Between Traditions and The Christian Faith:
A Conundrum in The Early Church.
Christianity is a practice belief system — of faith in the heart acted out in daily life. So the Christian is known not just for professing faith in Christ and his work of atonement, but also for the outworking of his faith in character and relationship to others.
Jesus says, “You will know them by their fruits” (Matt. 7: 15–20).
The practice of Christianity has evolved over time in history, manifesting both as inner expressions of faith and outward show. Christians wear different traditional and cultural togas — reflecting their cultures but saying little about their inner spiritual reality. The external display of Christianity is evidenced more among the clergy — who are distinguished by their official garbs than among the laity — the everyday Christian folks.
However, some emerging syncretic churches tend to blur the line of distinction by enforcing the wearing of “white garments” by their members for worship services. Wearing different outfits in church and out of church reflects the double living standard of church members as they separate religious events from daily lifestyle — equating religious traditions to Christianity.
For them, Christianity begins and ends in the church!
This brand of Christianity does not stop them from participating in pagan rituals and family religious traditions. They continue to offer sacrifices to tribal and national gods. Before long many pagan practices were introduced to the church. Hence the term syncretic churches.
In Africa, one element of indigenous religious practices brought into the church was the ministry of the seer. The seer was central in many indigenous African religions much as it was in biblical Old Testament times. Church leadership is determined by how much an individual displays spirituality in terms of seeing visions and leading people in three to seven days of special prayers in the church or on a prayer mountain — away from their homes.
Prayers with fasting are offered to avert an impending disaster foretold by the seer for members of the church. The seers in indigenous African religions now translate into prophets of today’s syncretic, masquerading as evangelical churches.
It is little wonder that the “prophets” and their prophecies continue to attract large followerships from a broad spectrum of the African population given the uncertainties that characterize life in most African nations. A large number of the African population are overwhelmed by the twists and turns of political and economic instability, and fear of the unknown represented by cultism and witchcraft.
Was Syncretism Unavoidable?
One major challenge the early church had to contend with was separating Jewish religious customs and traditions from the gospel for Gentile believers. The apostle Paul's insistence on separating the Law and tradition from faith in the gospel became the target of a culture war — forcing the Jerusalem Council to shift grounds on erstwhile positions in order to find a common ground.
Chapter 15 of the Acts opens with an account of what happened in the Antioch church:
Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. (vv.1–2).
To begin with, Judaism and the customs and rituals associated with it are what makes a Jew, Jewish. One has to be a Jew to practice Judaism. There’s no place in it for the Gentiles. By the same token, it was difficult to imagine The New Way — Christianity to stand apart from the laws and customs passed down by the Jewish ancestors.
For apostles Paul and Barnabas, however, it was a great joy to see converted Gentiles being added to the infant church and saw no reason to over-burden them with hangovers of Judaism. To resolve the issue, a delegation comprising Paul, Barnabas, and some believers in the Antioch church was sent to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders. While on their way, traveling through Phoenicia and Samaria, they shared the news of Gentile conversion with other believers in those cities.
“This news made all the believers very glad,” says the Scripture. Moreover, “when they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them.” (v.4).
Even so, the culture war continues:
“Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said,” “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.”
They were saying in other words, that the Gentiles can only be accepted into the church after they have gone through Judaistic initiation ceremonies. They would have to be Jews first to become Christians.
The Way Forward.
The Council of the apostles and elders was faced with a conundrum here: Finding common or middle ground for the liberals and the conservatives in the church while separating Christianity from Judaism.
After the apostles and the elders had considered the ramifications of the issue, Simeon Peter, the same apostle who responded to the questions of convincted listeners on Pentecost, spoke:
“Brothers, you know that sometime ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips “the message of the gospel” and believe. God who knows the heart, (God deals with our hearts), showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved just as they are.”
Peter ended his address by letting “those who belonged to the party of the Pharisee” know that they, the Jewish Christians were not saved by their Jewish custom and tradition but by grace — the same grace by which the Gentiles were saved. Peter described the demands of the Law as a yoke that they and their ancestors could not bear.
For it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; not by works so that no one can boast (Ephes. 2: 8–9).
Though the “party of the Pharisees” were silenced by Peter’s address, reinforced by Barnabas and Paul’s testimonies to the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles, the message for the Gentiles summarized by the apostle James, who chaired the session, did not completely absolve the Gentiles from certain prohibitions:
“It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements:
“You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meet of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things (vv.24–29).
Having settled the issue of salvation that is attainable by grace through faith alone, the four additional requirements had nothing to do with the salvation of the Gentiles but had everything to do with how they could best live and worship alongside Jewish believers who were particularly offended by those four behaviors.
Thus the additional instructions were meant to promote peace and unity in the church populated by Jews and Gentiles, and in our day, by peoples of diverse ethnocultural backgrounds.
Paul, writing to the church in Rome later, emphasizes love as the key to believers' relationships in the church:
Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean. If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died (Rom.14:12–15).
The clear lesson for us is that whereas believers are free from the encumbrances of legalism and man-made culture and traditions, equally important is the prioritization of love and unity in the church. Jesus came and died for the world (John 3:16).
Love and unity are the practical expressions of Christ's work — creating One Body of many parts, drawn from among peoples, and nations of the earth. It calls for understanding and significant flexibility in believers’ attitudes to the subject matters addressed by the Council at Jerusalem.
It is the reason for accommodating all cultures in Christianity:
In essentials — Unity; In non-essentials — Tolerance.
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