except a single summary statement (15:1) repeated one time (v. 5), then spends the entire rest of ch. 15 focusing on the apostolic viewpoint.
I say Luke is lying, James was the leader of the Judaizers at that Council (if it even ever happened), and either a) James Peter and John agreed with the Judaizers that Gentile men must be circumcised to be saved, or b) despite viewing Paul as a heretic, they decided in his favor anyway, because giving Paul that much leeway would likely result in Paul sending the Jerusalem church financial donations from the Gentile churches. You scream about how stupid Mormonism is all day long, but if you were drowning and the only person who could save you was a Mormon lifeguard, how loudly would be you screaming about Mormonism's falsehoods as you are being rescued?
So then, don't discount the historical plausibility of the original apostles believing the material benefits of making Paul part of the club, outweighed the risks of obstinately pointing out his doctrinal errors.
Why don't any of the apostles make the one argument that the canonical gospels indicate would have been the most powerful, namely, that the Judaizers are in error because Jesus preached the gospel to plenty of Gentiles for three years prior and never once required them to get circumcised? Did not Jesus preach his gospel to Gentiles to the point of causing massive crowds of them to gather around him (Mark 1:45, Matthew 4:15, Luke 5:15, etc)?After listening to both sides, Peter, as the leader of the apostles, stands to speak. In verses 7-9, Peter recounts his experience with Cornelius and his household (Acts 10), an event which had occurred some ten years earlier. The Holy Spirit had been given to Cornelius because his heart had been cleansed by faith, not by circumcision or by following the law of Moses. Peter then argues that to require Gentiles to follow the Law would be to challenge God Himself. After all, if God does not require circumcision and Law adherence, then why should the Christian leadership add these burdens to the Gentiles? Peter closes by reiterating that “we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”
Aren't you just a little suspicious about the fact that in Acts 15, the apostolic response avoids resting on the obvious authority of Jesus every bit as much as Paul himself avoids it in his epistles?
Or maybe the Judaizers were correct, and the reason they started a stir that required a meeting of Christianity's finest is because their arguments were weighty and powerful and that's why Luke never tells us what arguments they made to support their beliefs...had he done so, it would be clear that the the apostolic reliance on shallow OT exegesis and praise reports from newly established Gentiles churches would make the apostles the losers of this Acts 15 debate. By kepeing the reader from knowing how powerful the Judaizer case can be made, the apostolic response revealed in the text need not be very substantive.
Read what Jesus said and ask yourself whether Exodus 12:48 was a part of the Law at the time:
17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.At the time Jesus said that, the Law excluded Gentiles from covenant with God unless they got circumcised:
18 "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
19 "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
20 "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5:17-20 NAU)
48 "But if a stranger sojourns with you, and celebrates the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near to celebrate it; and he shall be like a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person may eat of it.Regardless, as long as the canonical gospels continuing having Jesus surrounded with large crowds, fundamentalists are going to look stupid insisting that by some miraculous accident, Jesus never had opportunity to answer the question of whether Gentiles need to be circumcised to be saved.
49 "The same law shall apply to the native as to the stranger who sojourns among you." (Exod. 12:48-49 NAU)
The whole assembly falls silent until Barnabas and Paul speak up again and describe the miracles that God performed during their mission trip to the Gentiles in Asia Minor.
Sort of like Benny Hinn refuting your accusations of his teaching heresy, because he can allege miracles and conversions in several of his churches. That phenomena hardly suffices to get him or Paul out of their theological jams. Any fool can "start a church" and allege "miracles".
To clarify, James, a brother of Jesus, who with brother John remained singularly unimpressed with Jesus' miracles (John 7:5). Unless we count James and John willfully blind idiots, their rejection of their own brother Jesus as Messiah during his physical life justifies the contention that Jesus was an actual fraud...in turn justifying the conclusion that frauds do not rise from the dead. If James "converted", he only converted to a gospel version that pleased Judaizers (Acts 21:20), and then there's no reason to believe he took the Christian religion any more seriously than Benny Hinn.James, the brother of Jesus and leader of the elders of the Jerusalem church, now stands to speak.
Once again, under inerrantist assumptions, it is shockingly unexpected that a brother of Jesus who became leader over the Jerusalem church, should think making questionable interpretation of the OT is the best way to resolve a circumcision issue that Jesus himself surely had ample opportunity in three years of preaching to resolve. What would you think of a Christian apologist who argued that Psalm 16 was a sufficient proof that Jesus rose from the dead, and then never quoted anything in the NT to substantiate Jesus rising from the dead?James makes the case that Peter’s experience with Cornelius is a precise fulfillment of prophecy.
Regardless, the fact that Peter feared the legalistic "men from James" (Gal. 2:12) despite knowing James personally, argues he knew their legalism was a correct representation of James' own doctrinal position...and this being so, Luke is lying in Acts 15:24, the real true and legalistic James likely did authorize emissaries to travel to Antioch to impose the circumcision requirement on Gentile converts.
Once again, the Jewish apostles on Acts 15 appear suspiciously Pauline in how they avoid the obvious authority of Jesus in favor of resting their conclusions about important matters on how they interpret the OT. James said nothing of the sort, this is just Luke putting words in James' mouth to make it appear that the mother church spoke and taught more like Paul than they actually did.Darrell Bock, in Acts, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, explains that “James’s quotation matches Amos 9:11–12 LXX with material in verse 18 from Isa. 45:21. Jeremiah 12:15 may be the source for the opening ‘After these things I will return,’ but this is less than clear, since the phrases may be only a transition into the citation that shows how James sees the timing.”
But it is more likely, under inerrantist-assumptions, that James knew that Jesus taught against the Judaizer position. So the apostolic failure here to rely on the obvious authority of Jesus remains a problem inerrantists cannot resolve in terms of historical plausibility or probability.Bock adds:The reference to the prophets is important. James’s point is not just about this one passage from Amos; rather, this passage reflects what the prophets teach in general, or what the book of the Prophets as a whole teaches. Other texts could be noted (Zech. 2:11; 8:22; Isa. 2:2; 45:20–23; Hos. 3:4–5; Jer. 12:15–16). James is stressing fulfillment, for the prophets agree with what Peter has described.
...which makes the account all the less believable. How could Gentile salvation be such a post-resurrection development like this (i.e., "now" taking place), if the canonical gospels are correct in representing Jesus as having a mix of Jewish and Gentile followers (Matthew 4:15, etc)?This is not an affirmation of analogous fulfillment but a declaration that this is now taking place.
Common sense says if the prophets predicted Gentile inclusion, the fulfillment was Christ's own mission to the Gentiles:God had promised Gentile inclusion; now he is performing it. Paul cites a string of OT texts on this theme in Rom. 15:7–13.
12 Now when Jesus heard that John had been taken into custody, He withdrew into Galilee;
13 and leaving Nazareth, He came and settled in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali.
14 This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet:
15 "THE LAND OF ZEBULUN AND THE LAND OF NAPHTALI, BY THE WAY OF THE SEA, BEYOND THE JORDAN, GALILEE OF THE GENTILES--
16 "THE PEOPLE WHO WERE SITTING IN DARKNESS SAW A GREAT LIGHT, AND THOSE WHO WERE SITTING IN THE LAND AND SHADOW OF DEATH, UPON THEM A LIGHT DAWNED."
17 From that time Jesus began to preach and say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Matt. 4:12-17 NAU)
The presentation in Acts that Gentiles are "now" being included, clashes in bright sparks with the canonical gospel presupposition that inclusion of Gentiles was already established.
The prophets predicted that the Gentiles would be added to God’s people. They would be added when the house of David was restored. The house of David was rebuilt in Jesus of Nazareth, the descendant of David and long-awaited Messiah. Bock notes that thegoal of this rebuilding work is to allow the rest of humanity, not just Jews, to seek God. This fulfills not only the promise to David about his line but also a commitment to Abraham that through his seed the world would experience blessing (Gen. 12:3; Acts 3:25–26; Gal. 3). Thus James argues that this Gentile inclusion is part of the plan of Davidic restoration that God through the prophets said he would do. The prophets affirm what is taking place now. So both divine events and Scripture sustain the church’s inclusion of Gentiles.
Just one problem: Luke doesn't tell us about 99% of the Judaizer response, so just how acceptable other Christians found this questionable use of the OT will never be known. Indeed, it would be reasonable to conclude that the Judaizers cited to Jesus' words to substantiate their position, so much that Luke could not have honestly recorded their response without making the apostles look as willfully stupid as humans are capable of being.
An issue he'd never have needed to comment on if the apostle's message was doctrinally the same as the message of Jesus. If Jesus preached Gentile salvation without circumcision and the apostles followed suit, how could legalistic Pharisees ever attain sufficient status in the new church that their legalistic and false view requires a meeting of Christianity's finest in order to root out?In James’ opinion, the Gentile converts need not be circumcised nor follow the law of Moses to be saved.
How about a Mormon who "converts" to Mormonism, but retains her prior distrust in Mormon doctrine?
At some point you have to get realistic about God's responsibilities, and acknowledge that some sinners fail because God doesn't do His part as promised. Stop viewing God as so perfect. If Copan and Flannagan are correct that OT authors frequently employed language of exaggeration when describing God's commands for Israel to entirely slaughter other nations, it follows quite reasonably that their high and lofty language about God's unspeakably infinite perfections is likewise just more exaggerated talk, hence, if God is real, he likely has his share of imperfections despite laudatory biblical language to the contrary. Exaggerated language doesn't count for establishing reality. God has problems and worries about which solution is best.He agrees with Peter that salvation is now by faith in Christ. But the problem remains that the Gentile converts, since they are new followers of Yahweh, are falling prey to the pagan religious institutions to which they once belonged.
Then he must have liked doing things the hard way, because telepathy and teleportation were available to get the job done much more efficiently:James believes that the church in Antioch should be sent a letter which states that Gentiles should “abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood.”
39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; and the eunuch no longer saw him, but went on his way rejoicing.
40 But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he kept preaching the gospel to all the cities until he came to Caesarea.
(Acts 8:39-40 NAU)
9 A vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing and appealing to him, and saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us."
(Acts 16:9 NAU)
The original question is only shifted away from because Luke chose to avoid revealing how the Judaizers responded to these already-unlikely answers from the apostles.Clinton Arnold, in John, Acts: Volume Two (Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary) explains:The focus of the debate now shifts away from the question of what is essential for salvation to one of how to help Gentile believers break away from their idolatrous pre-Christian practices.
What you don't tell the reader is that despite the importance of this decree, it is textually corrupted. Metzger says in his Textual Commentary on the NT:Each of these four instructions relates to dangers associated with involvement in idolatry.
The text of the Apostolic Decree, as it is called, is given at 15.29; it is referred to proleptically in 15.20 and retrospectively in 21.25. The three verses contain many problems concerning text and exegesis: (1) Are Gentiles commanded to abstain from four things (food offered to idols, blood, strangled meat, and unchastity) or from three (omitting either strangled meat or unchastity); and (2) are the three or four prohibitions entirely ceremonial, or entirely ethical, or a combination of both kinds?====================
Page 380(a) The Alexandrian text, as well as most other witnesses, has four items of prohibition.
(b) The Western text omits “what is strangled” and adds a negative form of the Golden Rule in 15.20 and 29.
(c) Several witnesses omit “unchastity” from 15.20 (so î45 [which unfortunately is not extant for 15.29 or 21.25] and eth) and from 15.29 (so Origen, contra Celsum, VIII:29, as well as vgms Vigilius and Gaudentius).
The occasion for issuing the Apostolic Decree, it should be observed, was to settle the question whether Gentile converts to Christianity should be required to submit to the rite of circumcision and fulfill other Mosaic statutes. The Council decided that such observance was not required for salvation; at the same time, however, in order to avoid giving unnecessary offense to Jewish Christians (and to Jews contemplating becoming Christians), the Council asked Gentile converts to make certain concessions for prudential reasons, abstaining from those acts that would offend Jewish scruples and hinder social intercourse, including joint participation in the Lord’s Supper.
As concerns transcriptional probabilities, th/j pornei,aj may have been omitted because this item seemed, superficially, to be out of place in what otherwise appeared to be a food law. Although such a consideration may well account for its absence, it is possible that what was intended by the Jerusalem Council was to warn the Gentile believers to avoid either marriage within the prohibited Levitical degrees (Lv 18.6-18), which the rabbis described as “forbidden for pornei,a,” or mixed marriages with pagans (Nu 25.1; also compare 2 Cor 6.14), or participation in pagan worship, which had long been described by Old Testament prophets as spiritual adultery and which, in fact, offered opportunity in many temples for religious prostitution.
Another way to make sure that the list deals entirely with ritual prohibitions is to remove pornei,aj by emending the text. Bentley,295 for example, conjectured that the Apostolic Decree was an injunction to abstain “from pollutions of idols and swine’s flesh (coirei,aj) and things strangled and from blood.” A similar conjecture, intended to
Page 381produce the same dietetic interpretation, is to read porkei,aj296 instead of pornei,aj. But there is no known example of such a word in Greek, and if an example were found it would be an abstract noun (from po,rkoj) meaning “piggishness.”297Concerning (b), it is obvious that the threefold prohibition (lacking tou/ pniktou/) refers to moral injunctions to refrain from idolatry, unchastity, and blood-shedding (or murder), to which is added the negative Golden Rule. But this reading can scarcely be original, for it implies that a special warning had to be given to Gentile converts against such sins as murder, and that this was expressed in the form of asking them to “abstain” from it – which is slightly absurd!
It therefore appears to be more likely that an original ritual prohibition against eating foods offered to idols, things strangled and blood, and against pornei,a (however this latter is to be interpreted) was altered into a moral law by dropping the reference to pniktou/ and by adding the negative Golden Rule, than to suppose that an original moral law was transformed into a food law.
The alternative to accepting the fourfold decree is to argue, as P. H. Menoud has done,298 that the original text involved a twofold prohibition, namely to abstain from pollutions of idols and from blood, and that to this basic decree respecting kosher foods, î45 al added “and from what is strangled,” thus extending the food-law concerning blood to all flesh improperly slaughtered. In the Western tradition the twofold decree was understood to be a moral injunction relating to idolatry and murder, and these witnesses added the prohibition against another major sin, unchastity. Subsequently the injunction concerning the negative Golden Rule was appended to the Western text, which thus extends the moral application far beyond the three
Page 382basic prohibitions. Finally, the text of the great mass of witnesses represents a conflation of several Western expansions of the basic twofold decree.Attractive though this theory is on the surface, the textual evidence is not really susceptible of such an interpretation. First, there is no manuscript evidence for the hypothetical twofold decree. Menoud does indeed shrink from pressing his conjecture concerning the twofold decree, and is prepared, with Lagrange, to adopt the reading of î45 as the original text.299 But such an alternative proposal leaves the text critic with exactly the same problems that confronted him before, namely, how to explain the deletion as well as the addition of certain items in the decree.
Secondly, the fact that in 15.20 pniktou/ precedes kai. tou/ ai[matoj is hardly compatible with the theory that it was added in order to clarify and extend the meaning of ai[matoj.
In conclusion, therefore, it appears that the least unsatisfactory solution of the complicated textual and exegetical problems of the Apostolic Decree is to regard the fourfold decree as original (foods offered to idols, strangled meat, eating blood, and unchastity – whether ritual or moral), and to explain the two forms of the threefold decree in some such way as those suggested above.300
An extensive literature exists on the text and exegesis of the Apostolic Decree. For what can be said in support of the Western text see, e.g., A. Hilgenfeld, “Das Apostel-Concil nach seinem ursprünglichen Wortlaut,” Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie, XLII (1899), pp. 138–149; Gotthold Resch, Das Aposteldecret nach seiner
Page 383ausserkanonischen Textgestalt (Texte und Untersuchungen, N.F. XIII, 3; Leipzig, 1905); A. von Harnack, Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Neue Testament, III (1908), pp. 188–198, and IV (1911), The Acts of the Apostles (London, 1909), pp. 248–263; K. Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, their Motive and Origin (London, 1911), pp. 48–60; idem, The Beginnings of Christianity, vol. v, pp. 205–209; J. H. Ropes, The Text of Acts, pp. 265–269; A. C. Clark, The Acts of the Apostles, pp. 360–361; Thorleif Boman, “Das textkritische Problem des sogenannten Aposteldekrets,” Novum Testamentum, VII (1964), pp. 26–36.Those who have argued in support of the fourfold decree301 include Theodor Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament, III (Edinburgh, 1909), pp. 18–22; idem, Die Apostelgeschichte des Lucas (Leipzig and Erlangen, 1921), pp. 523 ff.; William Sanday, “The Apostolic Decree (Acts XV. 20–29),” Theologische Studien Theodor Zahn…dargebracht (Leipzig, 1908), pp. 317–338; idem, “The Text of the Apostolic Decree (Acts XV:29),” Expositor, Eighth Series, VI (1913), pp. 289–305; E. Jacquier, Les Actes des Apôtres (Paris, 1926), pp. 455–458; Hans Lietzmann, “Der Sinn des Aposteldekretes und seine Textwandlung,” in Amicitiae corolla, a Volume of Essays Presented to James Rendel Harris, ed. by H. G. Wood (London, 1933), pp. 203–211; W. G. Kümmel, “Die älteste Form des Aposteldekrets,” Spiritus et veritas [Festschrift Carlo Kundzinš] (Eutin, 1953), pp. 83–98; E. Haenchen, Die Apostelgeschichte, ad loc.; Marcel Simon, “The Apostolic Decree and its Setting in the Ancient Church,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, LII (196–970), pp. 437–460; C. M. Martini, “Il Decreto del Concilio di Gerusalemme,” Atti della XXII Settimana Biblica (Brescia, 1973), pp. 345–355; C. K. Barrett, Australian Biblical Review, XXXV (1987), pp. 50–59.
James wants to make sure that these Gentiles make a clean break with their past when they embrace the living and true God. The instructions are, therefore, guidelines to assist their growth as believers, knowing full well that the Gentiles will continue to face significant cultural and spiritual pressures stemming from their past immersion in idolatry and ongoing association with family, friends, and coworkers still involved with it. These guidelines are a practical help in the spiritual and moral battle these Gentiles will face.
Sounds like those guidelines are so important, you should have alerted the reader to the fact that textual corruption problems plague such rules.
snip the rest.
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