LAW. — 1. Introductory. — The subject of the Law formed one of the main problems, if not in- deed the main problem, of the Apostolic Church, inasmuch as it involved the fundamental relation of primitive Christianity to Judaism on the one hand and heathenism on the other. Later Judaism, on its Pharisaic side, had carried legalism to ex- tremes, and thus accentuated the separation be- tween Israel and the Gentiles. The primitive Christian community, on the other hand, had been taught by its Founder to rank the freedom of Divine grace higher than human merit (cf. e.g. Mt 9^''^^ lis and, generally, the attitude of Jesus to publicans and sinners), and to regard faith as of more importance than the distinction between Jew and Gentile (cf. Mt S^-i^ |]s, I5-1--8 ||). In the
evangelical record, moreover, the early Church had preserved the recollection of its Lord's outspoken utterances regarding the merely relative validity of the Jewish ceremonial Law {e.g. of the Sabbath, Mt 12'-'^ lis ; of cleanness, Mt 15'"-'" lis)— or, at all events, of the interpretations recognized in the Synagogue ('the traditions of the elders,' Mt 15-*''- II). Still, the same record showed that in prin- ciple the attitude of Jesus to the Law as a whole was an avowedly conservative one (Mt 5^""-", Lk 16'"), even as He had lived His life within the confines of the Law (cf. Gal 4'' : yepo/xevos inrb vo/jlov) ; His supreme aim, indeed, was to bring out with full clearness and force the will of God made known in the Law. We thus see that, with regard to the Law, the evangelical tradition seemed capable of a double construction, or, at least, that it did not supply the means for deciding a question that soon became urgent. It is therefore easy to under- stand why the early Christian community in Jerusalem assumed at first a rigidly conservative attitude towards the Law, and regarded the faith- ful observance of it as praiseworthy (Ac 21-** ; cf. 246 31 109- i-» 22'2). St. Peter, e.g., required a special revelation before he would enter the house of the uncircumcised Cornelius and admit the first Gentile convert into the Church by baptism (10'"'**) — a step which did not fail to arouse opposition on the part of those who ' were of the circumcision ' (cf. lP-'8).
2. The view of St. James. — The principal repre- sentative of this zeal for the Law in the infant Church was St. James, the brother of the Lord, who, according to Acts, as also to the Pauline Epistles, occupied a leading position therein (Ac 1513-21 21>8-2«, Qal 29 ; cf. 1'"). St. James, by rea.son of his righteous life, is said to have been esteemed scarcely less highly by non-Christians than by believers (Hegesippus, in Eus. HE ii. 23). His great concern was to smooth the way by which Israel might come to Jesus Christ, and to put no stumbling-block before his people. From this point of view his attitude to the question concerning the Gentile Christians discussed at the Apostolic Council becomes readily intelligible. Here he shows himself to be a genuine disciple of Jesus in recognizing, after the example of Peter, the supremacy of grace, and in refusing to put the yoke of the Law upon the Gentile Christians, whom rather he receives as brethren, while he acknowledges St. Paul as the Apostle of the Cir- cumcision (Ac 15'^'-' ; cf. v.". Gal 2''). He thus came into direct conflict with the Pharisaic group of Jewish Christians — those who asserted that the salvation of the Gentiles depended upon their being circumcised and their acceptance of the Law (Ac 15''', Gal 2'"^). It was probably only for the sake of brotherly intercourse between circumcised and uncircumcised Christians that James proposed the restrictions to Gentile Christian liberty which were laid down in the so-called Apostolic Decree (Ac 1520f. 28f.)_ -pjjg reason given for the proposal (v.-' : ' For Moses from generations of old hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath ') probably means simply that the four prohibitions in question — which formed the kernel of the so-called Noachian com- mandments, and corresi^ond to the laws for prose- lytes— had come to be so impressed upon the minds of the Jews that they could not countenance any disobedience to them if their intercourse with their Gentile brethren in the Church was to be uncon- strained. In formulating the injunctions of the Apostolic Decree St. James was in reality only following the practice of the Synagogue with re- gard to proselj^tes of the narrower class (' the God- fearing,' oi (po^ovfxevoL [or cre/Sd^ej/oi] tov deov), just as that practice no doubt had already prepared the
way in the Christian mission to the Gentiles ; for the fact that St. Paul makes no mention of the Apostolic Decree in Gal 2^'* probably signifies that he had observed its provisions on his own initiative (so, in substance, A. Ritschl, B. Weiss, H. H. Wendt, etc. ; cf., further, art. MoSES). But the question regarding the Gentiles was in no sense solved, as soon appeared in what occurred at Antioch (Gal 2"-"). If, for the sake of Christian fellowship, St. Peter had in that city ignored the Jewish regula- tions about food, and had eaten in the companj^ of Gentile Christians, this did not coincide with tlie views of those who 'came from James.' These men took otfence at St. Peter's practice — just as the Jewish Christians at Jerusalem had resented his action at Ceesarea (Ac 10 ; cf. IP^-) — manifestly assuming that Jewish Christians, as the circum- cised, were under an absolute obligation to the Mosaic Law, and that they ought not, even for the sake of Christian fellowship, to make any con- cession whatever to the liberty of the converted heathen. If concessions were to be made at all, they must come from the Gentile, not the Jewish, side. Whether this point of view is to be traced directly to St. James himself, or rather merely coincided with his position, is a much-debated question. It is probable, however, that in his view of the matter his concern for Israel bulked more largely than his regard for the Gentiles, and that accordingly he would have preferred to sur- render the possibility of perfect Christian com- munion between Jewish and Gentile Christians rather than grant the former a dispensation from their regulations regarding food. Perhaps we may, with B. Weiss, see a suggestion of this point of view in what St. James says in Ac 15'* regard- ing the mission to the Gentiles, viz. that God had taken out of them a people for His name — i.e. a new people of God, in addition to the old.