Book Two: CHAPTER II--Gentile Christianity

CHAPTER II

 

Gentile Christianity

 

                        Jerusalem had not yet slipped into isolation and ignominy when the first Gentiles found their way into the Christian movement. It is true that the spread of Christianity beyond Jerusalem and Judea was not the result of the missionary activity of the Twelve, but was rather the result of the migration of Hellenistic Jewish Christians, who left Jerusalem seeking to escape persecution, establishing new Christian communities wherever they settled, attracting other like-minded Hellenistic Jews and Gentile God-Fearers, and eventually even attracting Gentiles with no previous affiliation with Judaism. Nevertheless, it must be remembered that this Hellenistic Jewish ministry occurred under the primacy and approval of the original church in Jerusalem. 

 

                        When one thinks of Gentile Christianity, one’s mind immediately turns to Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. This is the same Paul who was commissioned by the Jewish community of Jerusalem to quell the heresy of the initial Hellenistic Jewish Christians. At some point, however, Paul became convinced that the heresy that he was attempting to subdue was essentially correct in its assertions. The Book of Acts connects this change of heart with a conversion experience involving the risen Christ. This conversion experience is told on three separate occasions in the Book of Acts, and Paul’s own writings makes it clear that he believed that Jesus of Nazareth appeared to him as the Messiah.

 

                        With this change of heart, Paul became convinced that the Messiah had to be rejected by the Jews in order to demonstrate the extent of humanity’s rejection of God. The fact that the chosen people of God had rejected the Messiah, God’s agent, made the Jews the same as the Gentiles, a people deserving condemnation. In their rejection of the God’s Messiah, God leveled the playing field. All of humanity, Jew and Gentile, now stood guilty before God. The prerequisite for forgiveness is guilt. One must stand condemned before one can be forgiven. Jews and Gentiles now stood together. In Paul’s mind, the Jewish rejection of the Christ allowed for the possibility for the inclusion of the Gentiles as God’s people, not to the exclusion of the Jews, but in addition to them.

 

                        Of course, for Paul, the rejection and crucifixion were only half of the story. The cross of the Christ leads to the resurrection of the Christ from the dead. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead had a three-fold effect for Paul. It served to vindicate Jesus as the Christ; it served as a down-payment for the general resurrection to come on the last day of this age; and it marked the beginning of the new age.

 

                        This last element of the new age beginning with the resurrection of Jesus reflects Paul’s apocalyptic outlook. Paul, as did other apocalyptic Jews, believed that history had become so corrupt that it was irredeemable. The only thing for a just God to do is to destroy the present evil age and replace it with a new age of glory. Apocalyptic thought asserted that on the last day of the present evil age, the dead would rise to live in the new age. The fact that Jesus was raised from the dead meant that the present evil age was quickly coming to an end and that the new age of glory had in some sense begun. History had now entered a transitional period in which both ages overlap. The resurrection of the Christ, for Paul, served as history’s “two-minute warning.” The present age would soon expire, leaving only the new age in its stead. Paul sincerely believed that the end of this age was imminent. This belief in the immediate end of the age propelled Paul on his missionary journeys around the Roman Empire.

 

                        Traditionally, the importance of Paul’s attempts to spread Christianity around the empire have been overstated. Many historians and some theologians present Paul as a co-founder of Christianity, who single-handedly converted the Gentiles of the Roman Empire to the new faith. This view ignores two key factors in first century evangelization. The first is that Paul usually operated as a part of a group of missionaries, as is reflected in his letters, which are almost always co-authored. The second is that the majority of Gentile Christians converted to the faith as a product of the activities and teaching of the thousands of unnamed Christians positioned around the empire.

 

                        Gentile Christianity was a religion of the down-and-out. It’s message of victory of life over death made it highly seductive to the elements of Roman society who had little or nothing to hope for and little or nothing to live for. Most of the people converting to Christianity were the dregs of society. Christianity became associated with slaves and the lower-classes. What made Christianity so attractive to the down-and-out (and suspect among the up-and-in) of Roman society was its simple message of death and resurrection. 

 

                        Again, the concept of resurrection is often misunderstood by contemporary historians. Many historians assert that people flocked to Christianity because is promised a continuance of life after death. The logic is that people want to live forever; Christianity promises eternal life; therefore, people became Christian so that they can live forever. Nevertheless, the Christian promise of resurrection was not merely reserved for after the grave. It had very real meaning for this life as well. Christianity asserted that the worst thing that the powers of this world can do to a person is to kill him, and that ultimately proves to be no power at all. The forces and powers of the world stood against Jesus the Christ and meted out its worst punishment, death, and that could not keep him down. Through his resurrection from the dead, Jesus the Christ exposed all the powers of the world, even Rome, to be what they truly were, impotent potentates masquerading as supreme powers. Victory for these first Christians was not the hope of going to heaven when they died, but the promise of a life that was free from fear and hopelessness, which should have been their lot as slaves and members of the lower-classes of the Roman Empire. The power of the world lies in its ability to threaten and inflict death, but the Christ has demonstrated that that power is no power at all, allowing Christians to taunt the powers that willingly dole out death, “Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55).

 

                        Christians, fueled by this new sense of victory, chose to live as though the present evil age no longer existed and as if the new age were all that was left. They refused to live within the limitations imposed upon them by the world. Instead, they lived according to the standards of a new world. This sense of victory among the down-and-out, as well as their refusal to live according to anyone else’s standards but their own, confused and often frightened the more respectable elements of Roman society. Sooner or later they would respond. And when they did ultimately respond, they became even more confused when the Christians seemed to gladly accept death rather than give into societal pressure to conform.

 

                        The inclusion of the Gentiles raised a new issue that presented the potentiality of tearing the young church apart. The conflict centered on how to understand the inclusion of the Gentiles into the church and what requirements, if any, should be levied upon them in order for them to become members of the Christian community. Could Gentiles immediately become Christians on an “as is” basis, or must they become Jewish first? Should Gentiles follow the precepts of the Torah, or were they somehow free from Torah observance? Could Gentiles become Christian without being circumcised, or was circumcision a requirement for members of the faith? These questions sparked an intense debate and inflicted emotional wounds that would take a long time to heal, if, indeed, they ever healed at all.

 

c. 50 C.E.                The church decided to call together Christian leaders from around the Roman world to decide the matter of Gentile converts. The council met in Jerusalem and ultimately decided that Gentiles did not have to convert to Judaism before they could become Christian. The Jerusalem Council’s decision was circulated throughout the world via a letter, which stated that the only requirements imposed upon Gentile converts were that they were to keep from participating in direct or indirect idolatry; they were not to eat bloody meat or eat any meat of strangled animals; and they were not to commit any sexual sins. 

 

                        The decision proposed by the Jerusalem Council apparently was not the end of the matter, however. Paul obviously believed that his evangelistic activities were constantly being undermined by Jewish Christians who could not abide by the Council’s decision. The Jewish Christians did have a point in their protests against the Jerusalem Council’s resolution. If Gentiles did not have to observe the Torah, then why should anyone else, including the Jews? It must have appeared to them as if the Jewish leadership of the Christian community was singlehandedly accomplishing what the Babylonian Exile and Hellenistic persecution could not, the loss of Jewish identity. Conservative Jewish Christians asked themselves, “If Christ is the fulfillment of the Torah, shouldn’t that make the Torah central to Christian life?” After all, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus clearly stands in favor of Torah observance, teaching that those who teach others to ignore the most seemingly insignificant requirement in the Torah would be least in the Kingdom of heaven. 

 

                        The line of reasoning offered by Paul in response was that Christ is the fulfillment of the Torah in that he is the “end” of the Torah (The word end here is the Greek word telos, which is “end” as in a “destination” or “goal”). In essence, Paul’s argument was that Christ is the “finish line” of the Torah. Christ is what all the Jews had been racing toward for centuries, but now the race was completed. A runner is not expected to keep running once he has reached the finish line, and others are not forced to run a race once it is over. Therefore, Gentiles have missed the race, so making them run it now is pointless; however, they have been invited to the victory celebration. If the doorkeeper decides not to let someone into the party who has been invited, they then have to answer to the one throwing the party. If Jewish Christians chose to put requirements on Gentile converts that God has not put upon them, then these Christians would be working against the God they claimed to be following.

 

                        In the end, the moderate and radical elements of Jewish Christianity chose to side with Paul on this issue rather than the more conservative Jewish Christians. Even James, the so-called “Brother of the Lord,” who was not known for his moderate to liberal stances on theological issues, sided with Paul, alienating the most conservative Christians, and causing them to take matters into their own hands. If the larger church would acquiesce to undermining the Torah in the Christian community, then they would see to it themselves that the Torah would be taught to Gentiles, with or without the consent of the Jerusalem Council and leadership. 

 

                        Examining the issue from the criterion of mere practicality, Paul’s argument was the easier sell to the Gentile population. The main issue that kept so many Gentiles from converting to Judaism was that of circumcision. Very few adults willingly take it upon themselves to undergo that ritual. This is why there were so many “God-Fearers.” They were Gentiles who would like to become Jews, but who could not bring themselves to undergo the ritual requirement of circumcision. Paul offered a way to sidestep the issue altogether. Paul, a Jew, preached to the Gentiles that circumcision was unnecessary; Conservative, Christian Jews preached to the Gentiles that circumcision was a requirement. Given the choice, the majority of Gentile converts found Paul’s argument more appealing and decided to place their trust in his message, rather than that of the conservative Christian element, typically referred to as the  “Judaizers.”

 

                        The advent of Gentile Christianity would not only be significant within the Christian community, but within the larger Roman world itself. The large number of Gentiles who were turning to Christianity gave the faith a new flavor, one that made it much more easy to distinguish from Judaism. During the second half of the first century C.E., Roman authorities began to realize that Christianity was no longer just an extension of the Jewish religion, but was emerging as a brand new religion. When the Gentiles in the church outnumbered the Jews, the Romans noticed. The issue of Gentile Christianity was not only the source of a high degree of bitterness and division within the church, it was also the source of the persecutions that were to erupt throughout the Roman world.