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Converts Or Proselytes? the Crisis Over Conversion in the Early Church Andrew F

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Converts Or Proselytes? the Crisis Over Conversion in the Early Church Andrew F Converts or Proselytes? The Crisis over Conversion in the Early Church Andrew F. Walls he word conversion has been used in Christian history period of deep consciousness of personal sin followed by a sense Tin a multitude of ways. There have been at least two of joyous liberation dawning with realization of personal for- broad streams of usage, each with many divisions. In one stream giveness through Christ. Missionaries with this background conversion is spoken of essentially as an external act of religious expected to see a similar pattern of experience in those who came change. In this usage Christian conversion refers to movement to to Christian faith, even in societies where there had been no the Christian faith, individually or collectively, on the part of previous Christian profession. In this way, the distinction be- people previously outside it. By extension, this usage can also tween the two streams of usage—the one relating to externally indicate movement from one branch of Christian profession to recognizable adhesion to the Christian faith and the other relat- another—from Catholic to Protestant, for instance, or vice versa. ing to internal personal change—became blurred. This was not In the second stream of usage, “conversion” denotes critical the first time that such blurring occurred. There had long been internal religious change in persons within the Christian com- confusion within the first stream of usage when referring to such munity, and here the varieties of meaning raise complex issues. celebrated conversions as those of Constantine and Augustine, Sometimes “conversion” refers to subjective experience, some- where “conversion” might be used equally of their identification times to an assumed ontological change, sometimes to both. For (in their different ways) with the Christian community, or of the centuries in the Latin West, the primary meaning of “conver- particular critical experiences that led them to it. sion” was a person’s response to vocation to the religious or This essay does not attempt to disentangle these linguistic monastic life, turning from the life of the world to God. In and conceptual complexities. It seeks to focus on the simplest, Protestant devotion it came to refer to an early stage of the most elemental feature of the word “conversion,” the idea of pilgrimage of the soul awakened to God. Catholics, Jansenists, turning. There is ample biblical warrant for this focus in the mainstream Protestants, radical Protestants, Puritans, Pietists, insistence with which the Scriptures of both testaments call for and Arminian and Calvinist evangelicals developed differing turning to God. One might almost say that conversion represents maps of the processes of salvation and differing paradigms of the specifically Christian understanding of the response to God’s “normal” Christian experience. These in turn led to different saving activity. The events that best illuminate our understand- assessments of the nature and significance of conversion and of ing of it are described in the New Testament. its relationship to regeneration, justification, and other elements in the salvific process. They also raised the question whether The Jewishness of the Early Church conversion was always necessary where Christian nurture had been effective. New styles of evangelism, with new understand- The earliest church, as we meet it in the early chapters of the Acts ings of the saving process, that developed in the nineteenth and of the Apostles, was utterly Jewish. It was made up, virtually twentieth centuries complicated matters further. Whole new without exception, of people of Jewish birth and inheritance. vocabularies of evangelism came into existence, and the word They met every day in the temple (Acts 2:46), where they regu- “conversion” had a place in all of them. Where the vital question larly attended “the prayers” (Acts 2:42), that is, the temple is “Are you saved?” or “Have you accepted Jesus into your liturgy, thus congregating in a place where (beyond an outer heart?” “conversion” is likely to mean something rather different court) none but Jews could go. Presiding over the church was from what it means when the question is, “How long have you James, the brother of Jesus, a man nicknamed “The Righteous” been at Sinai, and what is your law work?” as it might be in the by his neighbors, who recognized that he was righteous in the older Scottish evangelicalism, or “Have you the form of godliness, Jewish sense of heartfelt obedience to the law. Whatever the and do you desire the power thereof?” which might be raised if differences among them in background and language—and that an inquirer sought membership of an early Methodist society. there were such differences, and that they had theological as- The Protestant missionary movement complicated the un- pects, is clear from the record—they all saw Jesus and his work derstanding of conversion still further. Missions aimed to bring from the perspective of Israel’s history, hopes, and expectations. into the Christian faith those who were outside it, but those who Their priorities and concerns are thoroughly Jewish: as the were most active in establishing missions were often evangelicals, disillusioned disciple on the way to Emmaus says, they had seen who had a well-defined paradigm of “normal” Christian experi- Jesus as the one who would set Israel free (Luke 24:21). On the ence. The evangelical conversion they had experienced had mount of ascension the preoccupation is the same. Realizing that taken them from the “nominal” Christianity professed through- they are standing at the threshold of a new era, the disciples ask out the society in which they had grown up to “real” Christianity the Lord if he is now about to give the kingdom back to Israel issuing in a holy life. This process was typically marked by a (Acts 1:6). They cannot conceive of Jesus’ saving work without its political climax in the history of Israel because, in Jewish terms, salvation is unintelligible without the salvation of the nation. Andrew F. Walls served as a missionary in Sierra Leone and Nigeria and was Nor does Jesus deny this idea or tell them they have misunder- director of the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World at the University of Edinburgh. He is currently Honorary Professor in the stood his mission; he simply tells them that the times and seasons Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and a contributing editor of the are in the Father’s hands (Acts 1:7). INTERNATIONAL B ULLETIN OF M ISSIONARY R ESEARCH. This article is adapted from There were, of course, things that marked out the company his forthcoming volume, The Cultural History of Christian Conversion, to of Jesus believers from all other varieties of observant Jew. What be published by Orbis. outsiders would probably notice first was a distinctive lifestyle 2 INTERNATIONAL B ULLETIN OF M ISSIONARY R ESEARCH , Vol. 28, No. 1 among these Jesus people. They shared property, making special International Bulletin provision for vulnerable sectors of the community such as wid- of Missionary Research ows. And they had frequent communal meals, eating in one Established 1950 by R. Pierce Beaver as Occasional Bulletin from the Missionary another’s houses (Acts 2:44–46). In the sphere of belief, their most Research Library. Named Occasional Bulletin of Missionary Research in 1977. Renamed distinctive feature was their identification of three key figures in INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH in 1981. Published the Scriptures of Israel—the Davidic Messiah who was the na- quarterly in January, April, July, and October by tional savior, the Son of Man who would figure in the judgment Overseas Ministries Study Center of the world, and the Suffering Servant who sacrificed himself for 490 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, U.S.A. his people—with the recent prophet and teacher Jesus of Nazareth. Tel: (203) 624-6672 • Fax: (203) 865-2857 Jesus was universally known to have been put to death by the E-mail: [email protected] • Web: www.OMSC.org Romans, but the community vigorously asserted that he had risen from the dead. Editor: Associate Editor: None of these things, however, meant that these people had Jonathan J. Bonk Dwight P. Baker taken on a new religion. Rather, these beliefs gave them deep Assistant Editor: Managing Editor: insight into, and deeper understanding of, the religion they had Craig A. Noll Daniel J. Nicholas always had. They did not even know that they were Christians; the word had not yet been coined (Acts 11:26). They needed no Senior Contributing Editors: Gerald H. Anderson Robert T. Coote special name; they were Israel. They had no less reverence for the Torah than before, but more; they remembered that Jesus had Contributing Editors: said that not the smallest letter of the law would be lost by his Catalino G. Arévalo, S.J. C. René Padilla agency. They had not less reverence for the temple, but more, for David B. Barrett James M. Phillips they remembered how Jesus had cleansed it and called it his Stephen B. Bevans, S.V.D. Dana L. Robert Samuel Escobar Lamin Sanneh Father’s house, recalling the old scripture about the zeal of God’s John F. Gorski, M.M. Wilbert R. Shenk house consuming his chosen one (John 2:17). They saw no reason Paul G. Hiebert Brian Stanley to cease animal sacrifices; in the light of the Suffering Servant’s Jan A. B. Jongeneel Charles R. Taber self-offering, they understood them better. Their favorite title for Sebastian Karotemprel, S.D.B Tite Tiénou Jesus, Messiah, was steeped in the history of Israel and in David A. Kerr Ruth A. Tucker convictions about Israel’s destiny.
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