to climb the social ladder and prized clever rhetoric, Paul had an occupation without status, assumed a servant role and rejected crowd-pleasing rhetoric in favour of standard classical forms (Thiselton, 2006, pp. 6–19). He showed how the gospel was distinctive within a Corinthian way of life.
In identifying with context to be distinctive within it, Paul was imitating Jesus and he expected the small congregations he founded to do the same. Church happened in the midst of the everyday – in the home, which was the centre of day-to-day life. ‘Worship and the daily life of the Christian [were] bound together in the household’ (Becker, 1993, p. 246). John Drane notes that
different social contexts enabled the emergence of many different styles of Christian community, and there was never any guarantee that the church in one place would be the same as the church in a different setting. Indeed, this ability to contextualize itself within such diverse cultures is perhaps the one thing that, above all others, explains the attraction of the Christian gospel. (Drane, 2009, p. 196)
Within these different settings, relationships between members of the new gatherings were entirely transformed (or at least meant to be). Distinctions between Jews and Greeks, masters and slaves, and men and women began to be redefined as members saw themselves as brothers and sisters in Christ. The communities that made up the church were living an incarnational life. Immersed in their contexts, they showed how the Spirit could make their contexts very different. When the gospel went out from Jerusalem, it took a different shape in different settings.
For reflection
The shift from centripetal to centrifugal mission is one of the big stories of Scripture. It is consistent with calls today for the church to adopt a ‘we’ll go to you’ rather than ‘you come to us’ approach to mission. But just as Jesus drew people to himself, so did many of Paul’s new congregations. Presumably, that is why they took root and multiplied. They had an attractional, come-to-us dynamic. In a sense these new communities were ‘little Israels’, attracting people round about, but within a story that had opened an incarnational chapter. Adopting a ‘go’ strategy, Paul and others gave birth to gatherings whose corporate lives also invited ‘come to us’. Has the distinction between ‘come’ and ‘go’ mission sometimes been overdrawn? Perhaps we should think of a cycle: a church goes out when it starts a new church, which attracts people. In time the new chuch goes out to start a further church. ‘Go’ leads to ‘come’, which is followed by ‘go’.
Sustaining the ‘mixed economy’
Within fresh expressions circles, there are frequent references to the mixed-economy church, in which inherited church (with its inherited life and structures) and new forms of church exist side by side, in mutual respect and support. But this is not always easy. Are there lessons that can help us from the New Testament church?
Ray Anderson has argued that the Antioch church can be seen as emerging out of the church at Jerusalem. Under Paul’s ministry and teaching, it produced an emergent theology, based on the Spirit’s revelation about Jesus. This theology was very different to that of the Jerusalem church, which was committed to historical precedent and the tradition of the Twelve. He claims that
the emerging churches in our present generation can find their ecclesial form and their core theology by tracing out the contours of the missionary church under Paul’s leadership based at Antioch. (Anderson, 2007, p. 21)
Unfortunately, Anderson’s reading of the New Testament privileges new expressions of church over inherited forms and their traditions. Jerusalem, which in Anderson’s reading can be seen as an inherited church, appears to be the big problem. It is ‘controlled by a fortress mentality’ (Anderson, 2007, p. 27). Anderson underlines the conflicts between Antioch and Jerusalem, but downplays their attempt to stay together and ignores the range of views that existed among believers in Jerusalem (and in Antioch, too, presumably).
Jerusalem can be viewed more sympathetically if we understand the troublesome problem of identity the early believers faced. The key question for the Jerusalem followers of Jesus, as for many in the inherited church now, was how to make space for believers with a very different sense of spiritual identity.
The dispute over identity
The Jerusalem church was born as a reform movement among the Jews. The disciples attended the Temple daily (Acts 2.46) and had a strong sense of their Jewish identity. They saw themselves as the nucleus of a new Israel, living in the last days. As we have seen, they were extremely mission-minded. They assumed that Gentiles would come to faith, but they expected them to do so by becoming Jews.
The conversion of Cornelius challenged that expectation. Peter’s vision of clean and unclean animals together in Acts 10 symbolized, for him, the end of Israel separating itself from the nations. The Spirit falling on Cornelius’ household convinced him that those present could become Christians as Gentiles without converting to Judaism, and his fellow leaders in Jerusalem agreed (Acts 11.18). This was a very significant expansion of the apostles’ sense of spiritual identity: through the Spirit, they were forming a Jewish/Gentile community, not just a Jewish one.
It was of course Paul, deeply immersed in Gentile mission, who did most to reconceptualize the place of Gentile Christians in God’s purposes. They were not coming into Judaism but into church, a new Israel comprising Jews and Gentiles, whose cornerstone was Jesus. Through him all were made one (Gal. 3.26–9).
This notion of Christian identity was very different to that of the more conservative believers. Until recently, it has been common to distinguish between a ‘conservative’ Hebrew group of Aramaic-speaking believers, who clung fiercely to their Jewish traditions, and ‘liberal’ Greek-speaking converts from the Jewish Diaspora, the so-called ‘Hellenists’. New Testament scholars now tend to think that conservatives and liberals, if one can use such terms, were drawn from both Hebrew and Hellenistic backgrounds (Witherington III, 1997, pp. 240–7). Indeed, there was probably not a distinct liberal camp in competition with a conservative one: views on such issues as resistance to Rome, temple worship, purity codes, circumcision and eschatological expectations more likely ranged along a spectrum for each issue. These different spectrums may well not have corresponded to each other (Wright, 1992, p. 454).
With that in mind, conservative elements, who treasured their Jewish identity, no doubt saw the baptism of Cornelius without becoming a Jew as an exception rather than the new norm (Dunn, 2009, p. 402). But when the birth of the Antioch church and Paul’s first mission showed that Cornelius was far from an exception, the issue of circumcision – Gentile converts becoming Jews – flared up again. In Acts 15 the Council of Jerusalem confirmed that circumcision was not required, yet added an important rider (‘the apostolic decree’): Gentile believers were to observe some of the Jewish food laws and certain other stipulations (Acts 15.20, 29).2
Though the traditionalists had lost on circumcision, their desire to protect their Jewish identity had been acknowledged – which made sense from a mission view point. If they strayed too far from their Jewish traditions, mission to their compatriots would have become almost impossible (see Gal. 2.9). A way had been found to combine a single identity – one Lord, faith and baptism – with the preservation of distinctive identities (Jewish and Gentile).
