It’s astonishing how Scripture surprises you every time you read it, even after a lifetime of familiarity.
Yesterday in my church’s ongoing exposition of Acts, we came to the last part of chapter 2, describing how the new Church behaved. As the speaker pointed out, there are so many strands in those six verses that a whole series of useful sermons could be based on it. We have the nature of Christian meetings, the role of signs and wonders (how many Charismatics notice that they are only performed by apostles, just 12 of the suggested 3,120 believers!), the interesting question of commonality and how it practically applied then and applies today, successful evangelism and so on.
But I don’t think I’ve ever quite twigged the significance of 2:46, which says “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.” In fact, Acts makes it pretty clear that, in the early days, the old temple of Jerusalem was the place where the new temple of the Church habitually met. That’s hinted at in the Pentecost account, in which “the house” where they are gathered is filled by the rushing wind, and the mass of pilgrims from various nations are at hand to witness and wonder. The temple was often, in Greek, referred to as `ο οικος, The House.
But at the end of the chapter it is clearly stated that the temple is where they gathered steadfastly for “the apostles’ teaching, the fellowhip, the breaking of bread, and the prayers,” although v46 may suggest that the breaking of bread was done over fellowship meals in believers’ homes, and was therefore a private commemoration, like the Passover meal. 5:12 is more specific, naming Solomon’s Colonnade as their gathering place, and that provides the context for Peter’s explanation of the healing of the lame man at the Beautiful Gate, which takes place in the same Colonnade (3:11).
The importance of making this connection is that Peter and John’s going to the temple at the time of prayer, 3pm, is not to be taken as an indication that the apostles were “hanging on to aspects of Judaism,” though indeed it is highly likely that they were, with all the other believers, taking part in the “official” temple prayers. Apart from anything else, “Judaism” did not exist at that time, but only the various sects and denominations of Israel, for most of which the temple was the God-given focus, even if they disliked its management. Sects like the Essenes, who shunned the temple, did so because they believed the priesthood was illegitimate, not because they didn’t hold with the temple as a theological ideal.
The temple, then, was the religious focal point for all Jews. Yet it was not only a religious centre, but a political one, for conceptually Israel was a theocracy, and the Sanhedrin, meeting at or near the temple, consisted largely of priests, Pharisees and scribes making political decisions, ie rulings for all the people, under the watchful eye of the Romans. What this means is that for the Church of Jesus the Messiah to meet there as a body was a political, as well as a religious, act.
In other words, contrary to my previous assumptions at least, the Church did not see itself as a mustard seed gathering in a quiet upper room and slowly spreading out under the noses of an inimical religious Establishment. Instead, its public gathering in the temple, as the new temple of Christ, was as much as to say, “Here is the true temple of Israel – come over to Solomon’s Colonnade to hear the Torah of the Prophet like Moses, by the mouth of his twelve apostles.” Indeed, it was a statement that the true Israel was now centred on Jesus, and therefore called on all Jews to take part. As for the miracles, the implication is that many of them occurred in the temple setting, thus validating the apostolic teaching, and setting it apart from that of the compromised temple authorities, which Jesus had denounced when alive, and which the apostles now challenged. The apostles’ appearances before the Sanhedrin, therefore, are not to be seen as Christians getting into trouble, but as their boldly claiming to possess the true authority to speak to Israel from God, which the Council had forfeited. As in so many unjust systems, it was the judges who were on trial.
I don’t think it’s clear from Acts how long this temple focus for meeting continued. Paul attempted to pay his vows there, together with those of some other believers, on his final return to Jerusalem. But perhaps under James the organisation had changed, or quite possibly they had been prevented from meeting in the temple by the Sadducees. But that doesn’t matter, because despite Jesus’s talk of his kingdom not being from this world, his Church had still, at its outset, laid claim to the political and religious centre of God’s nation. It was a thoroughly political move.
The question is whether there is any valid parallel to be drawn for Gentile churches in secular nations now. It is a mistake to assume that what is true for the nation of which Jesus was, as David’s Messianic Branch, the legitimate king, is also true of the church in England or America or Egypt, which are not theocracies. Granted, in the initial spread of Christianity to pagan nations, people like St Martin had great success in pulling down pagan temples, not getting zapped by the false gods, and building churches in their place. Nowadays that would not be seen as legitimate (though let’s not assume it would be seen in the same way by a local king at the time, for whom it might well have appeared a demonstration of the true God).
Our nations are, indeed, not theocracies. But on the other hand, for many nations Christianity was consciously adopted as the very foundation of their political, legal and religious systems. It’s not just that Magna Carta, for example, embodies a Christian philosophy of the State. It actually begins:
John, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and count of Anjou, to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justiciars, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his bailiffs and faithful subjects, greeting.
Know that, having regard to God and for the salvation of our soul, and those of all our ancestors and heirs, and unto the honour of God and the advancement of the holy Church, and for the reform of our realm, by advice of our venerable fathers, Stephen archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England and cardinal of the holy Roman church, Henry archbishop of Dublin, William of London, Peter of Winchester, Jocelyn of Bath and Glastonbury, Hugh of Lincoln, Walter of Worcester, William of Coventry, Benedict of Rochester, bishops; of master Pandulf, subdeacon and member of the household of our lord the Pope, of brother Aymeric (master of the Knights of the Temple in England), and of the illustrious men William Marshall earl of Pembroke, William earl of Salisbury, William earl of Warenne, William earl of Arundel, Alan of Galloway (constable of Scotland), Waren Fitz Gerald, Peter Fits Herbert, Hubert de Burgh (seneschal of Poitou), Hugh de Neville, Matthew Fitz Herbert, Thomas Basset, Alan Basset, Philip d’Aubigny, Robert of Roppesley, John Marshall, John Fitz Hugh, and of other faithful subjects.
And it finishes by recording that it was enacted under oath to God. Likewise our present king rules on the basis of a Coronation Oath, whose 2023 preamble stated:
Your Majesty, the Church established by law, whose settlement you will swear to maintain, is committed to the true profession of the Gospel, and, in so doing, will seek to foster an environment in which people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely. The Coronation Oath has stood for centuries and is enshrined in law. Are you willing to take the Oath?
He was, and so it would appear to be quite legitimate for those committed to the Gospel, particularly faithful members of the established Church of England (whether or not their bishops agree), to hold him and his government (and his bishops) to it. And similarly to assert in some political manner the Christian foundations of the nation, to which we are all signed up as citizens and subjects.
The same ought to be true for any nation that has comparable Christian roots, whilst of course the details, and therefore the nature of legitimate Christian political action, will differ from case to case. The USA, for example, has a deliberately non-sectarian Constitution. And yet the Declaration of Independence’s “self-evident” provisions may be argued to make sense only in a Christian context, for Gnostics don’t believe all men are created equal, the Qur’an does not teach that Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness are inalienable rights, and of course atheists don’t believe anything is endowed by a Creator, let alone inalienable rights.
As for legitimate methods, the Jerusalem Church never used violence against the temple authorities, and indeed fled the city during the rebellion against Rome in 69-70 rather than taking up arms. But then the Sanhedrin, whilst initiating persecution, never attempted to murder the believers indiscriminately. The same cannot be said of, say, Lebanon within living memory, or Northern Nigeria and the Congo currently, where Jihadists take the call to kill those kaffirs who will not convert seriously. Manchester saw the same ideology at work against Jews this Yom Kippur. Surely, in that case, armed resistance is as warrantable as maintaining an army against foreign invasion is.
Whatever the limitations on armed struggle, however, what is clear is that the Jerusalem church practised civil disobedience on a large and public scale, challenging every Jew, essentially, to choose between loyalty to the Sanhedrin, and loyalty to the risen Messiah. A recent and highly apposite, example of that has occurred in my home town of Guildford. It happened in a place I know well, the very spot where, perhaps appropriately, a First World War tank once rested, seen by my father as a child, as a symbol of resistance to foreign aggression. The video shows a now typical example of police harassing a street preacher on the basis of some anonymous complaint and dubiously applied laws. It appears that he was eventually prevented from using a PA, and the video ends with his preaching without one, even louder than with it, on the text of Acts 3 and the Sanhedrin’s forbidding the apostles to preach Jesus. Good for him, I say.
