Apostolic Council

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The Apostle Council (also called the Apostles' Convention) in Jerusalem (between 44 and 49) was a meeting of the apostles of the Jerusalem early community with Paul of Tarsus and his companions. It was there that the decision about the so-called pagan mission , which was central to early Christianity, was made. It was recognized that pagans do not have to be circumcised in order to become Christians. The apostle Peter is quoted in the Bible passage ( Acts 15:11  SLT ): "Rather, we believe that by the grace of the Lord Jesus we will be saved in the same way as they." This meant Gentiles and Jews. In his letter to the congregations in Galatia , Paul himself reports on the agreements made in Jerusalem: “And they recognized the grace which had been bestowed on me, James and Cephas and John , who are considered pillars, and gave me and Barnabas the handshake of the community, we should preach among the Gentiles, but they should preach among the circumcised ”(Gal 2,9 JER ).

swell

A report on the council can be found in Paul's letter to the Galatians ( Gal 2 : 1–10  EU ), which was written shortly after the event, as well as in Luke's Acts of the Apostles ( Acts 15  EU ), which according to current scientific opinion was not written until around the year 90 . The two testimonies are not only more than 40 years apart, but are also motivated and addressed differently: In Galatians, Paul defends himself against current theological opponents within a community he founded, Luke describes the first decades of Christian missionary history in retrospect.

The authors also present the result of the apostles' meeting in different ways: According to Paul, non-Jewish Christians were completely exempted from observing the Jewish Torah , according to Luke they were recommended to keep some ritual laws. There were conflicts about this even after the meeting.

Dating

According to Gal 2.1  EU , Paul visited Jerusalem “after 14 years” for the second time, this time for the apostolic council. It is unclear whether he meant the deadline of his conversion before Damascus (32 or 33) or his first visit to Jerusalem (35 or 36). Since the first year was counted, the apostolic council fell in the first case on the year 45 or 46, in the second on 48 or 49.

NT historians arrive at similar conclusions from the information in the Acts of the Apostles: According to Acts 12 : 23f  EU , the council was preceded by the death of Herod Agrippa I , who, according to Flavius ​​Josephus, occurred in 44. This was followed by Paul's second missionary trip to Greece , during which he stayed in Corinth from the age of 50 ( Acts 18.2  EU ). The vast majority of theologians and historians therefore set the date of the meeting between 44 and 49.

Some exegetes represent a date before 44. They assume that Paul only mentions two visits to Jerusalem in Galatians. However, the Acts of the Apostles also tell of a collection before the death of Herod Agrippa, which was organized by Paul and others on the occasion of a grain price increase and which was brought to Jerusalem before Agrippa's death ( Acts 11 : 27-30  EU ). This visit is equated with the journey to the council described by Paul.

Other exegetes did not start the convention until the early 1950s because Paul had taken a position in Jerusalem that he could only have developed in the course of his mission to Greece. These exegetes completely reject the Acts of the Apostles as a historical source.

Individual exegetes attribute the discrepancies between the two texts to two different meetings: the letter to the Galatians could represent an earlier, Acts 15 a later meeting of Paul with the representatives of the early church. The renewed conflict after the (now "first") meeting described in Gal. 2 : 11-14  EU could thus be equated with the events that Acts 15: 1-6  EU represented as the trigger of the (now "second") council . However, this thesis cannot explain why Luke mentions the decision for the Gentile mission, which Paul describes as drastic, and why Paul should have kept silent about the compromise.

The New Testament scholar Hans Conzelmann therefore rejects both the early dating and the hypothesis of the “double” council. He points out that other sources do not report any “price increases” for the years before Agrippa's death, but a local supply crisis for 46 and 48 under the governor Tiberius. Luke may have reversed the sequence of events: Acts 12.24 EU speaks  of a "return" of Paul and Barnabas from Jerusalem to Antioch , which, according to Gal 2.11  EU, probably only took place after the Council (cf. Acts 15.30-35  EU ). Accordingly, Conzelmann assumes the year 48 for the council.

prehistory

According to Acts 2  EU, the early church in Jerusalem consisted from the beginning of Jews , proselytes and Hellenists , who recognized Jesus Christ as the Messiah of Israel . Their different religious backgrounds expressed themselves in very different attitudes towards the temple cult and the Jewish Torah, which soon led to conflicts.

Before that there were conflicts about the widow's care of the Hellenists, which were resolved with the election of seven deacons ( Acts 6,1–6  SLT ). But because of his temple criticism, Stephen , one of the seven, was accused and stoned by the Sadducee temple priests . Afterwards his followers were persecuted and fled Jerusalem. According to Acts 8.1  EU , the Pharisee Paul of Tarsus was also involved in their persecution .

One consequence of their expulsion was the mission in surrounding areas, where now non-Jews - so-called heathen - were won over to believe in Jesus Christ. This is how Christian communities emerged in Samaria , Syria , Cyprus and Asia Minor . Another consequence was the spatial separation of the “Judaists” from the “Hellenists” within the early Jerusalem community. The togetherness became a coexistence, combined with different theological positions, especially on the Jewish ritual law.

The congregation in Jerusalem understood being a Christian as belonging to the “true” or “renewed” people of God of the end times, represented by the number of twelve apostles as a symbol for the twelve tribes of Israel . In this respect, she wanted to remain a part of Judaism and respected its customs including circumcision , purity and food laws and sacrifices in the Jerusalem temple, the meeting place of the first Christians. For early Palestinian Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth did not come to abolish the Torah, but to fulfill it and to urge people to fulfill the commandments ( Mt 5 : 17-20  EU ).

From this, some Jewish Christians concluded that a Christian who believes in Jesus as the Messiah of Israel must be circumcised in order to participate in the election of God's people and their promises. Traditionally, this was associated with an obligation to comply with all Torah commandments. This view is also known as Judaism and was probably mainly represented by Christians close to Jesus who were close to the Pharisees.

In addition to this group, which Paul described as “zealous for the law” and compared with himself before his conversion, there were mediating positions represented by Simon Peter and above all by Jesus' oldest brother James the Righteous . He became an apostle after Jesus' death and then gained a leadership role in the early church. He was highly regarded for his loyalty to the Torah and was considered an undisputed moral authority, as the letter of James attributed to him shows.

On the other hand, the Hellenistic communities seem to have only recognized Jewish law as a moral standard and apparently practiced neither the temple cult nor the dietary laws nor the circumcision of non-Jewish converts. That was probably the reason for further persecution of Christians by Herod Agrippa, who wanted to make himself popular with the Sadducee-dominated Sanhedrin ( Acts 12.3  EU ). This brought the Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem into a dilemma. Because if they stood by their Christian brothers, they would also expose themselves to persecution and were considered traitors to Judaism, to which they, however, felt they belonged and which they saw as their home.

The trips of the various apostles to the new congregations repeatedly brought conflicts about observance of the Torah on the agenda. The point of crystallization with which the Christian community stood or fell with the Greek Christians was eating together. The food commands in particular were a major hurdle here.

Paul also intensified the conflict: for since his conversion he has represented the exact opposite of his earlier Pharisaic positions. As the main exponent of Hellenistic theology, he took the view that the Gentiles were purified and sanctified by believing in Jesus Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit, even without having to obey the Jewish religious law; they too are children of Abraham and a Jewish origin or practice is not necessary for believing in Jesus Christ as God's Messiah. This belief in the risen Christ alone is sufficient for belonging to Israel's covenant with God. Using Pharisaic methodology and Hellenistic rhetoric, Paul defined theological alternatives to the traditional Pharisaic positions retained by Palestinian Jewish Christianity, which considered circumcision and submission to the Mosaic Law to be necessary for the integration of non-Jews ( proselytes ) into the covenant people. So the practical problem turned into a theological conflict. Through his busy missionary work, Paul also increased the number of Gentile Christian communities considerably and thus changed the majority relationships within the growing early church, so that a clarification of the problem became inevitable.

According to Acts 15 : 1  EU , the immediate occasion of the council was a clash between Paul and Barnabas with men "from Judea " who demanded circumcision from the church in Antioch on the grounds:

"If you do not allow yourselves to be circumcised according to the way of Moses , then you cannot be saved."

It is assumed that they were identical with those "from the Jews" who had already confronted Simon Peter about his first baptisms and table fellowship with Gentiles ( Acts 11 : 2f  EU ) and who evidently represented the position of James ( Gal 2, 12  EU ). The congregation then sent Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem to seek advice and the decision of the Jerusalem apostles ( Acts 15: 2-6  EU ).

Course and decision

Depiction in Galatians

Paul saw the meeting not only as a solution to the practical problem of restoring the meal fellowship between Jewish and Gentile Christians, but as a decision about the truth of the gospel. For although he attributed the commission to the Gentile mission directly to his individual encounter with Jesus Christ and, according to his own admission, had long worked independently of the other apostles, it was now a matter of getting their confirmation for it, “so that I don't run in vain or would have run ”( Gal 2,3  EU ).

In the following ( Gal 2, 4–10  EU ) he presents himself as the spokesman for the negotiation, without mentioning an assignment as an envoy from Antioch. His “false brothers”, who “pushed their way in” and “snuck in” to “spy on” his Christian freedom, failed to put him on the defensive for even an hour. Rather, all those who, although not in front of God, but had the "reputation" and say within the early church - Paul only names the three "pillars" James, Peter (Cephas) ​​and John - did not impose anything on him; not even his companion Titus , a native of Greece , was forced to be circumcised. Rather, they recognized that his missionary successes were equal to those of Peter and then assured him with a handshake that he and Barnabas had the right to preach the gospel among the Gentiles - apparently just as he understood it. They should only remember the “poor”.

This refers to the collection for the Jerusalem congregation mentioned in Acts 11 : 27–30  EU (see above), which Paul often called for in his church letters ( Rom. 15.26  EU ; 1 Cor 16.1  EU ). Otherwise Paul does not cite any official or even written resolution of the council to which he would have had to submit. In addition, a “division of labor” had been agreed, according to which Peter should evangelize mainly among the Jews, Paul and Barnabas among the Gentiles.

Depiction in the Acts of the Apostles

In Acts 15: 2–10  EU , Luke points out that Paul was only one of several Gentile missionaries who were sent to the council by their congregations. Even their arrival appears to be a triumphal procession, as they would have received unconditional approval on the way in Phenicia and Samaria . That is why they were received by all members, apostles and elders of the early church on their arrival . First they would have referred to their mission successes; then some of the “party / sect” of the Pharisees who had become Christians appeared and reaffirmed the position of Paul's opponents in Antioch:

"They must be circumcised and commanded to keep the law of Moses ."

After that, apostles and elders - apparently without the rest of the community - would have discussed it. After much back and forth, Peter got up and remembered his own mission to the Gentiles. Just like the Jews, God gave them the Holy Spirit "after he had purified their hearts through faith ". Keeping the Torah is a yoke "that neither our fathers nor we could bear."

In the same way, James is said to have made his plea for mission to the Gentiles. According to Luke, he recalled the Old Testament promise of a new temple - an indication of the origin of this text after the destruction of the temple in 70 - and demanded that pagans should only avoid meat, fornication and blood consumption in order to maintain a minimal conformity with the traditional purity laws of Judaism (see James Clauses ).

It is controversial whether he was more concerned with the Noachidic commandments ( 1 Mos 9,4–7  EU ) or the law for foreigners in the Land of Israel (e.g. 3 Mos 17,10  EU ; 3 Mos 18,26  EU) ). In any case, the common meal should apparently also be possible without settling the basic theological conflict: The Gentile Christians should adhere to those ritual commandments that enabled the Pharisaic Jewish Christians to tolerate them at least as "guests" at the table.

Following these speeches, the entire congregation put down the resolution in writing to allow mission to the Gentiles in accordance with James. She sent Paul and Barnabas back to Antioch with this commission together with representatives of the early church ( Acts 15,22-29  EU ).

Historical appreciation

Paul's description is considered authentic because he was an eyewitness to what happened and reported about it promptly. As a participant in the conflict, however, he could have presented the course and results of the meeting for his communities one-sided.

Luke's report, on the other hand, is considered to be a later and idealizing reconstruction that cannot be measured against today's historiographical standards. Luke hardly reproduced the speeches of Peter and James at the meeting verbatim, but rather formulated them himself. He already had the Greek translation of the Tanakh , the Septuagint , which the Galilean followers of Jesus should hardly have known. The speech of James quotes from it and is rhetorically and literarily designed in the Hellenistic style. Nevertheless, these speeches can very well reflect the positions held at the time.

The two versions reflect a different interpretation of the compromise found (whether on paper or by handshake) by those involved: For Paul, the fundamental recognition of the Gentile Christians by the Jerusalemites was central, he only understood the restrictions as "consideration for the weak in faith" has no essential theological significance. Luke, on the other hand, emphasized the compromise according to which certain minimum requirements were maintained for the Gentiles in order to preserve the continuity to Judaism with the continued application of the ritual laws for the Christians. This ostensibly restored the fellowship at the table, but the fundamental theological problem was not really resolved, and further conflicts were inevitable.

The hypothesis that Paul and Luke reported on different meetings is only supported by a few exegetes, who assume the historical reliability of the contradicting detailed descriptions contained in both reports. This idea did not gain acceptance in scientific research because there are more similarities than differences in the reports and because it is unable to answer the question of why Luke and Paul do not report anything about the other meeting.

consequences

Paul already shows that the conflict remained unsolved in his description of the Antiochene incident ( Gal 2 : 11-14  EU ), which occurred shortly after the council: In Antioch, Peter arrived after the arrival of a delegation of the law-abiding Jerusalemites led by James Congregation refrained from continuing to eat with uncircumcised Gentile Christians for fear of the stricter Jewish Christians. Other Jewish Christians from around Paul, even Barnabas, would have been infected and carried away by the example of Cephas. Accordingly, the compromise, which was supposed to enable communion between Jews and Gentiles within Christian communities, apparently initially led to a distancing between the two groups.

Paul emphasizes that he did not accept this, but publicly confronted Peter:

“If you live pagan and not Jewish as a Jew” [based on the previous table fellowship with pagans], “then what do you force the pagans to live Jewish?” [With reference to the dietary laws].

In his opinion, this requirement either did not exist, or he rejected it as soon as he saw the divisive effect.

In 1 Corinthians ( 1 Cor 8,7f  EU and 1 Cor 10,19-29  EU ) Paul explicitly contradicts the dietary regulations of the council. In the later letter to the Romans ( Rom 14  EU ), however, he recommends the Gentile Christians - here the "strong" in faith, who know that religious precepts are unsuitable for salvation - nevertheless to allow love for and unity with the "weak" Jewish Christians to their dietary laws pay attention (v. 21): "Do not destroy God's work for the sake of food!"

On the one hand, this shows that the Gentile Mission in no way replaced the Jewish Mission, but rather mixed congregations emerged, so that table fellowship between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians remained a problem. On the other hand, some Jewish Christians, even far from Jerusalem, were not ready to give up their Mosaic tradition and to live “pagan” as Christians. It cannot even be ruled out that there were also Gentile Christians who represented “Jewish Christian” theology because they wanted to decide entirely in favor of Jewish Christianity.

In addition, Paul himself by no means had sole theological authority in the churches he founded, but had to fight for it again and again. The division of tasks in missionary work did not mean that outside Palestine only his position was valid. Jewish Christian traditions persisted into the 4th century not only in Syria and Egypt or Asia Minor, but also in the West, not least in the struggle with Arianism .

On the whole, however, the Pauline view prevailed in the church. The rules of the Council of Apostles, decided according to Luke, only apply today in rather marginalized groups of Christianity such as Jehovah's Witnesses or communities of messianic Judaism .

Theological meaning

The meeting of the apostles of the early Christians had groundbreaking theological meanings for further church history in several respects:

  • Ecclesiologically : The communities of early Christianity understood themselves from this point on at the latest as a "called out" community (ecclesia) of Jews and Gentiles. The unifying factor was no longer belonging to the Jewish people or following the Jewish ritual laws - which at that time had the function of identifying marks - but rather belief in Jesus Christ, baptism and sharing in the Holy Spirit . Christianity was now in fact a separate religion alongside Judaism , even if the process of separation between the two cannot be reduced to this one point.
  • Ecclesiastical history : Even if today's exegesis speaks more of a convention, this can be seen as the first trial of a “council”, because an internal church issue that was important for everyone was clarified in dialogue by the congregations and not decided by a central authority. This council principle remained valid in all Christian churches even after central authorities such as the papacy were formed, and it is still applied today.
  • Hermeneutical : With the apostolic council, the Torah was relativized as sacred scripture of Judaism, Jesus and the early community. It was the only Bible that could be relied on at the time. Though it was clung to, it became subject to the work of the Holy Spirit. What he declares to be clean, the community should not declare unclean even with reference to the Holy Scriptures ( Acts 10  EU ). This dispute about the principle of writing occupies the church to this day and marks a decisive difference to the other book religions Islam and Judaism, in which the writing itself is holy and not a means to (sanctifying) faith.
  • Dogmatic : Last but not least, with the compromise that was found, the church was given the task of clarifying exactly what actually makes people just, holy and pure. The relationship between beliefs and works that shaped the controversy during the Reformation was already recognizable here as a problem - albeit with a completely different omen.

literature

reference books

Treatises

  • Jürgen Becker : Paulus, the apostle of the nations. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1989, ISBN 3-8252-2014-1 (pp. 89-99: The Jerusalem Agreement on the Lawless Gentile Mission ).
  • Hans Conzelmann : History of early Christianity (= floor plans for the New Testament , Volume 5). 3rd edition, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1976, ISBN 3-525-51354-2 (reprinted several times unchanged, last in 6th edition 1989; first edition in the NTD supplementary series 1969) (pp. 67–75: Das Apostelkonzil ; limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Klaus Haacker : The Acts of the Apostles (= theological commentary on the New Testament ). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2019, ISBN 978-3-17-026990-3 (pp. 250–268: VII. The first mission conference in church history ).
  • Dietrich-Alex Koch : History of early Christianity. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-525-52199-1 (pp. 223–245: Chapter 9: Apostolic Council and Antiochian Controversy ; limited preview in Google book search).
  • Martin Meiser: The letter to the Galatians as part of the chronology of the letters of Paul. In: Michael Labahn (Ed.): Searching for traces as an introduction to the New Testament. A Festschrift in Dialogue with Udo Schnelle (= Research on Religion and Literature of the Old and New Testaments , Volume 271). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-647-54069-6 , pp. 109–124 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Wilhelm Pratscher : The Lord Brother James and the James tradition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1987, ISBN 3-525-53817-0 (pp. 59-74: Der Apostelkonvent (Gal 2,1 ff .; Acts 15,1 ff.) ).
  • Ruth Schäfer: Paul up to the Apostolic Council. A contribution to the introduction to the letter to the Galatians, to the history of the Jesus movement and to the chronology of Paul (= WUNT II / 179). Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 3-16-148309-X (critical: Ingo Broer : Neues zur Pauluschronologie? In: Biblische Zeitschrift 50 (2006), pp. 99-104).
  • Thomas Söding : The Apostle Council as a prime example of church conflict resolution. Claim, reality and effect. In: Joachim Wiemeyer (Hrsg.): Dialog processes in the Catholic Church: Justifications - Requirements - Forms. Schöningh, Paderborn 2013, ISBN 978-3-506-77629-7 . Pp. 25–34 (online as text version (PDF; 135 kB) of a lecture given on January 12, 2012 at the Ruhr University Bochum at the conference on the 50th anniversary of the convening of the Second Vatican Council ).
  • Jürgen Wehnert: The purity of the “Christian people of God” made up of Jews and Gentiles. Studies on the historical and theological background of the so-called Apostle Decree (= research on religion and literature of the Old and New Testaments , Volume 173). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1997, ISBN 3-525-53856-1 .
  • Alfons Weiser : The "Apostle Council" (Acts 15: 1-35). Event, tradition, Lucanian interpretation. In: Biblical Journal , New Series, Vol. 28 (1984), pp. 145–167.
  • Holger Zeigan : Apostle meeting in Jerusalem. A historical research study on Galatians 2: 1–10 and the possible Lukan parallels (= work on the Bible and its history , volume 18). Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-374-02315-0 ( Review by Jürgen Wehnert in: ThLZ 131 (2006), Issue 6 (July / August), Sp. 862-864).

Web links

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on December 10, 2005 .