The Council of Jerusalem
Throughout Church history, the Church faced many important questions, the answers to which impacted her life for centuries. In the early days, the first question was what to do with the Gentiles. Paul’s missionary activity and Peter’s visit to Cornelius’s household, among other evangelization efforts, brought Gentile converts to the Faith. However, some believed these new Christians should adopt the Jewish dietary restrictions and the law of circumcision. This group, known as the Circumcision Party, was angry that Peter ate with Gentiles, and criticized him upon his return to Jerusalem. In an attempt to placate the Circumcision Party, when Peter later went to Antioch, he refused to eat with the Gentile converts there. Paul, in a spirit of fraternal correction, rebuked Peter for this action.21 The issue became a debate as groups formed around James the Less, bishop of Jerusalem, who believed that all Christians should follow the Jewish customs, and Paul, who argued that Christ had fulfilled the Law and instituted the New Covenant, thereby abrogating the need to follow the dietary restrictions and circumcision of the Old Covenant.
In an effort to resolve the conflict, the apostles gathered in Jerusalem, where, after some debate, Peter spoke in favor of not requiring the Gentiles to be circumcised and abide by the dietary restrictions. James agreed, but proposed that Gentile converts follow the traditional law of “strangers among the Jews” as given by Moses — that is, do not eat meat offered to false gods or the flesh of strangled animals, and refrain from engaging in temple prostitution.22 James’s amendment was accepted, and the apostles promulgated their decision by sending Paul, Barnabas, and a few other men with letters to Antioch to inform the Christian community in the city. The Council of Jerusalem set the procedure for how disagreements and questions of importance would be settled by the Church’s leadership: collegiality with Petrine leadership.
In these first decades, the family of God had undergone an amazing transformation. What began as a small sect within a recognized group in the Roman Empire evolved into a separate community. Commanded by the Lord to take the Gospel to the four corners of the world, the Church’s mission of evangelization resulted in converts from every walk of life and nationality embracing Christ and joining the new family of God. An important question concerning the addition of the Gentiles was settled through an exercise of apostolic leadership. The family was small but growing and would soon come into contact with the world’s only superpower.
1. Acts 1:8
2. Tim Gray and Jeff Cavins, Walking with God: A Journey through the Bible (West Chester, PA: Ascension Press, 2010), 262.
3. Ibid., 264.
4. Ibid., 266.
5. This makes sense when reading the narrative in the Acts of the Apostles, which describes a large number of people hearing the apostles speaking in their native languages — such a number would not have fit inside the Upper Room. Cisterns were also near the Temple, which could have been used for the baptisms that occurred after Peter’s preaching. See Gray and Cavins, 265.
6. Acts 2:41.
7. Acts 6:3.
8. Benedict XVI, Wednesday General Audience on Stephen the Protomartyr, January 10, 2007, in Jesus, the Apostles, and the Early Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 136.
9. Acts 12.
10. James became the patron saint of Spain, known as “the Moor-slayer,” as his intercession was invoked throughout the Reconquista, the centuries-long war of liberation by Catholic forces against the Muslim occupiers.
11. The Church used to celebrate the feast of the Dispersion of the Apostles liturgically on July 15.
12. See Warren H. Carroll, The Founding of Christendom: A History of Christendom, vol. 1 (Front Royal, VA: Christendom College Press, 1985), 406.
13. See 2 Cor 11:23–29.
14. Paul’s focus on the strategic centers of Roman rule is found in Gray and Cavins, 282.
15. Gray and Cavins, 275.
16. Ibid.
17. Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, revised edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), 20.
18. Philip Hughes, A History of the Church: Volume 1: The Church and the World in which the Church was Founded, second edition (London: Sheed and Ward, 1998), 20.
19. Acts 10:1–8.
20. For the Roman legion military structure, see Adrian Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), 46–47.
21. See Galatians 2. This episode is sometimes overblown by Protestants, who use it to illustrate 1) that Peter’s primacy was not respected in the early Church or his leadership was suspect, because he gave in to the Circumcision Party; and 2) that Paul was the real leader of the early Church. Paul’s rebuke of Peter is nothing more than fraternal correction, which even popes are liable to experience.
22. See Robert Louis Wilken, The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 21.
Two
The Empire and the Church
“Two ways there are, one of life and one of death, but there is a great difference between the two ways.” 1
The Didache
The philosophy teacher was perplexed. He had mastered ancient Greek thought, but this new teaching threatened to turn the philosophical world upside down. How was he to interpret this new way of life? It gave purpose and meaning to his life in a way the Greeks had never done. His contact with the God-man Jesus, in the sacraments and teachings of the Catholic Church, led him to understand that the only authentic source of philosophical truth was Christ. He believed it was his duty to share that truth with others. As a young man, he had left his native Palestine to study philosophy in Ephesus. After his conversion at the age of thirty-eight, he settled in Rome, where he opened a school of Christian philosophy and allowed students to attend free of charge — because the truth of Christ was so important, it had to be made accessible to all. The philosopher poured his life into studying the Scripture, where he saw how the life of Jesus fulfilled the ancient Old Testament prophecies. He studied history and was the first to understand that there is a twofold dimension to history: sacred and secular, with Christ at the center.2 He utilized his intellectual talents to combat early heresies, and when the Roman Empire turned its violent attention to the nascent Church, he wrote to defend and explain the Faith to the emperor and pagan society. When persecution came under the reign of Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180), the philosopher’s ardent love for Christ drove him to give his life in martyrdom. He is forever known as Saint Justin Martyr (100–165).
What was the Roman Empire?
In his study of the impact of the Catholic faith on Europe, the historian Hilaire Belloc asked two important questions: “What was the Roman Empire?” and “What was the Church in the Roman Empire?” Answering these questions helps us understand the history of the early Church.
In