I was reading through the book of Acts yesterday for the first time with a more ‘emerging’ perspective like that expressed on this site and its was amazing to see the gaps filled. However, I am wrestling with understanding how the good news of Jesus’ life, death and kingdom became relevant to Gentiles. For example terms like salvation, forgiveness of sins, eternal life (or life in the age to come) and the kingdom of God have meaning for Jewish listeners but what did they mean to the Gentiles being saved? And what were they being saved from or, better yet, what did they belive they were being saved from?
An interesting observation is the statement in Acts11:14 where angel tells Cornelius (a gentile) that Peter will bring him a message about how his whole household will be saved. in traditional understanding of being saved this makes no sense cus my family doesnt become saved if i am saved. But if saved means something else, like an event(s) that threatens my life if i go down a certain path then this statement makes sense cus the family would follow me to safety. Sorry if this has already been covered on the site.
relevant texts = Acts10-11
Sorry if this is more of post to satisfy my uncertainties than a contribution to the theology.
Thanks Ryan
Re: Relevance of Jesus to the Gentiles
I would suggest that for people like Cornelius salvation meant, in the first place, participation in renewed Israel (cf. Eph. 2:11-22). Cornelius was clearly already deeply attracted to Jewish monotheism, and the possibility of becoming part of Israel through faith in the message about Jesus rather than through observance of the law of Moses must have been received as a profound fulfilment of his desires. No doubt salvation in this context also carried connotations of healing and wholeness. Was the lame man at the Beautiful gate ‘healed’ or ‘saved’ (sesōtai) (4:9); were the Jews of this crooked generation to be ‘saved’ or ‘healed’ (sōthēnai) by the name of Jesus (4:12)? The inclusion of the ‘household’ (‘kinsmen and close friends’: 10:24) makes sense when ‘salvation’ means the restoration to wholeness of human community, though the point is made that the ‘Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word’ (10:44). I don’t think there’s any suggestion that members of his household were saved unwittingly!
The story suggests a number of dimensions to this salvation: Gentiles are not to be regarded as unclean (10:28); Cornelius is acceptable to God (10:35); he and his household worship God in the Holy Spirit (10:45-46); they are baptized into the community of Jesus’ followers (10:47); they have been ‘granted repentance unto life’ (11:18). What this last phrase brings into view, presumably, is not the obduracy and rebelliousness of the ‘crooked generation’ of Israel that faced devastation but the involvement even of a God-fearer like Cornelius in the systematic paganism of the Greek-Roman world. ‘Life’, I would argue, is not eternal life in heaven but the life of the coming age - beyond judgment and renewal.
In Acts 17:29-30 Paul tells the men of Athens that time is running out for pagan idolatry and that the creator God has ‘fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed’ (17:31). In light of his argument in Romans about the impending wrath of God on the Greek-Roman world, I would argue that what Paul has in mind here is not a final and absolute judgment of the world but a historical judgment on late classical paganism. So I would also suggest that Cornelius and his household are ‘saved’ from an obsolescent religious system, and perhaps more specifically from the wrath of God against Rome as Israel’s enemy.
The discussion attached to ‘Pentecost and the drama of prophetic community’ may also have some relevance to this question if you can be bothered to sift through it.