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2.4.3 - A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age
Primitive Jewish Christianity
The Conflict with Judaism - Stephen’s Address
The address which Stephen is reported to have made goes to confirm the conclusion that has been drawn. It is a mistake to interpret that address as implying a belief on the part of the speaker in either the immediate or ultimate abrogation of law and temple worship; or a tendency on his part to regard them as of only relative and temporary worth.
The address was not directed, as is frequently said, against the Jews’ valuation of the Holy Land, of the temple, and of the law. It was not the speaker’s purpose to assert over against such valuation that God may be worshipped everywhere and in all ways, for the sacredness of the promised land is repeatedly emphasized, and the sojourn of Israel in Egypt and in Babylon is regarded as a calamity because it means separation from it.
Nor is there any sign of an inclination to treat the law slightingly. On the contrary, the law is called "living oracles" in vs. 38, and its divine character is emphasized by its connection with angels in vs. 38 and 53, [It is true that in the Epistle to the Hebrew (2:2), the agency of the angels in the giving of the law is regarded as a mark of its inferiority as compared with the Gospel which was given through Christ. But in Stephen’s address no such idea appears. It was common belief among the Jews that the law had been promulgated by the mediation of angels, and Stephen refers to the fact for the purpose of magnifying not minimizing the dignity of the law.] and Moses himself is accorded the greatest possible honor. In fact, one of the marked characteristics of the address is the emphasis that is put upon the sacredness both of the Promised Land and of the Mosaic Law.
The speech might more easily be interpreted as an evidence of Stephen’s profound respect for and rigid adherence to those things that his countrymen regarded as holy, than as evidence of his undervaluation of them.
The theme of the address is not to be found in vss. 48-50, but in vs. 51-53. Stephen’s design is to show that not he and his fellow-Christians, but his accusers and the unconverted Jews in general are the real criminals and violators of God’s law.
To bring the matter out in the clearest light, he begins with the call of Abraham and the divine promise that Abraham’s descendants should serve God in the land to which God had called him. In the light of that promise the residence of the children of Israel in Egypt, and their true fatherland is Canaan.
Stephen is careful to refer in passing to the burial of Jacob and of the patriarchs in Scechem, thus emphasizing the fact that Canaan and not Egypt is their home and the home of their descendants. But in spite of the fact that, according to God’s announced purpose, the Israelites were only strangers and sojourners in Egypt, when Moses, who had enjoyed the most eminent favors from the Egyptian court, and who had consequently the best of reasons to remain in the land of his adoption, voluntarily relinquished all his honors in order to deliver his brethren from their bondage, they refused to go, preferring to remain where they were rather that to seek the land which God had appointed them as the place in which to serve him.
This is the first instance of the Israelites unbelief and opposition to the will of God to which Stephen refers, but the instance multiply as the address proceeds. He mentions them evidently with a double purpose: on the one hand, to show that at all stages of their history the Israelites had withstood and opposed the purposes of God, even refusing to receive and obey the "living oracles" which he gave them through the agency of Moses; and, on the other had, because their conduct furnishes a parallel to the treatment accorded Jesus by those whom he is addressing.
He calls particular attention to the fact that the very Moses who had been rejected by his brethren, was afterward commissioned and sent by God to be their ruler and deliverer, and that his same Moses predicted that God would raise up another prophet like unto himself, a prediction which was fulfilled in the person of Jesus the righteous one, whose coming the prophets announced beforehand and were slain for announcing.
Mover, the Israelites’ idolatry and disregard of God’s will continued, in spite of the fact that they had the tabernacle of the testimony, which was erected at God’s express command. The presence of that tabernacle in their midst did not prevent them from worshipping false gods. Indeed, that worship was carried so far that God could declare that they had in reality offered him no sacrifices during the forty years in the wilderness.
And so the building of the tabernacle did not insure the true worship of God on the part of his people. For God’s dwelling-place us bit mere hand-made houses. Tabernacle and temple may be built, but the hearts of the people may be far from God, and if they are, he whose throne is heaven and whose footstool is the earth must withdraw his presence and his favor from them.
Taken by themselves, vss. 48-50 might be regarded as a general statement that God is to be worshipped only in spirit and not in hand-made temples, and that consequently the Jewish temple worship is unnecessary, or even harmful, and may or should be done away. But read in the ligt of the context in which the words occur, they cannot mean external temple worship is not enough; that the temple may stand and worshippers gather therein, and yet God himself be absent, because the hearts of the worshipper are turned toward other gods, and the sacrifices which they offer him are no sacrifices.
In giving utterance to such a truth, Stephen was simply reiterating a principle repeatedly emphasized by the prophets, and not entirely forgotten among the Jews in his own day; a principle, moreover, with which all of his Christian brethren must have been in heartiest accord.
To read more that this into vss. 48-50 is to overlook the fact that Solomon at the very time of the erection of the temple gave distinct expression to the same thought, [1 Kings 8:27; 2 Chron. 2:6, and 6:18] and is to introduce an idea entirely foreign both to the body of the address and to its conclusion.
Stephen’s speech was thus not a direct defense of himself against the accusations brought by his opponents, but a warning, addressed to his accusers and judges, that the possession of the temple and the law, as it had not in the past, so would not now insure the presence of God and the acceptance of the people by him.
Only they who cease resisting his Spirit, and receive the righteous one whom he has sent are truly worshipping and serving God. It is clear, in the light of all that ahs been said, that to call Stephen a forerunner of Paul, and to think of him as anticipating in any way Paul’s treatment of the Jewish law and his assertion of agree Gentile Christianity, is to misunderstand him. He neither questioned the continued validity of the Jewish law nor suggested in any way the call of the Gentiles. [It has been maintained by many that the author of the Book of Acts himself composed the speech with which we have been dealing, and put it into the mouth of Stephen. But if our interpretation of the address be correct, such an assumption is impossible. The author of the Acts cannot have invented and ascribed to Stephen, who was accused of blaspheming the law and the temple, a speech in which there is no hint of the abrogation of the ceremonial law or of the calling of the Gentiles. Luke undoubtedly got the substance of the discourse from an early source, and reproduced it with approximate accuracy.]
Used by permission of the publisher.
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