ROUGH DRAFT—NOT FOR CITATION

THE PUBLISHED FORM OF THIS WORK APPEARED IN

THE WESLEYAN THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL

38.1 (2003): 125-38.

THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH IN ACTS:

INCLUSIVE OR EXCLUSIVE?

 

by

Thomas E. Phillips

 

 

Over the past few years I have tried to integrate my professional life as a scholar of Luke-Acts with my confessional life as a Wesleyan theologian. I have become increasingly convinced that the primary task of biblical scholars and theologians is to read grace into the complex and ambiguous affairs of human existence. Human life is inherently marked by complexity and ambiguity. Very few matters are characterized by the kind of clarity and simplicity that makes a single and coherent interpretation possible. Unfortunately, as the significance of a matter increases, not only does its potential for complexity and ambiguity often increase proportionally, but so also does the likelihood that we will want to ignore that complexity and ambiguity. My work as a Wesleyan Lukan scholar has taught me that one’s appreciation for the proportional relationship between significance on the one hand and complexity and ambiguity on the other hand is the true test of one’s intellectual and theological integrity. One striking example of such proportionality between significance and ambiguity can be found in an examination of the mission of the church as portrayed in Acts. We now engage in such an examination.

 

The Inclusive Mission of the Church in Acts

 

            Within popular Lukan scholarship, appeals to the “inclusive” or “universal” character of Luke and Acts have almost become a mainstay. As an example of this trend, this paper will examine Naymond Keathley’s recent book, The Church’s Mission to the Gentiles.[1] I have chosen this volume both because it is representative of a much broader stream of scholarship and because Keathley, a professor of New Testament at Baylor University, is a respected New Testament scholar.

            After briefly introducing the normal range of background issues typically associated with the critical study of Acts, Keathley divides the book into three sections entitled “Prelude to the Gentile Mission” (Acts 1:1-6:7), “Transition to the Gentile Mission” (Acts 6:8-15:35), and “Triumph of Gentile Christianity” (Acts 15:36-28:31).[2] He then proceeds with a sequential reading of Acts. In his analysis of Acts 1:1-6:7, Keathley notes that all of the earliest Christians were “types of Jewish Christians,”[3] but then suggests that the dispute between the Hellenists (Greek speaking believers) and the Hebrews (Aramaic speaking believers) in Acts 6:1-7 “is somewhat transitional. It sets the stage for the next part of the story, the expansion of the Christianity beyond Judaism, by introducing us to two of the main characters in that development…. Stephen and Philip.”[4] The history of the earliest (Jewish) Christian community in Jerusalem is, therefore, treated largely as mere “prelude,” which is preparatory for the subsequent “development” of the church.

            In his analysis of the second section of Acts (6:8-15:35), Keathley celebrates as the church begins to experience “the full realization of Jesus’ commission” and undergoes a “significant type of transition: from a totally Jewish church to one that includes Gentiles.”[5] Having thus introduced the theme of inclusion into his reading, Keathley quickly expands his treatment of this inclusion theme both negatively and positively in his analysis of Stephen’s speech (Acts 7:2-53). Keathley explains that Stephen’s speech regarded the temple as “a symbol of Jewish exclusivity”—and clearly exclusivity is a negative trait in Keathley’s view.[6] In his reading, Stephen is a key transitional figure in Acts. He explains:

 

The witness of Stephen marked the first departure from narrow Jewish exclusivity within Christianity. He was the first in the church to realize, or at least to verbalize, the universal implications of the gospel: just as God cannot be confined to one place [i.e., the temple], God cannot be limited to one people [i.e., the Jews].[7]

           

            For Keathley, “the heart of the matter” in the persecution of the church which followed Stephen’s death was “the inclusive nature of God” as practiced by Gentile Christians and rejected by most Jews and Jewish Christians.[8] For Keathley, even the adoption of the name “Christian” by the believers in Antioch symbolizes the inclusive and universal nature of the Christian gospel. In regard to the term “Christian,” Keathley explains:

 

“Christian” is formed by adding a Latin ending (ian) to the Greek translation (Christ) of a Hebrew concept (Messiah). The name itself has a universal quality. How fitting, then, that this inclusive name was first used in the city where the Gentiles were included among the believers for the first time.[9]

 

Throughout Acts 10 it is said that “Luke is primarily concerned with the expansion of Christianity to and among the Gentiles”[10] and Peter’s vision in Acts 11 serves to demonstrate that the church’s “turning to the Gentiles is indeed ordained by God.”[11] For Keathley, all of the events in 6:8-15:35 are “transitional” because they record “the major innovations that transform Christianity from a Palestinian Jewish sect into an inclusive worldwide movement.”[12] In summarizing his discussion of “the transition to Gentile Christianity,” Keathley says:

 

With the ascendancy of the role of Paul, the establishment of a precedent for outreach in the first missionary journey, and the decision of the Jerusalem Conference confirming the inclusion of the Gentiles, we are prepared for the triumph of Gentile Christianity that follows.[13]

 

Having been prepared for the expansion of the church in the first half of Acts, Keathley examines the second half (15:36-28:31) under the rubric of the “triumph of Gentile Christianity” and explaining that

 

Luke’s purpose is to help the church to clarify its self-understanding, to explain how it came to be the predominantly Gentile movement it was at the end of the first century. Running through his narrative is the idea that nothing could stop the spread of the gospel. Luke’s story is that the gospel triumphed in spite of religious, nationalistic, racial, geographical, cultural, and political barriers.[14]

 

Keathley correctly notes that the book of Acts is about the church’s identity and self-understanding and he also recognizes the problem that Jewish rejection creates for those seeking to understand the church’s identity. Thus, he insists:

 

Striving to clarify the church’s self-understanding at the end of the first century, Luke has reiterated that Christianity became predominantly Gentile not because the church had neglected the Jews in its missionary outreach, but because Jews usually had rejected the gospel.[15]

 

Later, in very similar words, Keathley emphasizes the theme of Jewish rejection by reiterating that

 

Luke demonstrated from the life of the church and from the career of Paul that Gentile Christianity emerged triumphant, not because of the failure of the church to reach out to the Jews, but because of the rejection of the gospel by the Jews and the overwhelmingly positive reaction of the Gentiles to it.[16]

 

Keathley’s reading of the mission of the church as portrayed in Acts closes with a clear celebration as he insists that

 

Luke’s story is bigger than that of Peter or Paul. It is bigger than that of any individual local church…. His story is that in spite of overwhelming obstacles, the gospel could not be stopped. God’s salvific intention was realized in these early crucial decades because of the unlimited vision of Stephen, Philip, Paul, and others like them who were willing to defy racial, religious, cultural, and geographical boundaries to proclaim the good news to all who would listen. Triumph came to the church because of the willingness of these to undertake a mission to the Gentiles![17]

 

            One need not be overly sensitized to the tendency of Christian historians toward triumphalism to detect its presence within Keathley’s reading of Acts. For Keathley, the church presents the inclusive and universal proclamation of the gospel, and the Jews, in their exclusivity and narrowness, chose to exclude themselves from the benefits of this proclamation. Admittedly, Keathley offers a coherent and plausible reading of Acts that is widely shared. It is, however, not without problems.

 

The Not-So-Inclusive Mission of the Church in Acts

 

            Not everyone regards the mission of the church as seen in the book of Acts to be nearly as inclusive and universal as does Keathley. In fact, many contemporary Lukan scholars insist that the mission of the church was characteristically intolerant and exclusive to the point of anti-Judaism.[18] One of the most outspoken proponents of this not-so-inclusive reading of the mission of the church as in Acts is Jack T. Sanders, professor emeritus of religious studies at the University of Oregon. Although Sanders has written extensively on the subject[19] and has therefore provided a rich variety of writings from which to discern his thought, the essential elements of his reading of Acts can be illustrated by examining his essay “The Jewish People in Luke-Acts.”[20]

            In light of the tendency to celebrate Luke’s writings as inclusive in nature and universal in concern, Sanders begins by asking a probing question:

 

What does Luke think of the Jewish people? Of course, we are not thinking of such items as whether they are rich or poor, or what their manners were like. We are thinking of such issues as these: Does Luke see the Jewish people as guilty in the death of Jesus or not, as irredeemably opposed to the will of God or not, as recipients of the salvation of God or not?[21]

 

Developing his answer to this question, Sanders suggests that one is wise “to separate speech from narrative in Luke-Acts.”[22] Sanders then proceeds to examine the speeches and sayings in Acts to see how they portray the Jews. After presenting a careful and nuanced reading of the various passages, Sanders concludes:

 

Jesus, Peter, Stephen, and Paul [the main speakers] present in Luke-Acts, in what they say on the subject, an entirely, completely, wholly, uniformly consistent attitude toward the Jewish people as a whole. That attitude is that the Jews are now and always have been willfully ignorant of the purposes and plans of God expressed in their familiar Scriptures, that they always have rejected and will reject God’s offer of salvation, that they executed Jesus and persecute and hinder those who try to advance the gospel and that they get one chance at salvation, which they will of course reject, thus bringing God’s wrath upon them, and quite deservedly so. There is not a single saying, story, or speech put into the mouths of the four leading speakers in Luke-Acts that contradicts this position, and it is repeated over and over in every way possible ad nauseam.[23]

 

            Although some readers will suspect that Sanders has engaged in rhetorical excess, a close reading of the respective speeches and sayings will bear out that Sanders has provided a coherent and plausible reading of these texts. There is certainly merit to his contention that “regarding the speeches and sayings in Luke-Acts. . .‘Luke has written the Jews off.’”[24] If Sanders’ analysis of the discourse in Luke-Acts leaves one feeling uneasy with Keathley’s emphasis upon the inclusive nature of the church’s mission in Acts, Sanders’ analysis of the narrative in Luke-Acts will do little to allay that uneasiness. Sanders acknowledges that the narratives in the early chapters of Acts provide a largely favorable portrayal of the Jews, but he insists that these favorable portrayals must be read in light of the plot development in Acts, a development which portrays “a picture of increasing Jewish hostility and opposition to the gospel.”[25] Sanders insists:

 

The attitude the Jews in Jerusalem demonstrated in nuce in the Stephen affair is therefore revealed in its fullness in historical development in the course of Paul’s ministry. The truth of Jewish opposition to the gospel that is announced by Stephen just prior to his being martyred is borne out in a historical progression in the course of Paul’s ministry. The accusations are becoming historical reality.[26]

 

For Sanders, the story of Luke and Acts narrates the “historical progression” of how “Luke has portrayed the Jews as totally rejecting Jesus, the church, and the message of salvation and as thereby bringing on themselves God’s condemnation and punishment.”[27]

            If Sanders is even partially correct in his assertion that the discourse in Luke and Acts has “written off” the Jews from the beginning and that the narrative has come to share in and illustrate that perspective, then it would seem that Keathley’s emphasis on the inclusiveness of the church’s mission in Acts is in dire need of reexamination. Surely, the book of Acts cannot be radically inclusive and universal in outlook, while writing off the Jews and defining the church as essentially non-Jewish--or can it be?

 

The Not-So-Inclusive Mission of the Church in Acts

. . .and the Inclusive Book of Acts?

 

            In spite of the very different emphases in the work of Keathley and Sanders, we should not overlook the tremendous irony that their readings are really not that much different. Keathley celebrates how the Gentiles are first included in the story and then come to dominate it. Sanders mourns how the Jews are first marginalized in the story and then come be excluded from it.[28] In both cases, Gentiles are included and Jews are excluded from the Christian community. Each reading emphasizes many of same themes within Acts, but examines these themes from significantly different perspectives. For Keathley, Luke’s emphasis on the inclusion of the Gentiles is read from a perspective sympathetic to the Gentiles. His reading therefore celebrates their inclusion. For Sanders, Luke’s emphasis on the inclusion of the Gentiles is read from a perspective sympathetic to the Jews. His reading therefore mourns the seeming exclusion of the Jewish people.[29] Both readings share the common assumption that the inclusion of the Gentiles within the primary mission of the church leads to the exclusion of the Jews from the saving mission of God. My concern now is to examine this assumption and to inquire if the theme of the soteriological inclusion of the Gentiles in Acts must necessarily be read as a soteriological exclusion of the Jews (or perhaps even worse, as anti-Jewish).

            In two separate books, Joe Tyson has addressed the issues of Judaism and anti-Judaism in Luke and Acts.[30] In the first book of the pair, Images of Judaism in Luke-Acts, Tyson asks: “Do the images that are embedded in Luke-Acts convey to the implied reader positive or negative impressions of Jewish religious life and the Jewish people? The answer, of course, is that they convey both.”[31] Tyson then explains:

 

The narrative [of Luke-Acts] begins with highly positive images of individual Jewish piety and reverence for the Temple and ends with images of the Jewish leaders and people who are hostile, vicious, and obdurate. But no less striking is the stress at the end of Acts on Paul’s fidelity to Judaism and the harmony between Christian and Pharisaic beliefs. The fact is that deeply ambivalent expressions about Jewish people and religious life pervade Luke’s writings.[32]

 

            Since Tyson found great “ambivalence” regarding the Jews and Judaism in his own analysis of these issues in the text of Luke-Acts, he committed the second book of the pair, Luke, Judaism, and the Scholars, to an examination of the history of nineteenth and twentieth-century Lukan scholarship on these issues in order to determine how scholars have dealt with the ambiguity apparently inherent within the Lukan texts. Tyson explains that “it is not obvious whether these texts lead readers to be positive or negative about Jews and early Judaism, and this leaves a great deal of room for scholarly interpretation.”[33] Tyson then demonstrates how in the nineteenth century both liberal interpreters of Luke-Acts (like F. C. Bauer and Adolf von Harnack) and their conservative counterparts (like Adolf Schlatter) shared a common assumption that the inclusion of the Gentiles in Acts excluded the Jews from salvation. In the early twentieth century, this interpretive tradition of what Tyson sees as “anti-Judaism” continued to be perpetuated by many of the leading scholars of Luke-Acts (particularly Ernst Haenchen and Hans Conzelmann). In fact, until the devastating events of the Holocaust in the mid-twentieth century sensitized Christian scholars to the potential horrors of anti-Judaism, Christian scholars typically interpreted portrayals of the Jews and Jewish religious life in Luke-Acts in ways that could, by contemporary standards, rightly be called “anti-Jewish.” Tyson explains:

 

A major change in the character of NT scholarship generally seems to have taken place in the period following the Holocaust. Before 1933-45, most scholars followed the tradition of anti-Judaism, portraying early Judaism as legalistic, casuistic, demanding, dry, and hopeless. After the twentieth-century tragedy of the Jewish people became widely known, NT scholars began to exhibit a more positive attutitude toward second-temple Judaism and described it in very different terms.[34]

 

            Tyson applauds this shift in readings, but reminds his readers that “there are both pro-Jewish and anti-Jewish materials in Luke-Acts” and it is “naïve” to suggest “that anti-Judaism in Luke-Acts is a figment in the eyes of all nineteenth-century scholars, or that those [late] twentieth-century scholars who find Luke to be more benign to Jews are indulging in wishful thinking.”[35] In essence, for Tyson (and I would say, for any serious reader of Acts), the highly significant question of anti-Judaism in Acts is, like nearly all highly significant questions, marked by considerable ambiguity and complexity. This ambiguity and complexity (Tyson would say “ambivalence”) is present both within the biblical text itself and within scholarship on that text.

            The final question, therefore, becomes: Is there a way to read grace into the ambiguous and complex scholarly task of interpreting the status of the Jews in Acts? I believe that there is. My suggested reading of the mission of the church in Acts is simply this: The mission of the church in Acts is exclusive and Acts has written off the Jews as essentially outside of the mission of the church, but the saving mission of God in Acts is inclusive and Acts has left the Jews in the hands of God where they were before the rise of the church. Let me briefly explain how this reading deals with some of the relevant texts and themes in Acts.

            Clearly, in Acts, the mission of the church is to witness to Christ. In the programmatic words in the opening chapter, the disciples hear the prescriptive and predictive announcement from Jesus that “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (1:8). Also clear in Acts is the church’s proclamation of Christ as the exclusive agent of salvation. As Peter and John boldly proclaimed in a sermon before the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (4:12). Equally clearly, the mission of the church in Acts is emphatically inclusive of Gentiles. When Simeon spoke before the so-called “Apostolic Conference” and insisted that God “looked favorably on the Gentiles, to take from among them a people for his name” (15:14), he gave voice to a persistent and recognized theme of Acts. Nearly as clearly, the Jews are written off from the mission of the church in Acts. On three occasions, Paul tells a Jewish audience that he is turning away from the Jews and to the Gentiles because the Jews have rejected his message (13:38-47; 18:5-6; and 28:26-28).

            What remains disconcertingly ambiguous, however, is the all-important question of whether one can find salvation through Christ, but outside of the church. Clearly, Acts promotes the basic Christian conviction that salvation comes only through Christ and demands that the church give witness to this conviction. It is decidedly less clear, however, whether or not Acts promotes the early church’s subsequently developed conviction that salvation comes only through the church. In Acts, there is no salvation outside of Christ, but this affirmation does not necessarily entail adherence to the patristic notion that there is no salvation outside of the church. Theologically, this distinction between a soteriology of christological exclusivity and a soteriology of ecclesiological exclusivity is easily justified. Take Abraham as an example. How was Abraham saved? Through Christ? Of course, Abraham was saved through Christ. The church must always proclaim that Christ is the exclusive agent of God’s salvation. To proclaim any other message would be to deny the church’s central confession. But was Abraham saved outside the church? Of course! The church did not yet exist in the time of Abraham. Christ, although not yet incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, existed as the exclusive agent of salvation in the time of Abraham. Thus, Abraham was saved through Christ, but outside of the church—and without a conscious confession of Christ as Lord.

            Biblically, specifically in terms of Acts, a similar case can also be made. Two factors are particularly decisive for one’s understanding of the soteriological status of Jews in Acts. First, Paul never ceased being a Jew in Acts. Even in the closing chapters, Paul repeatedly insisted, “I am a Jew” (21:39; 22:3) and even “I am a Pharisee” (23:6). Such statements would make little sense if Paul and the book of Acts had written the Jews off in a soteriological sense, that is, if Paul and Acts regarded the Jews as outside the scope of salvation. Second, even Paul’s final rejection of a Jewish mission for the church (28:26-28) is framed in terms of Gentile inclusion, but not in terms of Jewish exclusion from the saving mission of God. Paul’s final words in Acts were: “Let it be known to you then that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen” (28:28). Although this text is often read in a manner which assumes that the salvation which was sent to the Gentiles was also taken away from the Jews, nothing in the context demands such a reading.[36] We should not overlook the fact that even after Paul’s decisive turn toward the Gentiles, he “welcomed all who came to him” (28:30). The message remained open to the Jews who came to the church, even though the Jewish people were no longer a significant focus of the church’s mission—the message had been sent to the Gentiles.

            In light of these theological and biblical considerations, it seems credible to read the mission of the church in Acts as exclusive, that is, as primarily directed to Gentiles, but to regard the saving mission of God as inclusive of both the church and the Jewish people. As Christians, we, of course, must always witness to our conviction that all salvation comes through Christ. However, when reading Acts, we must also be very careful to avoid the unexamined assumption that the salvation we find within the church comes only through the church.

 

Conclusion

 

            I have reflected above on the mission of the church in Acts and noted the complexity and ambiguity present both within the text of Acts and within the scholarship on that text. I have suggested readings of the mission of the church in Acts and of the saving mission of God in Acts that emphasize the importance of the Christian witness to a soteriology of christological exclusivity without the accompanying claim to a soteriology of ecclesiological exclusivity. Of course, the reading suggested here is not the only credible reading of Acts, but I believe that this reading is appropriate both to the ambiguities of the text and the nature of the Christian witness. I also believe that this reading can be defended as decidedly Wesleyan. We Wesleyans have long affirmed that God’s prevenient grace is not limited to the church and that God’s prevenient grace is, in fact, actively seeking to save all human beings. While it would be dreadfully anti-Wesleyan to minimize the role of the church in bringing persons to the fullness of salvation in Christ, it is perhaps equally anti-Wesleyan to suggest that the incarnation of God in Christ brought an end to God’s saving activity in Judaism.

      [2]Scholarly analyses of the structure of Acts often proceed along lines very similar to the outline provided by Keathley. For a more sophisticated and nuanced analysis of the structure of Acts, see William H. Malas, “The Literary Structure of Acts: A Narratological Investigation into Its Arrangement, Plot, and Primary Themes” (Ph.D. diss., Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education, 2001).