Christ’s Message Crossing Boundaries - Part 2 of 3

Jesus charged his disciples to take His message to all nations (Matt. 28:19). Yet it took persecution to force the early believers out of their comfort zone in Jewish Jerusalem & Judea to reach the Gentile nations beyond Israel’s boundaries. Acts 11 records that momentous event— the first cross- cultural transmission of the gospel to pagan Greeks in the Syrian city of Antioch. It was an innovation—the gospel was “translated,” not only in terms of language, but also cultures--from Jewish idioms into Greek terms, while preserving the truth. The following centuries have witnessed further cross- cultural translations of the gospel. The resulting influx of Gentile believers in Antioch raised the issue— do they need to become proselytes to Judaism? Against all historical precedents, the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) decided “No,” they were converts to Christ, not proselytes to Judaism. Under God’s sovereignty they determined that non-Jews who became “followers of Jesus are not proselytes. They are converts,” says Andrew F. Walls. This was highly significant he says, because it “built cultural diversity into the church forever.” In the following selection, Professor Walls develops and applies these points, which are especially relevant to Churches in Toronto given the multi-cultural character of our city.—Nigel Tomes   

INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 1, Jan., 2004, pp. 2-6

A Turning Point in Christian History

Left to themselves, the earliest church members [of the Jerusalem Church] might have continued to demonstrate the messianic renewal and restoration of Israel, sharing in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, breaking social bread together, and attending the temple liturgy (Acts 2:42) until Jerusalem fell about their ears [was destroyed]. But they were not left to themselves.

What happened was no part of deliberate church strategy, and the people responsible for it were not apostles or leading figures in the church. We do not even know their names. Nevertheless the events mark a turning point in Christian history. It seems to have begun with Stephen’s explosive preaching and the disturbance that followed it and led to his death [Acts 7]. Many believers were forced out of Jerusalem; it would be natural for them to seek shelter in the Jewish communities beyond Israel (Acts 6:8–8:1).

Translating the Gospel

Most of them [the scattered believers] did what they had done in Jerusalem and proclaimed Jesus as Messiah in the Jewish communities (Acts 11:19). But some people, (believers of Cypriot and Libyan background), arriving in the cosmopolitan city of Antioch, began to talk about Jesus to “Greeks”—that is, to pagans (Acts 11:20). This meant talking about Jesus in a new way. There was little to be gained by stressing the ethnic term “Messiah” [i.e. Christ—the Anointed One]. It could be translated into Greek easily enough, but the translation (“the Smeared One”) would still seem odd to anyone not well acquainted with Jewish institutions. Explaining it would require a lengthy introduction to the Scriptures; and supposing there were Greek pagans with the interest and stamina to pay attention, they might still be puzzled to see any relevance to their own situation. Why should they [Greek pagans] rejoice that the national savior of Israel had arrived? What sort of good news to them was the restoration of Israel?

Cross-cultural Communication

The believers from Cyprus and Cyrene, although for them personally the messiah-ship of Jesus must have seemed the key to the Gospel, took a different route. Linguistic translation was not enough; conceptual translation was necessary in order to convey the fact that Jesus had ultimate significance for Greek pagans, just as he had for devout Jews. They presented Jesus as Lord, [Greek:] Kyrios. It was a word that Jews could use readily enough of the Messiah; Peter speaks to a Jewish audience of Jesus being made “both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36). But the believers must have known that in Antioch “Lord” was the title of cult divinities like Sarapis [a pagan god named Lord Sarapis]. And perhaps by this means Greek pagans could get their first inkling of who Jesus is by hearing of him as the divine lord, [Greek:] Kyrios Iesous, [Lord Jesus] just as other devotees addressed Kyrios Sarapis. This piece of cross-cultural communication was soon reinforced by a decision of permanent significance for the Christian faith. As people of Greek and pagan background responded to this presentation of Jesus in Antioch and far beyond it (for Antioch, rather than Jerusalem, turned out to be the missionary church), the status of those who responded had to be considered.

Jerusalem Council (Acts 15)

At the so-called Apostolic Council described in Acts 15, the apostles and elders at Jerusalem, themselves pious, law-keeping people under the presidency of James, the outstandingly  law-righteous brother of the Lord, agreed that followers of Jesus the Messiah, even if not ethnic Jews, had indeed entered Israel. They did not need the traditional signs of Jewish religious culture, circumcision and Torah [Law]-keeping.

Jewish Proselyte Tradition

To explore the significance of the decision, we should remember Israel’s long missionary tradition whereby Gentile proselytes had been welcomed to the fold of Israel. Rabbinic literature compared them to “stags,” [male deer] whose natural habitat was in the wild, grazing with sheep of the flock. [Jewish] synagogues in the dispersion often had numbers of such people, and the later chapters of Acts suggest that they were fertile soil for the preaching of Paul and other missionaries (Acts 13:48; 17:4). Israel had long known of people like David’s Moabite ancestor Ruth, who declared that their people would be Israel, and their God Israel’s God (Ruth 1:16). [The Gentile (Moabite) Ruth is an example of a Gentile proselyte to Judaism.] But a Gentile male needed to undergo circumcision, receiving the mark of the covenant with God, as the sign of adoption into Israel. Later the further requirement of baptism gave additional solemnity to the transition of the proselyte from the heathen world of the nations to the life of the Nation. Furthermore, several passages in the prophetic writings indicated that the messianic age would see floods of Gentiles seeking the God of Israel. Thus in Isaiah 2 and Micah 4 many peoples will decide to go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. In Zechariah 10 [Gentile] men from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the edge of his robe and go with him because they have heard that God is with him (Zech. 8:23). So as Jerusalem believers listened to the reports of the missionaries of the Antioch church (Acts 15), they would receive a yet higher sense of confirmation that the promised messianic age had arrived. But these same Scriptures talked of the word of the Lord going out from Zion (Isa. 2:3) and of “the mountain of the Lord’s house,” that is, the hill on which the temple stood, being established as the principal mountain (Isa. 2:2).

Jewish Believers expected Proselytes

Perhaps it is not surprising that many Jerusalem believers took it for granted that the believing Greeks in Antioch and beyond should be treated as enlightened Gentiles had always been treated in Israel. They were proselytes, “stags” [male deer] that had chosen to graze with the sheep. In addition to the baptism they had received (and there was in any case an established custom of baptizing proselytes), they should be circumcised and, being thus incorporated into Israel, keep the Torah [Moses’ law] as good Israelites. After all, the Torah was Israel’s most precious possession, given by God himself and marking Israel out from other nations—should not all followers of Israel’s Messiah keep and cherish it? And what greater gift or blessing could these newly adopted Israelites receive? If circumcision was the mark of the covenant, should not those newly brought within the covenant carry that mark?

The only way of life known to the earliest believers in Jesus—the only known Christian lifestyle, to use an anachronism— was that of pious, observant Jews. It was the way of life sanctified by the Messiah himself, maintained by his closest disciples (Peter had never eaten anything common or unclean), and outstandingly patterned by the brother who had grown up in the same home as the Messiah—[i.e., James].

It is not surprising that many Jerusalem believers evidently thought on these lines. Nor is it too surprising that numbers of new Gentile believers were ready to go along with the argument. Some of them had doubtless attended the synagogue for many years, convinced that Israel’s God was indeed God, keeping, perhaps, such parts of the Torah as they could manage, but holding back from the irrevocable step of circumcision. Now that they knew Jesus Messiah, might this be the time to take on the whole yoke of God?

Galatians—Paul’s White-hot Indignation

The opening of the Epistle to the Galatians, the source that reveals that some Gentile believers found the argument for Torah and circumcision attractive, also reveals Paul’s reaction to it. It is not just disagreement—it is white-hot indignation. His emotions are so strong as to strain his syntax, and his language becomes so robust that some English versions translate rather coyly. Paul will not allow it even as an option for people brought up as Hellenistic pagans to adopt, on coming to Christ, the lifestyle of very good, devout, observant Jewish believers. The followers of Jesus are not proselytes. They are converts.

Converts, Not Proselytes

This was no unilateral decision of Paul’s, though it is he who builds on it a whole understanding of Christian justification, first in Galatians and later in Romans. We are assured in Acts 15 that it reflected the mature decision of the apostles and elders at Jerusalem, and the specific advice of James and of Peter. It marked the church’s first critical departure from Jewish tradition and experience. It built cultural diversity into the church forever. What is more, it gave rise to situations that were open-ended and unpredictable.