A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

At stake was an issue which would trouble Christ-followers for 150 years: how far should they move from the Jewish tradition if, like Paul, they preached the good news of Christ’s kingdom to non-Jews? Questions of deep symbolism arose: should converts accept such features of Jewish life as circumcision, strict adherence to the Law of Moses and abstention from food defiled by association with pagan worship (that would include virtually all meat sold in the non-Jewish world)? Paul would allow only that Christians should not eat food which they knew had been publicly offered to idols, and otherwise not make much of a fuss about wares on sale in the market or about the dishes at a non-believer’s table.78 One might have expected that the result of this would be the development of two branches of Christianity in fundamental disagreement with one another about their relationship with the parent Judaism: there would be a Jewish Church looking to the tradition represented by James and a Gentile Church treasuring the writings of Paul and John. In fact this is not so. There is one epistle in the New Testament which has been given James’s name, and which does represent a rather different view of the Christian life and the role of the Law from that of Paul, but otherwise all Christians alive today are the heirs of the Church which Paul created. The other type of Christianity once headed by the brother of the Lord has disappeared.