Acts 14:21-15:21

The Council at Jerusalem

By the end of Paul and Barnabas’ first missionary journey it was clear that the Gentiles were going to be a significant part of the Church. This wasn’t just some isolated happening where a few here and a few there joined. In fact, it was proving easier to reach the Gentiles with the gospel than the Jews. This gave rise to the question: “How Jewish are Gentile believers supposed to be?” Should they be required to keep the Law of Moses?

This question was the cause for what has become known as the first great Church Council. The apostles and the elders met in Jerusalem to discuss the matter of the Gentiles coming into the church and it wasn’t long before this very question was raised.

The conservative position was that the Gentiles must be circumcised and obey the Law of Moses. One can easily see how this position was reached. The Law of Moses had always been the gold standard. Why abandon it now?

On the other hand, the Law of Moses had proved not only impossible to keep but also inept at bringing about real life and a changed heart. It seemed that the only thing the law did was clearly establish our inability to please God and the need for another way. That was the (dare I say) liberal position. (We can call it “progressive” if you like.)

We know who won. Thankfully, the faith was no longer merely a subset of Judaism but was established as a living faith rooted in the Law of Moses, but not bound to what the Law of Moses had become.

The point here is not that a conservative position is always a bad one, nor that the more progressive position is always right. If we knew that we wouldn’t need the Holy Spirit. However, if we knew that the conservative position is always right and the liberal position is always wrong, then again we wouldn’t need the Holy Spirit to guide us.

Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006) was a brilliant Yale professor. At the age of 22 he earned both a seminary degree from Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis, Missouri and a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. He is best known for his often quoted one liner: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” There is a second (and third) line to this quote that is also well worth pondering: “Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.”

Pelikan stated that he had been influenced all of his life by a quote from the great German poet Goethe who said, “Take what you have inherited from your fathers and work to make it your own.” That is what the Council at Jerusalem did, and we should endeavor to follow their example.