The Sunday Mail
IN last week’s installment, Pastor Peterson K. Simbotwe argued that whenever God wants a job done, He begins by raising up leaders, and that the Bible is full of examples of such leaders.
It is in this context that the writer, using material from her personal library explores how James, the Lord’s brother became the central figure in the first church in Jerusalem.
Vincent J. Donovan in his book The Church in the Midst of Creation, raises this critical issue after the ascension of the Lord – how Jesus’ brother claimed leadership, becoming the church’s first bishop and also leading the Jerusalem Council, although he was not one of the twelve Apostles.
James the Lord’s brother Donovan says:
“We like to imagine that after Pentecost, the apostles burst forth from Jerusalem across the world. It did not happen exactly that way. The Hellenistic (Greek) deacons were the first ones to go out from Jerusalem to Samaria and Antioch, and to baptise the first non-Jew, the eunuch of the Queen of Candace of Ethiopia.
The Apostles were told that after waiting for the power of the Spirit from on high, they were to go out from Jerusalem and Samaria to the ends of the earth. They did not do so.
They stayed in Jerusalem and a church grew up there. They continued to be faithful observers of the law and of worship in the Temple, and a kind of Jewish sect emerged there from. They regarded themselves as being a true Israel, the community of the New Testament.
Remarkable is the person selected to lead that church. All the Gospels take great pains to point out that the person to head the church of Christ in the world was Simon bar Jonah, called Peter.
Two other Apostles, the sons of Zebedee, were also chosen by Jesus, as recounted in the Gospel stories, to stand with Peter, to witness with him certain cures as well as the glory of the mountaintop, and the agony of the garden (of Gethsemane).
Yet, when it came time for someone to be chosen to lead the first and only church in existence, it was not Peter or James or John, or any of the Apostles who was chosen.
Who emerged as the head of the first local church that came to be? It was James, the brother of the Lord. Did Peter, James and John voluntarily give up the obvious claims they had to leadership and turn it over to the one who came to be called ‘James the Just’?
The historical Eusebius seems to think so. And Clement of Rome stated that the Apostles regarded themselves as being responsible for the universal church and placed local churches in the care of prominent men.
One has to wonder if the Apostles made such distinctions between local churches and the universal church when the only church in existence was the church in Jerusalem. It seems that soon, the prominence of James was not restricted to the local church in Jerusalem. When Gentiles began to come into the church and conflicts arose, the Council of Jerusalem was called to settle those conflicts.
“According to the Acts of the Apostles, after Peter, Paul and Barnabas had spoken at the Council, ‘it was James who spoke.’
‘I rule then,’ said James, sending out a ruling as to direct the churches outside Jerusalem. The ‘I’ resonates: ‘I rule, not Peter or James or John, but I, the brother of the Lord, rule that the following prescriptions be carried out in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia…’ (Acts 15:19-23).
“It looks very much as if the leadership of James extended far beyond the local church of Jerusalem. Despite Eusebius’ disclaimer to the contrary, he later quotes Hegesippus as saying, ‘Those who were called the brother of the Saviour governed the entire church, in virtue of their being relatives of the Lord.’
“I think we have to face the unpalatable fact that after Pentecost, the family of Jesus took over the church of Christ.
“The successor to James who was to become the second bishop of Jerusalem, was a man named Simeon, son of Cleopas, also a cousin of the Lord… It did not, apparently seem strange to the first Christians that the brother of the Lord should be the head of the church of Jerusalem.
‘‘There was a Semitic tradition of such family succession in religious leadership.
“There are indications in the Gospels that Jesus foresaw this very danger of Semitic succession among His own followers and tried to eliminate it. Never once does he allow anyone to lay claim to closeness to Him or discipleship merely on the grounds of a relationship of blood, (Mark 3:31-35, Matthew 12:46-50, Luke 8:19-21).
“Who was this James, the brother of the Lord? He is obviously not James, son of Zebedee, who was martyred by Herod in AD 44 (Acts 12:2).
“Was he James, son of Alphaeus, one of the twelve Apostles mentioned in Matthew 10:3? Early writers in the church and most modern Scripture scholars reject such a notion.
“It is probable that he was not an apostle at all, not one of those whom Jesus deliberately chose, but simply one of His relatives. . . The undisputed head of the Hebrew Christian community was James, brother of the Lord, who, standing with the Apostles, was the most important personality in the Christian community at Jerusalem.
“There was no difficulty, of course, until converts from the non-Jewish world began to join themselves to the Christian community. Paul of Tarsus became spokesman for the Gentile converts, and James, brother of the Lord, the advocate of the Hebrew Christian community.
“We should not be wrong in seeing in James the founder of Judeo-Christian community, who as such remained deliberately committed to Judaism, in confrontation with Pauline Christianity… Paul recognised the importance of James in the Judeo-Christian community.
“In justifying his own apostolate, he mentions that when he went to Jerusalem, he met with Peter and James, the brother of the Lord (Galatians 1:18-19), and that James, Peter, and John, ‘these leaders, these pillars of the church’, shook hands with Barnabas and himself as a sign of partnership – Paul and Barnabas to work among Gentiles, himself and the others among the circumcised (Galatians 2:9-19).
But there were serious conflicts, Paul writes in Galatians, “When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.
The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, ‘You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?”(Galatians 2:11-14)
“The Acts of the Apostles makes reference to this incident and expands on it: Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: ‘Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.’ This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with
some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question.”
“For James, to agree that circumcision was not necessary for Gentile Christians was one thing. To agree that it was no longer necessary even for Jewish Christians was something else again.”
The question that begs is: was the rise in leadership of James the Lord’s brother a sign that apart from him preaching the Gospel, he had to ensure that the interests and needs of Jewish converts to Christianity were taken care of? That is food for thought.
Note to the reader: This is an abridged version from the book: The Church in the Midst of Creation written by Vincent J. Donovan, and published by Mambo Press in Gweru, Zimbabwe in 1990. Donovan is also the author of Christianity Rediscovered.
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