I raised the issue of institutional change in the Church in a recent post. The major problem with respect to change is the tensions it raises at the level of Church teaching – is this an issue where change can be envisioned or is this a part of the sacred deposit of faith, a revealed truth, a doctrine of the Church in which no change can be considered? Even when it is not a doctrine of the Church, such as in the case of the teaching on limbo, any sort of proposed change in the theological teaching of the Church raises tensions. Does this indicate that the Church has been wrong on a certain theological question? Does that mean that every theological truth and doctrine is up in the air? Some people desire change with respect to much Church teaching and others say no change at any level is possible. Related to this is the fact that change occurs at a human level, not just at a theological level, which I feel deeply since my proclivities run to the traditional and the stable and so proposals for change concern me. Yet, change, a deepening of the understanding of revelation and its interpretation within the Church, has been with the Church from the beginning.

The first reading for the Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter deals with the Jerusalem Council and the question of whether Christians have to follow the Mosaic Law in order to gain salvation. The traditionalist position was clear and seems to have scripture and tradition on its side:

“Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” (15:1)

and

“Some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, “It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.”(15:5)

I suspect that one of the passages on the minds of the Christians who wanted to maintain the Mosaic Law was this passage from Genesis: “God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” (17:1-4)

One must recognize the weight of the tradition of practice amongst the Jews, but we cannot forget that scripture seems to speak unequivocally on behalf of circumcision. The individuals from Judea, the believers who were Pharisees, have a powerful argument. Many of my students, as we read Acts 15, begin to understand the momentous shift that was taking place through the teaching of Jesus and the understanding of the Church at the Jerusalem Council. But this was a movement to interpreting and understanding Jesus’ teaching and the scripture which had not been apparent to the early Church as a whole. The Pharisaic Christians often garner a high degree of sympathy in my classroom as my students grasp the struggle the Church had to go through to implement this change. There were powerful strands of the teaching by Jesus and the scriptures in support of the Mosaic Law, but there were powerful impulses which spoke of the salvation for the whole world in the scriptures, in Jesus’ teaching and in the experiences and evangelization of Peter, Paul and other apostles. This is why the Church had to meet to discuss the issue and to determine the way of the Spirit. We will consider the remainder of Acts 15, and the Church’s decision, in the next post, but it is worth for today to reflect with empathy on the position of those who wanted to maintain the Mosaic Law as it always had been. Change is difficult, then and today.

John W. Martens

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.