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Some have gone further and argued this was a mistake. This does not mean there was a deliberate sin by either Paul or the apostles. But it is interesting to observe that if the purpose was peace, the action did not succeed in the short term, because a riot broke out over the false belief that Paul had polluted the Temple with a Gentile associate of his. Can apostles make mistakes? Certainly. No one is perfect but God. Was this a mistake? Perhaps. I can see the argument. I can also report this is exactly what my own father believed. It is interesting to be reviewing it again after so many years.

Yes, this is what I wanted to see addressed. It brings us to the one holy catholic and apostolic church where all the apostles in Jerusalem agreed, including Paul, that he did not teach the Jews in the Diaspora to forsake Moses, either in circumcision or customs, and all may know that those things, whereof they were informed concerning thee, are nothing; but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest the law. As touching the Gentiles which believe, we have written and concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication. .

All the apostles in Jerusalem were in unity, agreeing to keep the law as the Messiah kept the law and commanded them to, not for justification, but to fulfill all righteousness as a testimony to Israel. What they told Paul to do, and what he did in obedience, was not a mistake. The Messiah had personally promised these particular apostles the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and given them the power to bind and loose. One might make a mistake, yet here you have all of them in Jerusalem. I'm certain you see the catholic implications, although you may not accept them. Once the temple passed away, the sacrifices stopped. How do you reconcile a third temple with restarted animal sacrifices after reading the book of Hebrews ?

AF, I have a developing work situation that demands my attention. It's quite a storm and it will take me offline, except occasionally in the evening, probably for the next few weeks.

With that in mind, I can only offer a fairly cursory response to your thoughts at this time. In short form then:

1) The "mistake" theory is not necessary to the larger point I was making. I merely mention it as a point of interest. The apostles may well have been doing the right thing. Even so, Paul was prohibited from following through on the ritual, and so no sacrifice was in fact offered on his behalf. We could say that God preempted him through circumstances. Then the question would be, would God lead them to do something that He did not intend them to finish doing? So the "mistake" theory, while not essential to my argument, remains a live issue for me.

2) As to the unity of the apostles in this situation, I do notice from my time here on the FR RF that RC readers of Scripture often find confirmation of things they already believe about Catholicism, and project that back onto the text. But a more rigorous analysis typically will show that the text by itself does not in fact confirm the Roman bias. In this particular instance, we cannot conclude that observing Moses was a universal requirement of Christian faith, because even in sending Paul to be purified, they readily acknowledged that this did not overturn their earlier decision respecting the liberty of the believing Gentiles. So at most your assessment that they were doing this because of Christ's teaching concerning the law could only apply to Jews. But then it is inconsistent with Christ's own teaching concerning the unity of the sheepfold. There are not to be two churches, one Jewish in practice, one Gentile. The better surmise, IMHO, is that they were doing this for the same reason they whittled down the behavioral imperatives for gentiles in Acts 15, to keep the peace between the two factions.

This is in keeping with Paul's own teaching regarding meat offered to idols. To him, in his conscience, it was a thing indifferent. The idols are nothing. The meat is fine. But as long as it might do damage to someone with a weaker conscience, he says he wouldn't eat such meat ever. It is a self-imposed limitation, done for the good of the body of Christ. That is a good and noble motivation, and fully explains the temple event without resorting to the superimposed idea that the apostles were actually motivated by a belief that full, Old Covenant Torah compliance was and would always be normative for Jewish Christians. The text doesn't say that.

This fact, BTW, is exactly why the mistake theory is unnecessary to harmonize Acts 21 with Hebrews 8, 9, and 10. I remain puzzled about it for the reasons stated above, but have no problem with the view that this temple event with Paul was nothing other than an attempt to build unity between the Jewish and Gentile factions of the nascent Christian family. There is no rational way to redirect this event to support a dual praxis of Gentile Christianity versus Jewish Christianity, which idea is profoundly at odds with Paul's teaching concerning the blending together of the two into one new man, which also coincides with Christ's own teaching on the same matter.

3) The third temple. As you know, I have always openly represented to you where I come from theologically. In eschatology, I am not a dispensationalist. I used to be. Followed Hal Lindsey and the whole nine yards. But now I am an Historic Premillenialist, after the model of Charles Spurgeon. We see no literal third temple. If there is a temple after the one destroyed in 70AD, it is either us, the Ecclesia, who are spoken of directly as the temple of the Holy Spirit individually, and corporately as living stones built on the rock of foundation in Jesus Christ, or perhaps at the end of days there will be a temporary faux temple, used to carry out the deception of the Antichrist for a time. But Hebrews is God-breathed revelation. The true Ecclesia will never look back to the shadows, except as instruction in Messianic truth, but not as a guide to ceremony.

And I will add that I have had this position, specifically on the Temple, for about 40 years. When I was a student at Moody, back in the early 70's, we had John Walvoord as a guest speaker. The dispensationist's dispensationalist, bar none. After the talk, he was meeting and greeting and I walked right up to him and confronted him about the heinous idea of reinstituting the sacrifice system in the Millenium, ostensibly in this third temple. I was offended then as I am now at the idea of erecting once again what God Himself tore down, so that His Son might receive all the glory for the once for all sacrifice He provided to all those who would come to trust in Him. The poor fellow was a bit flummoxed and really had no reply. He was expecting a friendly audience. And mostly they were. Not me. Not on this issue.

Bottom line, if Hebrews is canonical, and God-breathed, any sort of conscious return to the levitical sacrifice system, especially if viewed as literally necessary to obtain forgiveness of sins, runs way too close to the substance of the warning in Hebrews 10. We have passed through that transition, bumpy ride though it was, and ought not ever to go back, because going back willfully amounts to denial of the Messiah's greatest accomplishment.

Peace,

SR