Jewish leaders in Acts

For various reasons I’ve been reading and re-reading Acts these last few months, and something jumped out at me for the first time. I believe I’m right in the following observation, though I welcome correction; I ran it by one Acts scholar I know, and she didn’t think I was wrong.

Here’s what I noticed: In the book of Acts, there is not a single gentile leader of the church, anywhere, in any city, with what you might call (like a drama or film) “a speaking part.” Put differently, in the book of Acts, the only named, “speaking role” leaders of the church are Jews—whether apostles, deacons, prophets, missionaries, evangelists, teachers, elders, or other.

Sight unseen, you might not have expected that. You might have expected St. Luke to want to display an integrated leadership, at some point in the narrative, or some sort of “hand off” in this or that gentile-dominant city or region. And to be sure, we ought to take for granted that in Ephesus or Corinth or Philippi, when St. Paul departs and/or when elders are appointed or referred to, some among them, perhaps most or all, are gentiles. But Luke apparently goes out of his way not to say more than this, certainly not to spotlight a top-billing gentile church leader.

In my view, this decision sheds light on, or is another way of thinking about, the absence of St. Titus in the book. The rest of Paul’s close companions whom he names in his letters are likewise named by Luke and provided backstories or thumbnail-sketch biographies. Yet Titus is nowhere to be seen. Doubtless there are many possible reasons for this, much dependent on disputed theories regarding who wrote Acts, when, and with what level of knowledge (intimate or distant) about Paul and his delegates.

Suppose, though, that Luke does know of Titus—and, further, that Titus is neither the same person as Timothy (a fascinating if extremely implausible theory put forward by Richard Fellows) nor the author of Acts (a far more intriguing and plausible hypothesis, though equally speculative, proposed by Felix Asiedu). Why might Luke then not have mentioned him? One answer is that Luke was at pains to show that the early church, in its first three decades of life, was a wholly Jewish-led and Jewish-derived phenomenon. Its origins lay in Jerusalem; it was about the Jewish Messiah; it was a fulfillment of Jewish prophecy; and its leaders were were Torah-observant Jews with names like Simeon, Jonah, Jacob (son of Zebedee), Jacob (the Lord’s brother), Joseph (called Bar-nava), and Saul. Further, those leaders from the diaspora with Greek names like Stephen, Philip, Silas, and Apollos were, to a man, Jews, and Luke is keen to ensure we know it. The limit case is Timothy, son of a gentile father and Jewish mother, whom Paul circumcises in 16:3 without any show of hesitation.

To be clear, the claim isn’t that no gentiles speak up in Acts. Many do. Some believe. Many do not believe, especially governors and kings. The claim, rather, is that Luke makes the glaring decision not to include one gentile “co-leader” or “co-laborer” alongside Paul in his missionary journeys. This gospel, Luke wants us to see, is the good news of Israel’s God, led by Israel’s sons, taken to the nations on Israel’s terms. Do not suppose that God has abandoned his people. As Paul would say, by no means.

In short, from the opening of volume 1 (the Gospel) to the end of volume 2 (the Acts) Luke is careful to render a narrative in which the advent of God’s Son and the outpouring of God’s Spirit are unquestionably the work of the one God, the God of Abraham, in fulfillment of his promises to Abraham’s children. Whatever one might say about the gospel, Luke has removed one potential criticism. Perhaps the move is apologetic: yes, the churches become majority-gentile all too quickly; yes, this presents questions and perhaps problems; but that doesn’t call into the question the nature or the origins of the church and her gospel. Those are found in the Jewish people, in their history and scriptures, as evidenced—clearly—by the leaders of the church’s first generation.

P.S. Having said all this, Asiedu’s proposal, that Titus is the author of Acts, takes on new resonance in light of the above observations. If Titus were the author, then (on one hand) his scrupulousness about which church leaders to feature is even more pronounced, while (on the other hand) he has not so much “erased” himself from the narrative as made himself invisible, through the “we” passages. So that readers of every kind are seeing this altogether Jewish story of the gospel of Israel’s Messiah taken to the gentile nations through the eyes of “Titus the Greek,” even as he makes himself “present” to the proceedings through the strategic use of the first-person plural, without ever actually telling us who he is or that one of the “we” in the room is himself a gentile co-worker in the Pauline mission. All speculative, granted. But it’s fun to speculate in any case.

On finding race and racism in the New Testament

I am skeptical of attempts to center contemporary Christian conversations about race on New Testament texts purported to feature or critique racism. From what I can tell, this move is a common one. Pericopes adduced include Jesus's encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman, his meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well, and the parable of the good Samaritan. Most often, however, I see writers, pastors, and preachers use the example of gentiles in the early Jewish church, deploying some combination of Acts 15, Ephesians 2, Galatians, and Romans in order to illustrate the ostensible overcoming of racism in the early Jesus movement as an abiding example for churches struggling with the same problem today.

Why am I skeptical of this move? Let me try to spell out my reasons succinctly.

1.  Race is a modern construct. What we mean by "race" does not exist in the New Testament, either as a concept or as a narratively depicted phenomenon.

2. Racism, therefore, also does not exist in the New Testament. I'm a defender of theological anachronism in Christian exegesis of Scripture, but speaking of "racism in the New Testament" is the worst kind of anachronism. It's a projection without a backdrop, a house built on sand, a conclusion in search of an argument.

3. Prejudice toward, suspicion of, and stereotyping of persons from other communities—where "other" denotes differences in region, language, cult, class, or scriptural interpretation—did exist in the eastern Mediterranean world of the Roman Empire in the first century. Inasmuch as contemporary readers want to draw analogies between forms of modern prejudice and forms of ancient prejudice, as the latter is found in the New Testament, so be it.

4. It is a fearful and perilous thing, however, to attribute such prejudice to those Jews who populated the early church or who opposed it. Why? First of all, because today it is almost uniformly gentiles who make this claim, and gentile Christians have an almost ineradicable propensity to assign to Jews—past and present—sinful behavior they seek to expunge in themselves. (See also #7 and #10 below.)

5. Moreover, Jewish attitudes about gentiles in the first century were neither uniform nor simple nor reducible to prejudice. The principal thing to realize is that, according to the witness of both the prophets and the apostles (that is, the Old and New Testaments), the distinction between Jews and gentiles is a creation of God. There are Jews and gentiles because God called Abraham and all his descendants with him to be set apart as God's holy people. All those not so called, according to the flesh, are gentiles. This distinction is maintained, not abolished, in the preaching of the gospel by the Jewish apostles in the first half century of the church's existence.

6. First-century Jewish beliefs about and relations with gentiles, then, were informed by scriptural testimony. God's word—that is, the Law, the prophets, and the writings—has a lot to say, after all, about the nations (the goyim or ethne). Go read some of it. See if you walk away with a clear, obvious, and uncomplicated view about those human communities that lie outside the election of Abraham together with his seed. Focus in particular on the book of Leviticus. Then go read chapter 10 of the book of Acts. Is St. Peter blameworthy for his hesitancy about Cornelius and his household? Is he foolish or shortsighted, much less prejudiced? Or is he following the way the words run in the Torah until such time as an angel of the Lord Jesus provides a vision paired with a divine command to act according to an alternative and heretofore unimagined interpretation of Torah? (An interpretation, note, only possible now in the light of the resurrection of the Messiah from the dead.) I'd say it's fair to think Peter, along with his brother apostles, was not in the wrong if God deemed a vision necessary to change his mind—a vision, mind you, that is didactic, not an indictment.

(7. As a historical matter, it is also worth drawing attention to the work of scholars precisely on persons such as Cornelius, gentile God-fearers and friends and patrons of the synagogue in the diaspora. The caricature of Jews living outside the land in the first century, distributed across countless cities in the Roman Empire and elsewhere, as bitter, sectarian, resentful, fearful, and hostile ethnic fundamentalists is just that: a caricature. Indeed, one should always beware of anti-Jewish sentiment lingering just beneath and sometimes displayed right on the surface of historical scholarship as well as popularized historical treatments of the Bible.)

8. As for Acts 15—the culmination, as St. Luke tells it, of Peter's vision, of Saul's conversion, of Pentecost, of the ascension, of the birth of Jesus, in fact of the calling of Abraham and the creation of Adam—the story is hardly one of racism or even of ethnic prejudice. The question for the nascent apostolic church was not whether gentiles could join. It would certainly qualify as something akin to ethnic prejudice if the exclusively Jewish ekklesia said, "We don't want your kind here." But that's not what they said. All saw and glorified God for the wonders he'd worked among the gentiles, drawing them to faith in Jesus Messiah. The question—the only question—was on what terms they would enter, that is, by what means and in accordance with what rule of life they would become members of Christ's body. Would they, like the Jews, follow the Law of Moses? Would they honor the Sabbath, keep kosher, be circumcised? Or would they not?—that is, by remaining gentiles, not subject to Torah's statutes and ordinances. Either way, they would be saved; either way, they would believe in Jesus; either way, they would receive baptism and thereby Jesus's own Spirit. The issue, in short, was not an ethnic, much less a racial, one. The issue was the will of God for those believers in Jesus who were not descendants of Abraham. And after not a little disputation and controversy, the apostolic church discerned that it was the Spirit's good pleasure for the church to comprise Jews and gentiles both, united in the Messiah as Jew and gentile, neither becoming the other nor both becoming a third thing.

9. It turns out, therefore, that the climactic tale of gentiles being welcomed into Jewish messianic assemblies around the Mediterranean Sea in the years 30–80 AD has nothing whatsoever to do with race, racism, or ethnic prejudice. Acts 15 is simply not about that. Insinuating that it does either distorts its proper significance or metaphorizes a text without grounding, or even the need, to do so.

10. None of the foregoing is meant to suggest that either the New or the Old Testament is thus reduced to silence on pressing challenges facing the American church today, not least the seemingly unexorcisable demon of anti-black racism. Nor, as I said above, is it impossible, or imprudent, to draw analogies between scriptural instances of out-group derogation and present-day experience, or between the complications arising from Jew-gentile integration in Pauline assemblies and similar complications in American churches. Nor, finally, does the wider witness of Holy Scripture have nothing to say about the bedrock principles that ought to inform Christian speech about these matters: that God is sovereign, gracious Creator of all; that every human being is created in the image of God; that each and every human being who has ever lived is one, in St. Paul's words, "for whom Christ died." I only want to emphasize what we can and what we cannot responsibly read the canon to say. More than anything, though, I want to encourage gentile Christians to be vigilant in their perpetual war against Marcionitism in all its forms. There is a worrisome tendency in recent Christian talk about white racism in America to frame it, biblically and theologically, as anticipated and foreshadowed by Jews. Even when unintended—and I have no doubt it usually is—that is a morally noxious, canonically warped, theologically obtuse, and historically false claim. The early Jewish church did not resist gentile inclusion due to its racism against gentiles. It had none, for there was none to have. There is, lamentably, plenty of racism in the world today. Look there if you want to address it. You won't find any in the pages of the Bible.

Gentiles exiting the faith

It seems to me that most Christians today—in my context, I mean: college-educated or middle-class American Christians, especially those raised in the church—see their spiritual options as basically threefold. Either they maintain Christian faith of some kind; or they become spiritual but not religious; or they become officially agnostic, though functionally atheist. That is, there are basically two "exit" options from Christianity, both of which can be described as a form of nonbelief: faith in nothing at all, or faith in something-or-other left undefined.

In other words, such wayward believers aren't drawn to other religious traditions: the primary question is organized theism. Give up the former, you remain spiritual but not Christian; give up the latter, you're neither Christian nor spiritual. The temptation isn't ordinarily to become a Muslim or Sikh or Hindu. (Though the other day I did hear someone say, "If it weren't for X in Christianity, I'd be Muslim." But the exception proves the rule.)

Here's my question: Why don't Christians who cease to believe in Christ become Jews instead?

By which I mean: Why don't gentile worshipers of the God of Israel who cease to confess Jesus as the Messiah of Israel convert to Orthodox Judaism—precisely that religious community that worships the God of Israel without confessing Jesus as Messiah?

This is hardly an unknown trend in Christian history. It saturates the pages of the New Testament. Depending on how late you date some of the New Testament texts, it seems to have lasted well into the second century. Moreover, it's popular as late as St. Augustine and St. John Chrysostom—the latter of whose sermons contain such strikingly anti-Jewish rhetoric exactly because his listeners find the synagogue so attractive.

There are social, political, and historical reasons that help to explain why so few American gentile Christians would ever, in the absence of faith in Jesus, even for a moment consider converting to Judaism, not least secularization's spiritual minimalism and liberalism's ethical individualism. Here's what I think the main factor is, though; it's theological and, in my view, the most damning one.

Most—or at least, far too many—gentile American Christians do not love the God of Israel.

Which is to say, the fact that the God and Father of Jesus Christ is the God of the Jews, and thus the God of the Law, the prophets, and the Psalms, is a stumbling block for Christians today. It may be a stumbling block they've overcome, or seek to overcome. But it's a part of the challenge of faith, not part of its appeal. They don't want the Father without the Son; they want the Son, and are stuck with the Father. Drop the New Testament, they're not left with the Old; they've only accepted the Old because of the New.

Now, obviously gentile believers the world over are believers because of the person and work of Jesus, through whom they have been grafted into the covenant people of God. I'm not suggesting for a moment that that is odd or out of sorts. What I'm saying, rather, is that, according to the gospel, Jesus is the mediator, not between generic humanity and generic divinity, but between gentile humanity and the God of Abraham. Jesus's introduction of the gentiles to the praise and glory of YHWH, Lord of Hosts, isn't meant to remain at the level of stiff formalities: gentiles are meant to grow in knowledge and affection for this One, precisely as their trusted Father and King.

And the truth is, converting to Judaism would sound to these Christians like a prison sentence. Why? Because of sermon after sermon, catechesis class after catechesis class, Bible study after Bible study preaching and teaching more or less explicit Marcionite doctrine.

They love Jesus. But not the One who sent him.

If I'm even close to right, this only furthers my resolve so to teach and preach that—counterfactually—if Jesus were not risen from the dead, his gentile disciples would nevertheless long with all their hearts to continue confessing the ancient prayer with Abraham's children: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one."