James and the Gentiles (Acts 15.13–21)

Abstract

INTRODUCTION The speech of James in Acts 15.13–21 plays a key role in Luke's account of the Council of Jerusalem (and therefore in his whole account of the origins of the Gentile mission). Peter's speech, which opens the proceedings, reminds his hearers of the conversion of the first Gentile converts, when the evident charismatic phenomena (15.8; cf. 10.44–47; 11.15–17) constituted a clear declaration by God himself that Gentiles were acceptable to him as Gentiles (15.9; cf. 11.12). Thus Peter's argument is from miraculous events making God's will clear. Barnabas and Paul follow up this argument in the same vein, alleging “the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles” (15.12) as evidence that their Gentile mission is the valid continuation of what began in the house of Cornelius. But Luke does not represent this line of argument as the finally decisive one. After all, the matter under discussion is one of halakhah (15.5), which could only be decided from Scripture. It is therefore left to James to provide the clinching argument: that according to Scripture itself the Gentiles who, it predicts, will join the eschatological people of God will do so as Gentiles. On this basis James proposes the terms of the Apostolic Decree (15.19–20; cf. 15.28–29; 21.25) as a definitive decision on the issue of what the Torah itself requires of Gentile Christians.

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