Section 3. The First Council of the Church.
A.D. 46-51.
For a "long time" after the return of St. Paul and St. Barnabas to Antioch, with the news that God had, through their instrumentality, "opened the Door of Faith to the Gentiles," the Church in that city seems to have continued to flourish in peace and prosperity. Difficulties as to the observance of Jewish rites. But difficulties with regard to the observance or non-observance by the Gentile converts of the rite of circumcision and other precepts of the Mosaic law, arose to disturb this quiet.
A.D. 52. Hebrew Jews go to Antioch.
The Hellenist clergy in Antioch, less wedded to Judaism, had apparently received into communion, without doubt or question, those amongst the heathen around the city who had been added to the number of the faithful by Holy Baptism; but when tidings of this freedom of communion reached the more severely Hebrew Christians at Jerusalem, certain Hebrew Jews of them hurried to Antioch, anxious to bring the converts there under the yoke of the law. Though unauthorized in this mission by the rulers of the Church in Jerusalem[10], they urged with such persistency the necessity of circumcision for the salvation of all, that the opposition of St. Paul and St. Barnabas only raised "no small dissension and disputation," and it was agreed that the advice of the Apostles and Presbyters at Jerusalem should be sought on this important question. St. Paul and St. Barnabas go to Jerusalem. St. Paul and St. Barnabas then, "and certain others with them" (amongst whom was Titus, an uncircumcised Gentile convert[11]), went up to Jerusalem, where at this time happened to be St. Peter and St. John, as well as St. James, the Bishop of that Church[12].
The First Council.
The Apostles and Elders, under the presidency of St. James[13], met together in the First Council of the Church, a large body of the laity being also present, not indeed to take part in the discussion, but to hear it, and to receive and acknowledge the decision arrived at[14].
St. Peter, who had first been commissioned to carry the tidings of the Gospel to the Gentiles, boldly proclaimed the sufficiency of "the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ" for their salvation[15], and St. James, who was probably himself a very strict observer of the Jewish law, yet did not hesitate to declare that it had no binding force on those who were not Jews by birth. St. James presides as Bishop of Jerusalem. Decree of the Council. He, as President of the Council, proposed the decree to which the rest agreed, and which was in substance, that the Gentile Christians should be commanded so far to respect Jewish prejudices as to "abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled," whilst they were also enjoined to keep themselves from the sin of "fornication," into which the Gentile world was so deeply sunk.
The decrees of the Council did not enter into or provide any solution of the minor difficulties connected with the intercourse between Jews and Gentiles in the Church of Christ. Doubtless "it seemed good to the Holy Ghost" that these questions should be left to be solved by time and experience and the general exercise of His Gift of Wisdom.