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2.5.3 - A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age
Primitive Jewish Christianity
The Widening Field - First Gentile Converts
The account of the work of Philip and the apostles in Samaria is followed in the same chapter of the Acts by the story of the conversion of an Ethiopian eunuch through the agency of Philip.
Eusebius [Hist. Eccles. II, 1] refers to the eunuch as the first of the Gentiles to embrace Christianity, and he has been followed by many scholars, who regard the Ethiopian as an uncircumcised heathen, and therefore see in his baptism the first instance of a departure from the primitive principle that Christianity is only for Jews, native or proselyte.
But there is nothing in Luke’s account to suggest that Philip took a step of such far-reaching consequence on this occasion. The fact that the Ethiopian had come up to Jerusalem to worship, and was reading the Prophet Isaiah when overtaken by Philip, suggests that if not a native Jew, he was at least a proselyte, and thus a recognized member of the family of Israel. [According to Deut.23:1, a eunuch could not be a member of the congregation of Israel, and therefore could not be received as a proselyte; but the term may have been employed in the present case simply as an official title, as it was very commonly in the East. At any rate, it is not certain that the prohibition was strictly observed at this time. Cf. Isa. 41:3, which anticipates its abrogation.]
At any rate it is inconceivable, in the light of Luke’s account of the conversion of Cornelius, that he intended to relate in this passage the conversion of an uncircumcised Gentile. The great emphasis which he laid upon the case of Cornelius, the elaborateness of detail with which he reproduced it, the scruples which he represented as so difficult for Peter to overcome, the controversy which he recorded as precipitated in Jerusalem, and the defense of Peter which he quoted at such length,- all serve to show that he was describing in that case what he regarded as the first occurrence of the kind, and the he cannot have thought of it as a mere repetition of an earlier event already recounted by him.
The conversion of the Ethiopian he found worthy of record not because it was a departure from the principles of the primitive disciples, but probably because it meant the spread of the Gospel at so early a day to a land so far distant from the place of its birth.
The first recorded departure from primitive principles took place in connection with the Cesarean centurion, Cornelius, of whose conversion Luke gives a detailed account in chapters 10 and 11. Though a pious and God-fearing man [Acts 10.2. The words have a technical sense, and indicate that Cornelius was one of the large class of Gentiles who worshipped the God of the Jews and endeavored to conform their lives in a general way to his will, while they did not accept circumcision and thus become proselytes. The term “proselytes of the gate,” by which such men were formerly called, is a misnomer.] Cornelius was neither a Jew nor a Jewish proselyte, and therefore his admission to the Christian church was a distinct violation of the principles that had hitherto controlled the action of the disciples.
It is in this light that Luke pictures the event. He evidently regarded it as an occurrence of the very greatest significance, as nothing less, in fact, that the official recognition by the apostles and other Christians of Jerusalem of the Christianity of the Gentiles, and of their rights to enter the church without passing through the door of Judaism.
The question is, can such action on the part of the disciples of Jerusalem be reconciled with the subsequent course of events as revealed to us in Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians? It is claimed by many scholars that it cannot; that the apostolic council, to which Paul refers in Gal. 2, and Luke in Acts 15, implies that the question of the legitimacy of Gentile Christianity had not before presented itself to the Christians of the mother church, and that it was only by the arguments and influence of Paul that they wee induced to give it the sanction they did on that occasion.
But the council took place not less than fourteen years after Paul’s conversion, and for at least a part of the time he had been diligently preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles, and had met with very large success in his work. It is upon the face of it incredible that during all that period the Christians of Jerusalem were ignorant of what he was doing, and it is equally incredible that the question as to the legitimacy of the new form of Gospel which he was preaching did not suggest itself to them. Indeed, in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Galatians, Paul distinctly states that they had long known his work, and that they regarded that work with approval. [“They glorified God in me” Paul says in Gal. 1:24]
It is to be noticed, also, that Gal. 2:4, sq. implies that the “false brethren,” as Paul calls those who opposed the legitimacy of his Gentile Christianity and endeavored to make circumcision an indispensable condition of salvation, had recently come into the church and did not represent, with their extreme views, the sentiment that had hitherto prevailed in the church of Jerusalem.
The fact, then, that the legitimacy of Gentile Christianity was challenged in Jerusalem some fourteen years after Paul’s conversion, cannot be made to militate against the recognition of its legitimacy at an earlier day. And it may well be that such recognition was a result of the conversion of Cornelius, as Luke records.
For the tremendous change of principle involved in it requires some exceptional event for it explanation. We cannot suppose that the Jewish Christians, loyal as they were to the law of their fathers, admitted that its observance was not a necessary condition of the enjoyment of the blessings of the Messianic kingdom, except under the pressure of the most convincing arguments.
Possibly the persecution which began with the execution of Stephen had led some of them to doubt whether there was any hope of the conversion of the Jewish people as a whole, and to turn their thoughts to the Gentile world as a possible field for evangelistic work; but the persecution, thought it may have prepared the way for broader views, cannot have effected the change of principle which the recognition of Paul’s work presupposes.
The visit of Paul to Jerusalem three years after his conversion, which he refers to in Gal. 1:18, might be thought of as the possible cause of the transformation; but there is no hint in his account that the visit had any such significance, and there is no sign of a controversy of conflict such as could hardly have been avoided if the legitimacy of Gentile Christianity had then been discussed. In fact, no other event of which we have any knowledge is so well calculated as the conversion of Cornelius through the agency of Peter to account for the development that took place sometime before the apostolic council.
Used by permission of the publisher.
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