Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 15:29

"that ye abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication; from which if ye keep yourselves, it shall be well with you. Fare ye well." — Acts 15:29 (ASV)

From meats offered to idols.—The specific term takes the place of the more general word that Saint James had used. If the two words were not used as entirely equivalent (which is possible), this change may be thought of as favouring the Gentiles by narrowing the prohibition to a single point.

Fare you well.—The closing salutation, like the opening, was a Greek and not a Hebrew one. We encounter it again in Acts 23:30. Both were naturally used in a letter addressed to Greeks and intended to be read by them and by Hellenistic Jews. However, it does not occur in any of the Epistles of the New Testament.

At the close of this great encyclical letter, it is natural to ask how it truly related to the life of the Apostolic Church. As an concordat between the contending parties, it was framed, as has been said, with a wisdom that may well be regarded as inspired.

But obviously, it was not—and from the nature of the case, could not be—more than that. The time had not yet come to proclaim to the Church of Jerusalem the full scope of Saint Paul’s teaching (Galatians 2:2). Accordingly, although something may be read between the lines, the decree seems to treat the precepts of Noah as perpetually binding, places moral and positive obligations on the same level, and leaves the basis on which they are “necessary” as an open question.

Saint Paul, who had accepted it as a satisfactory settlement of the matter in debate, never refers to it, even when he discusses the chief point with which the decree dealt (1 Corinthians 8-10). In his narrative of what happened on this occasion (Galatians 2:1–10), there is no mention of it. For him, the private conference with the three great “pillars” of the Church was more significant than the decree of the synod. He felt able to discuss the whole question again on different grounds and with a more distinct reference to spiritual and ethical principles. It was wrong to eat things sacrificed to idols, not because the act of eating, in itself, brought defilement, but because it might involve participation in the sin of idolatry in the eater's consciousness or wound the conscience of the weaker brother who saw him eat.

It was natural that those who lacked his breadth of view would become slaves to the letter of these rules long after the grounds on which they rested had ceased to exist. Consequently, we find that the prohibition of blood was reaffirmed in the so-called Apostolic Canons (canon 62), in the fourth century by the Council of Gangra (canon 2), and in the seventh century by the Council at Constantinople, known as in Trullo (canon 67). This prohibition continues to be the binding rule of the Greek Church.

In Africa and Europe, however, sounder views prevailed (Augustine, Contra Faustum, Book 32, Chapter 13). Not even the most devout believer in the inspiration of the Apostles or in the authority of primitive antiquity would venture to argue that the last two of the four precepts enjoined here were in any degree binding. Hooker (Ecclesiastical Polity, Book IV, Chapter XI, Section 5) rightly refers to this decree as a crucial instance. It proves that commands might be divine and yet given only for a time, binding as long as the conditions to which they applied continued, but no longer.

Indeed, it would almost seem as if Saint Paul felt that the terms of the decree had the effect of placing the sin of impurity on the same level as eating things sacrificed to idols, things strangled, and blood. He may have felt this tended to prevent people from seeing impurity in its true hatefulness.

Those who claimed a right to eat things strangled or offered to idols—a right Saint Paul could not deny in the abstract—thought themselves free to fall back into the old license of the pagan world. He therefore needed far stronger motives than the council's canons to restrain them (1 Corinthians 5:9–10; 1 Corinthians 6:15–20). He found these motives in the truths that they had been bought with a price, that the will of God was their sanctification, and that their bodies were His temple.