Leo Volont
Registered Senior Member
Christianity’s Charter Document Missing
In Acts Chapter 11 Paul takes a huge collection of money down to Jerusalem, and in Acts Chapter 15 he asks for a return on that favor. Paul had gone to Peter who had once before benefited from Paul’s actions – remember when Paul, then Saul, had murdered Stephen who had just recently been appointed to oversee the Treasury after Peter had stirred up dissent and murmurings of corruption when he murdered Ananias and Sapphira over money. Now, Paul, feeding money directly back to Peter, would bolster Peter’s declining influence in The Church. We have only to notice that it is James, not Peter, who is in charge of things in Acts 15, and so we know that Peter had certainly fallen from the Top, and the Gospels give us every indication that Peter was the kind of man who would want to scratch and claw his way back up again.
Anyway, what we are told in Acts 15 is that a separate Gentile Church is established, and that there are practically no restrictions placed on what it accepts as its Teachings and Doctrines. Then we are told a Letter is issued which supports this bazaar and sweeping assertion.
Okay, where is it? Why can’t anybody point to this Foundational Letter? But we can ask more than where it is. Why is it not quoted in detail?
There must be a modern assumption, that allows people to gloss over this 15th Chapter of Acts, that Ancient People must have been simple childlike idiots who had no sense for organization or details. Yet we can read “The Peloponnesian Wars” by Thucydides and see that the Ancient politician, statesman, or leader could be as complicated as any modern. Then the controversies of Doctrine which embattled the Church in its 2nd and 3rd Centuries could not have been entirely absent in its 1st Century, could they?
In this context, can we really believe that The Messianic Church of Jerusalem would give a completely free hand to a New Gentile Church with no restrictions except for Kosher and Marriage regulations. You would suspect that somewhere in that gathering, with the Holy Spirit having to whisper in somebody’s ear, that some sort of a Creed would have been specified in excruciating detail. And then, at the Organizational Level, some sort of a command structure or chain of loyalties established. This is what we might have found in that Charter Letter.
But that Letter disappears from History. It is not even quoted. After Acts 15 it is not even mentioned. Can we wonder why it is not preserved, or why Paul does not repeatedly cite it, being the source and directing document of all his Authority? Well, the answer here is that we can suppose that it did not say what it is purported to have said. Paul wanted a Separate Church but the actual Letter did not give him that. Paul wanted a Separate Doctrine and a Separate Gospel, but the Letter did not give him that. So Paul simply claimed he had a letter giving him a Free Hand in all things, and acted as though such a Letter existed. But actually, if such a Letter did exist, he probably decided to burn it because it could not have possibly said what he pretended it to say, and its discovery would have only undermined his ambitions and false doctrines.
There is one thing we can be sure of though, that if there ever was a Letter which authorized a New Dispensation of God to an Independent Gentile Church, somebody would have saved a copy.
In Acts Chapter 11 Paul takes a huge collection of money down to Jerusalem, and in Acts Chapter 15 he asks for a return on that favor. Paul had gone to Peter who had once before benefited from Paul’s actions – remember when Paul, then Saul, had murdered Stephen who had just recently been appointed to oversee the Treasury after Peter had stirred up dissent and murmurings of corruption when he murdered Ananias and Sapphira over money. Now, Paul, feeding money directly back to Peter, would bolster Peter’s declining influence in The Church. We have only to notice that it is James, not Peter, who is in charge of things in Acts 15, and so we know that Peter had certainly fallen from the Top, and the Gospels give us every indication that Peter was the kind of man who would want to scratch and claw his way back up again.
Anyway, what we are told in Acts 15 is that a separate Gentile Church is established, and that there are practically no restrictions placed on what it accepts as its Teachings and Doctrines. Then we are told a Letter is issued which supports this bazaar and sweeping assertion.
Okay, where is it? Why can’t anybody point to this Foundational Letter? But we can ask more than where it is. Why is it not quoted in detail?
There must be a modern assumption, that allows people to gloss over this 15th Chapter of Acts, that Ancient People must have been simple childlike idiots who had no sense for organization or details. Yet we can read “The Peloponnesian Wars” by Thucydides and see that the Ancient politician, statesman, or leader could be as complicated as any modern. Then the controversies of Doctrine which embattled the Church in its 2nd and 3rd Centuries could not have been entirely absent in its 1st Century, could they?
In this context, can we really believe that The Messianic Church of Jerusalem would give a completely free hand to a New Gentile Church with no restrictions except for Kosher and Marriage regulations. You would suspect that somewhere in that gathering, with the Holy Spirit having to whisper in somebody’s ear, that some sort of a Creed would have been specified in excruciating detail. And then, at the Organizational Level, some sort of a command structure or chain of loyalties established. This is what we might have found in that Charter Letter.
But that Letter disappears from History. It is not even quoted. After Acts 15 it is not even mentioned. Can we wonder why it is not preserved, or why Paul does not repeatedly cite it, being the source and directing document of all his Authority? Well, the answer here is that we can suppose that it did not say what it is purported to have said. Paul wanted a Separate Church but the actual Letter did not give him that. Paul wanted a Separate Doctrine and a Separate Gospel, but the Letter did not give him that. So Paul simply claimed he had a letter giving him a Free Hand in all things, and acted as though such a Letter existed. But actually, if such a Letter did exist, he probably decided to burn it because it could not have possibly said what he pretended it to say, and its discovery would have only undermined his ambitions and false doctrines.
There is one thing we can be sure of though, that if there ever was a Letter which authorized a New Dispensation of God to an Independent Gentile Church, somebody would have saved a copy.