The Apostle Paul, Servant of Christ Boiling Springs, NC Overview Study Guide 704 966-6845 Unit II, Chapter 5 [email protected] “The First Missionary Journey” © All rights reserved by Lorin L Cranford Quick Links to Study 5.0 First Missionary Journey 5.0.1 Establishing Christian Congregations 5.0.2 Discipling Christian Congregations, Acts 14:21-28 5.0.1.1 Work in Seleucia, Acts 13:4 Summary: Gal. 3:1-5, 4:12-20 5.0.1.2 Work in Cyprus, Acts 13:5-12 5.1. Jerusalem Council, Acts 15:1-36, Gal. 2:1-10 5.0.1.3 Work in Perga, Acts 13:13 5.1.1 Problems at Antioch, Acts 15:1-3 5.0.1.4 Work in Pisidian Antioch, Acts 13:14-52 5.1.2 Victory in Jerusalem, Acts 15:4-29, Gal. 2:1-10 5.0.1.5 Work in Iconium, Acts 14:1-7 5.1.3 Ministry in Antioch, Acts 15:30-35, Gal. 2:11-14 5.0.1.6 Work in Lystra, Acts 14:8-20 5.0.1.7 Work in Derbe, Acts 14:21 Conclusion Introduction After Paul and Barnabas arrived back at Antioch, along with John Mark, some time passed before the next major event that would change Christianity forever. The breakthrough to the non-Jewish world with the Gos- pel had largely started at Antioch. And now this group of believers would launch a movement toward Gentiles that would revolutionize Christianity. This event was the beginning of the first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas. What is that? The more common label is ‘missionary journey.’ But increasingly today a wide variety of labels are being applied to the scripture texts in Acts that describe the three trips1 of the apostle and various associates.2 The importance of this is largely that how the writer labels these activities of Paul will reflect cer- tain perspectives about the nature and value of them in the author’s thinking. Some of the older issues about the reliability of Luke’s account regarding three such trips or not are being replaced in current scholarship with other issues related to how Christianity could have spread so quickly and so extensively. One of the continuing contributions of the older “History of Religions” studies of the early nineteen hundreds is to see Paul’s travels in comparison to the efforts of other religious and philosophical groups in spreading their teachings in the ancient world. One must recognize that Luke’s inclusion of these three journeys is for more than either chronological or historical purposes. He has a theological objective in mind, as well as other intentions. Uncovering these will be helpful to grasping his presentation of Paul’s missionary ministry in chapters thirteen through twenty-one. The impact of Paul’s missionary activities is substantial in many ways. First, it provided the setting for all of his writings found in the New Testament. All but the Prison Letters and the Pastoral Letters were written ‘on the mission field’ by Paul while he was caught up in doing missions where ever he happened to be when writ- ing the letters. Additionally, the Prison Letters (Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, and Philippians) were written while Paul was a prisoner of Rome and not active in missionary service. But these letters were written to congrega- tions established either directly or indirectly by his missionary labors. Among the Pastoral Letters, First Timothy and Titus were written while the apostle was actively engaged in missionary activity after release from his first imprisonment at Rome. Second Timothy was written from imprisonment in Rome to Timothy while laboring at Ephesus, along with First Timothy. Thus Paul’s letters are genuinely ‘missionary letters’ by a missionary on the field of mission service. Second, the implication of this for Paul’s thinking theologically is enormous. The theological formulation of the Gospel in Paul’s thinking is hammered out on the mission field, not in an isolated monastery somewhere 1Cf. Acts 13:1-14:28 (First); 15:36-18:22 (Second); 18:23-21:16 (Third). 2Among these alternative labels are ‘missionary trips,’ ‘travels,’ ‘mission,’ ‘evangelizing trip,’ etc. Page 186 cut off from real life. To understand Paul as a theologian means understanding him first as a missionary.3 Chris- tian doctrine is functional, rather than theoretical. This is a major reason why no writing of the apostle looks anything like a modern textbook on theology. His religious understanding was applied in small bits and pieces to individual situations being faced by differing churches and individuals. Only those aspects relevant to each par- ticular situation were articulated by Paul in his letters. Even though Romans comes the closest to a systematic presentation of the Gospel of any of Paul’s letters, even it is very limited in its coverage because it stands as a letter of introduction to the church at Rome for Paul and thus was shaped by inclusion only of those elements deemed important for the Roman Christians to understand about Paul and his missionary ministry. Third, the way Paul went about doing missions has served as an important model for Christian expansion for nearly two thousand years. Various aspects of how Paul approached doing missions have importance for modern understanding: his strategy in choosing the places he went to4; his approach of ‘Jew first, then Gentile’; 3“Paul’s permanent historical significance is commonly taken to be that he was the first to give theological articulation to the early Christian proclamation and to work out reflectively the issues which it raised. But the historical significance of Paul’s missionary labors must not be underestimated. At all points the apostle’s theological articulations were called forth from within the context of his Gentile mission. By means of that mission Paul also contributed to the remarkably early transposition of the new faith from the limited sphere of Judaism into the broader frame of the Gentile world, thereby making it possible for Christianity to survive and flourish as a distinct movement after A.D. 70. And in the process Paul’s mission became for all religious history a preeminent model of organized missionary outreach.” [Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin and Daniel G. Reid, Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (Downers Grove, IL: Inter- Varsity Press, 1993), 609.] 4Did Paul and the other apostles work off the “table of nations” (sons of Noah listing) in Genesis 10 with their missionary travels? Or, did Paul base his decisions on where to travel from the prophecy in Isaiah 66:19 about the nations? Isaiah 66:18-19. 18 For I know their works and their thoughts, and I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and shall see my glory, 19 and I will set a sign among them. From them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Put, and Lud—which draw the bow—to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the nations. Scholars have advocated both of these assumptions over the years as a critical aspect of the Pauline missionary activity, as is noted by E. J. Schnabel in his article “Mission, Early Non-Pauline”: The apostles could have thought of the “nations” (ethnē) of the world, including Israel (cf. LXX), in terms of “all the nations” in distinction from the nation Israel (cf. Pss. Sol. 9:9) or in terms of the individual “Gentiles” or non-Jews (cf. 4 Bar. 6:19). A messianic mission to “all the nations” would remind the apostles, in terms of geography and ethnography, of the table of nations in Genesis 10 and its continuing significance as the “Jewish” description of the world (cf. Scott 1994, 492–522; Scott 1995, 5–56). That their geographical horizon was not limited to the Roman Empire is demonstrated by the evidence in Acts that mentions regions inde- pendent of Rome: Parthia (Acts 2:9) in the east and Ethiopia (Acts 8:27) in the south. As regards a feasible policy to fulfill the Great Commission, the apostles would have thought in terms of specific nations or “tribes” or, from a political perspective, in terms of Roman provinces (cf. Rom 16:4 with Gal 1:2; 1 Cor 16:19; 2 Cor 8:1; Gal 1:22). An exclusively biblical-Jewish outlook might interpret the phrase “end of the earth” in terms of the extent of the Jewish Diaspora (cf. Acts 2:9–11), whereas a wider perspective would extend the geographical horizons to the furthest points on the edge of the inhabited world: the Indians in the east (or even the Seres, the “silk people” further east, as the Periplous Maris Erythraei of the first century A.D. reflects existing commercial contacts with China?), the Scythians in the north, theGermani at the Atlantic in the west (or Britannia, known to the Mediterranean world from at least the third century .B.C.. and annexed by Claudius in A.D. 43?) and the Ethiopians in the south (Homer Odys. 1.23 calls the “distant Ethiopians” “people at the edge [of the earth]”; cf. Herodotus 3.25.114). The singular eschatos (tēs gēs) in Acts 1:8 should not be understood in terms of a single goal of the disciples’ mission (pace Ellis, who thinks of Spain); it affirms that there is no spatial limit to their mission. It appears that the early Christians had the broader perspective: for the Scythians see Colossians 3:11 (Michel, 7:449–50, seems to assume a converted Scythian in the Colossian church); for Spain see Romans 15:24, 28; for Ethiopia see Acts 8:27–39.