For the last few weeks I have been blogging about my journey through the Book of Acts with a local church, so I've been doing some heavy thinking about where I stand regarding religion and science, and why. (It also helps that my job, while requiring concentration and attention to detail, allows me the freedom to engage in such thinking). Lately it dawned on me that there is something very important missing from the message presented in the Book of Acts. Maybe others have noticed it as well; if so, I've never encountered it in my reading.
Acts is the story of the early Christian church in the decades immediately following Jesus' resurrection and ascension. So it represents Christian teaching at its earliest and perhaps purest, as far as anything can be recovered from the pre-Constantine era. The New Testament as we have it now did not exist; Paul was still developing his Christology through his letters while the Gospels had yet to be written. This is very important when trying to understand this book and where I am going with this. Most people when they read the New Testament for the first time start out with the Gospels and hence get a misleading impression. Better to start with the letters of Paul and work backwards.
The missing element from the Book of Acts can be summed up in one word: ethics. By ethics I mean how we treat each other. Maybe that isn't the strictest definition of the word, but I am not going to stop my flow to look it up. So ethics will have to do for the time being because I can't think of a better one.
As every Protestant ought to know, or at least what they keep hammering at Catholics about, salvation is by grace, not works. That is what Paul taught, that is what Acts teaches. Catholics, they say, have it all wrong when they say it is faith plus works that saves. You cannot, absolutely cannot, do anything to earn grace or salvation. (See, Pastor, I have been listening all these weeks!). All the critical verses can be found in Paul's letter to the Romans, which is what inspired Martin Luther to start the Reformation. So you will not find, or at least I haven't so far, anything in the Book of Acts that really deals with how we should treat one another. There's plenty about the Law, and plenty about circumcision but nothing along the lines of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That was NOT part of the original Pauline teaching.
Now, as I said, the Gospels came later, and that is where you find admonitions about loving your enemies, doing good to those who hate you and all that stuff. Matthew directly contradicts Paul by having Jesus say at the Last Judgement (which took place spiritually a few weeks ago, according to Harold Camping) that people will go to heaven or hell based on how they treated other people, what they did and did not do. "Whatsoever you do to the least of these, that you do unto Me." There's no talk of grace here or depravity. By putting these words into Jesus' mouth, Matthew trumps Paul. After all, it's one thing to say, as did Martin Luther, of the Epistle of James that it is an "epistle of straw" because James insists that "faith without works is dead"; it's another thing to try to get rid of an entire Gospel!
I don't think this is a trivial matter. Apparently there were some in the early church who were very concerned about the message Paul and his cohorts were spreading. If you read Paul's letters to his congregations and then read the letters written by the other apostles, Paul spent a lot more time and energy cleaning up messes in his churches than they did in theirs. Could that have been as a direct result of what he was preaching?
Acts is the story of the early Christian church in the decades immediately following Jesus' resurrection and ascension. So it represents Christian teaching at its earliest and perhaps purest, as far as anything can be recovered from the pre-Constantine era. The New Testament as we have it now did not exist; Paul was still developing his Christology through his letters while the Gospels had yet to be written. This is very important when trying to understand this book and where I am going with this. Most people when they read the New Testament for the first time start out with the Gospels and hence get a misleading impression. Better to start with the letters of Paul and work backwards.
The missing element from the Book of Acts can be summed up in one word: ethics. By ethics I mean how we treat each other. Maybe that isn't the strictest definition of the word, but I am not going to stop my flow to look it up. So ethics will have to do for the time being because I can't think of a better one.
As every Protestant ought to know, or at least what they keep hammering at Catholics about, salvation is by grace, not works. That is what Paul taught, that is what Acts teaches. Catholics, they say, have it all wrong when they say it is faith plus works that saves. You cannot, absolutely cannot, do anything to earn grace or salvation. (See, Pastor, I have been listening all these weeks!). All the critical verses can be found in Paul's letter to the Romans, which is what inspired Martin Luther to start the Reformation. So you will not find, or at least I haven't so far, anything in the Book of Acts that really deals with how we should treat one another. There's plenty about the Law, and plenty about circumcision but nothing along the lines of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That was NOT part of the original Pauline teaching.
Now, as I said, the Gospels came later, and that is where you find admonitions about loving your enemies, doing good to those who hate you and all that stuff. Matthew directly contradicts Paul by having Jesus say at the Last Judgement (which took place spiritually a few weeks ago, according to Harold Camping) that people will go to heaven or hell based on how they treated other people, what they did and did not do. "Whatsoever you do to the least of these, that you do unto Me." There's no talk of grace here or depravity. By putting these words into Jesus' mouth, Matthew trumps Paul. After all, it's one thing to say, as did Martin Luther, of the Epistle of James that it is an "epistle of straw" because James insists that "faith without works is dead"; it's another thing to try to get rid of an entire Gospel!
I don't think this is a trivial matter. Apparently there were some in the early church who were very concerned about the message Paul and his cohorts were spreading. If you read Paul's letters to his congregations and then read the letters written by the other apostles, Paul spent a lot more time and energy cleaning up messes in his churches than they did in theirs. Could that have been as a direct result of what he was preaching?
