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Certainly there was not a regular order of teachers for the edifying of the Church any more than for the work of evangelism; but it was the business of every Christian, according to the measure of his gifts, to preach the word for the edification of his brethren in their assemblies. At the outset, however, there was no ordained office at all; but the feeling of need awakened by the growth of the Church first impelled her to change somewhat the nature of a society quite informal, which had trusted solely to the Spirit of God and love of the brethren. The informal ministering to the poor, as carried on by the apostles with their other work, proves in the long run insufficient; and then the apostles propose that the Church should choose for herself seven men to care for the poor (vi. 1 ff.). These are not deacons, as is often said—the Book of Acts never uses this name for them, but calls them the seven even long afterwards (xxi. 8). It was a first form of official ordination which perished with the dispersion of the Church at the death of Stephen, and was not in the same form restored afterwards. The choice of the seven by the Church, and the way in which the apostles simply give counsel in the matter, shows that nothing is thought of in the office except a transference to definite officials of powers which belong to the Church as a Church. The laying-on of the apostles' hands which follows the choice of persons to care for the poor, is a recognition of the spiritual character of this office also, for which men are required who are " full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom"; but it by no means implies a transference of apostolic official authority, to which indeed, according to vv. 2–4, care of the poor does not at all belong, but only—as we see also in the sending out of Paul and Barnabas as missionaries (xiii. 3)—the invoking of a divine blessing. When the Church is restored after the persecution, it is elders instead of those almoners who receive the gifts of love flowing in upon the Church (xi. 30), and who in other respects appear as overseers of the Church; and so we must conclude that it was found advisable, in the readjustment of the Church, to institute real overseers with more comprehensive powers, but that these powers in relation to the Church were conceived and conferred in the same way as those of the seven. That the elders also were chosen by the Church may be concluded from the fact that, after his

detailed account in chapter vi., Luke does not find it necessary to give any account of the origin of the elder's office. The expression χειροτονήσαντες αὐτοῖς ( = getting men elected by them) used in Acts xiv. 23, in connection with the introduction of the elder's office into the Churches of Asia Minor, favours this inference, while a choice for which Paul and Barnabas were responsible would rather lead us to expect ékλeğáμevoi (cf. 2 Cor. viii. 19); and this is confirmed by the right to choose bishops and elders which existed in the postapostolic age of the Church. And even the introduction of this new and extended office is not intended to exclude the direct decision of the Church in important cases; the whole Church was called together for considering the great question as to what was to be imposed or not imposed on Gentile Christians (xv. 4, 22). We see then Jesus' idea of the community realised in the Church arrangements at Jerusalem; and what other arrangements would have corresponded to the universal possession of the Holy Spirit on which this Church rested?

5. LEGAL OR EVANGELICAL STANDPOINT

But whilst the Church thus lives in the fulness of the Christian spirit of love and freedom, does it not make us feel that in one main point the purity of its Christian consciousness is marred by the old Judaism, namely, in seeking its righteousness with God, not in Christ but in the fulfilling of the Mosaic law? This is a question of great consequence for the understanding of the apostolic age and teaching, to which present-day theology is for the most part inclined to give an affirmative answer. We have the strongest testimony, direct and indirect, in the Book of Acts (e.g. xxi. 20) that the primitive Church held with great strictness to the observance of the Mosaic institutions; and in the later apostolic age there appeared also a JewishChristian party,-probably connected with the first community, —which certainly saw in the observance of these institutions its righteousness before God, or at least a necessary condition of that righteousness. We must not, however, reason backward from a later phenomena to the primitive period and Church, more especially as, after the death of Stephen, that Church was altogether scattered (viii. 1); and that Judaising

party, as we shall see, by no means affected the whole of the Jerusalem Church itself. But as regards the strict observance of the law by the primitive Church, the question still remains, Whether this observance, in the case of pious Israelites,especially in Palestine,-which was quite natural to them, was really meant as a means of salvation and as a way of becoming just before God? There is no justification for the assumption which Baur has silently made the starting-point of his consideration of the earliest Church history, namely, that at the time of Jesus all pious Israelites were on the Pharisees' side, and hoped to merit God's favour by their keeping of the law. The piety of the Prophets and Psalms, which confidently trusted in the grace of God, who was rich in forgiveness, and not in its own. righteousness, and least of all in any ritual righteousness, was not extinct in the nation from which Jesus and His disciples came forth. If we listen to the Acts of the Apostles, we find that the members of the early Church at anyrate did not seek their righteousness before God in the fulfilling of the law, but in God's grace, inasmuch as they every one became Christians on the basis of a forgiveness of sin received in baptism. And even with regard to the decision of God in the final judgment, the first apostolic confession runs to the effect, that whosoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved (Joel iii. 5; Acts ii. 21), that there is salvation in no other, "that there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved than the name of Jesus the Lord" (iv. 12). That is in direct opposition to the righteousness of the law. But if anyone is inclined to contest the genuineness of these Petrine confessions, the testimony of the contemporary who was most capable of judging in the matter refutes him: Paul, in Gal. ii. 15, 16, expressly represents to Peter that they alike had sought and found salvation in Christ, in the knowledge that righteousness before God could not be attained by the works of the law. Those Jewish Christians of course found. that the name of Jesus, in which they trusted, constrained them also to follow Jesus in their conduct; and they held to the view that not to say Lord, Lord, but to do the will of God, was required for the kingdom of heaven. And this will of God they were to seek in the law, which He declared He had come not to destroy but to fulfil. But they must have viewed

and kept the law as He exhibited it to them in doctrine and life, that is, they regarded love of God and our neighbour as the essential fulfilment of it, and the ritual commandments as only forms and customs in which God had clothed the outer life of His people. Thus the great fallacy," the first apostolic Christians strictly observed the law, therefore they sought their righteousness before God in that observance," melts away in every respect. The observance even of the externals of the law was certainly a matter of course for these Palestinian Christians, for without it they would have denied their nationality, despised the rules and regulations which God had given to Israel to mark it off from all other nations, and placed themselves on the level of publicans and sinners. But the old prophets had already demonstrated that one could observe these regulations with perfect piety and strictness, and indeed hold himself bound to them for God's sake, and yet find his righteousness before God alone in love and fidelity to Him. So much may be granted to that celebrated and widely accepted fallacy, that in the early Church, and even in the first apostles, there was at first no reflection concerning this question of the law and of righteousness; Christian faith rested simply within the limits of the old order of life. The law comprehends the most outward and the most inward things. Christ had indeed made a clear distinction between the value of the two, but yet everywhere treated the outward with consideration where they did not become a hindrance to the inward. The Christians were children of Israel and lived in their mother country, where the Mosaic customs were a matter of course to all who were not foreigners or outcasts; how should they even have thought of giving themselves a reason for obeying the law? No doubt this standpoint of naive unconsciousness was not without danger in the long run. As soon as the mighty spiritual impulses of the primitive period began to be lost, when many entered the Church whose convictions were less deep, to whom Christianity was more an intellectual conviction of the Messiahship of Jesus than an experience of His renewing spiritual power, then danger arose. For, owing to that want of clearness, it was possible to think of Christianity as only a new patch on an old garment, and righteousness by faith in Christ as a complement of righteousness by the works of

the law (Gal. ii. 4; Acts xv. 5); and in fact it was with men holding such a view that Paul carried on a death-and-life struggle between Jewish bondage and evangelical freedom. But the brotherly attitude which the original apostles took up and then maintained towards Paul, shows sufficiently that their inner position from the first was not the same as that of those zealots for the law, and their position was no doubt that of the better part of the early Church.

CHAPTER IV

FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS

§ 1. STEPHEN

Moreover, it must be noted that the strict legal standpoint of the early Church did not altogether escape contradiction. Jesus' own attitude made two courses possible. One might adhere to Christ's programme, "Not destroy, but fulfil," and might imitate His considerate accommodation of His life to the outer Mosaic institutions, content if he could put into this strict observance of the law a new spirit of inwardness and love, as Jesus had suggested in the introduction of His Sermon on the Mount. But one might also proceed on the lines of His occasional indifference to the outer institutions; and on the authority of His own prediction of the destruction of the temple, and of the future worship of God in spirit and in truth, or of His words about the new skins into which the new wine is to be put, one might come to regard that naive union of Christianity and Judaism in a temper of criticism resting upon an anticipation of a better order. It is quite, credible, because based in the historical circumstances, that the latter course was taken by a Hellenist, the Almoner Stephen, as the Book of Acts records; Hellenists, that is, those Jews who were born in lands of Greek culture, and spoke Greek as their mother tongue, formed, beside the Hebrews, that is, Hebraic- (Aramaic) speaking Jews of Palestine, a considerable part of the early Church (vi. 1 ff.). They held from the first a freer relation towards the ceremonial law,

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