Additional Information on Peter with Cornelius
Farrell Till jftill@midwest.net
Tue, 4 Nov 1997 00:34:40 -0600 (CST) (00878646880, 199711040634.AAA18135@cdale3.midwest.net)
At 08:12 PM 11/3/97 -0000, Matt Bell wrote:
>MATT
>In the discussion between Farrell and myself on the conversion of Cornelius
>the focus has been on Acts 10 and Acts 11. There is however, another passage
>in Acts which relates, in summary, the same account. It is to found in Acts
>15 in the context of a dispute about whether or not one had to be
>circumcised in order to be saved. The relevant verses are from 7-12:
>
>'7 And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto
>them, Men [and] brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice
>among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel,
>and believe.
> 8 And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the
>Holy Ghost, even as [he did] unto us;
> 9 And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by
>faith.
> 10 Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the
>disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?
> 11 But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall
>be saved, even as they.'
>
TILL
Matt, I have seen biblicists struggle before but not many who have done so
as you are now. Acts 15 says nothing--absolutely NOTHING--that affects the
argument I have posted several times on this issue.
Cornelius was told by an angel to send men to Joppa to fetch Simon Peter who
would speak to him words WHEREBY he and his household could be saved (Acts
11:14).
Peter said to the Jews in Judea that the Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius and
his household as Peter BEGAN to speak (11:15).
This statement is more time specific than Acts 10:44, which says only that
the Holy Spirit fell on the household of Cornelius while he (Peter) YET was
speaking.
There is no inconsistency between Acts 10:44 and 11:15, and if the present
controversy had never been introduced to the list and some errantist should
have cited these two verses as an example of chronological discrepancy, what
does everyone think Matt Bell's position would be? Does anyone think for
one minute that he would say, "Yes, this is definitely a discrepancy. One
verse says that the Holy Spirit fell on them WHILE he yet spoke, and the
other one says that the Holy Spirit fell on them as he BEGAN to speak.
So now, Matt, here is a question for you: Is there a discrepancy in these
two statements? If not, then you have to agree that the Holy Spirit fell on
Cornelius and his household as Peter BEGAN to speak. If it fell on them as
he BEGAN to speak, then it fell on them BEFORE they had heard Peter speak
the words by which they could be saved.
Now would you please cite specifically where Acts 15 in any way indicates
that the Holy Spirit did not fall on Cornelius and his household as Peter
BEGAN to speak. For some reason, Matt, you don't want to deal with this
argument, and I think that the reason why you don't is rather obvious.
MATT
>I am sure that Farrell will find some means to squeeze this into his
>semantic games with Acts 11, but for me it is decisive in what happened:
>
>1. The Gentiles (Cornelius and his household) heard 'the word of the
>gospel'.
>2. On hearing the word of the gospel they did 'believe'.
>3. God bore witness to their belief in the gospel by 'giving them the Holy
>Ghost'
>4. God acted 'purifying their hearts by faith'.
>
>This taken alongside Acts 10&11, and taking the plain meaning of the
>passages tell us clearly what happened on that day and the order in which it
>happened. The water baptism was there, and rightly so, but not as relating
>to their salvation.
TILL
Point 4 is easy to answer, Matt. As I have pointed out to Esposito, the
faith that saves or justifies in the NT is a faith that is indicated by
actions, and so God purified the hearts of these Gentiles as a result of
their obedient faith. What's the big mystery?
But let's talk a bit more about your third point above, Matt. Please cite
where Acts 15 says that God "bore witness to their belief in the gospel."
The verse merely says that "God, who knows the heart, bore them witness,
giving them the Holy Spirit, even as he did to us" (v:8). This doesn't say
that God gave them the Holy Spirit to bear witness to their belief in the
gospel; it merely says that God bore them witness by giving them the Holy
Spirit. So what did the Holy Spirit bear witness to?
Let's let scripture interpret scripture to answer that question. You
believe in that hermeneutic principle, don't you? In Acts 10, which records
the account of what presumably happened at Cornelius's house and not what
Peter later said happened there, Luke stated that the Jews who had come with
Peter were amazed when they saw that Holy Spirit had fallen on the Gentiles,
so Peter said to them, "Can any man forbid the water that these should not
be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we" (v:47)? From
this statement, it sounds very much as if the Holy Spirit had fallen on the
household of Cornelius not as a witness of their faith but as a witness to
their entitlement to be baptized and added to the church just as the Jews
had been.
In chapter 11, when Peter was defending his actions before the Jews in
Judea, he summarized what had happened: (1) An angel had told Cornelius to
send men to Joppa to bring back Peter who would speak to him words by which
he could be saved. (2) The Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius and his household
as Peter BEGAN to speak those words. (3) Peter then remembered the words
of Jesus, who had said, "John indeed baptized with water, but you will be
baptized in the Holy Spirit."
So after saying all of this, what did Peter then conclude? He then asked
who he was to withstand the God who had given to the Gentiles the "like
gift" that he had given to the apostles. Again, this sounds very much as if
Peter was saying that he saw the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as evidence
that the Gentiles were entitled to hear and obey the gospel.
You may argue that Acts 15:8 says that God, who knows the heart, bore them
witness, and so the Holy Spirit was a witness to what God knew was in their
hearts. Well, I've already noted in earlier postings that Cornelius was
introduced into the book of Acts (before Peter appeared on the scene) as a
"devout man, who feared God with all his house, who gave much alms to the
people and prayed to God always" (Acts 10:2). So what was in his heart was
already known.
Let's just assume, however, that all of this happened just as recorded in
the book of Acts and that Peter actually did say to the Jews in Jerusalem
that God had given the Holy Spirit to Cornelius as a "witness to his belief
in the gospel." My response to that would be, "So what?" How would this
prove that a person is saved before baptism? What Matt needs to do is find
a text that says that God poured out the Holy Spirit on Cornelius and his
household as a witness that they had been saved. Since the outpouring of
the Holy Spirit happened before their baptism in water, this would be
conclusive evidence that Matt is right and that the NT does not teach that
baptism is necessary for salvation. The only problem is that Matt is not
going to find any such statement in the NT.
What he was actually doing in this posting was begging two questions: (1)
One is saved only by belief in the gospel. (2) Baptism in the Holy Spirit
is given to all people who are saved by believing the gospel. Unfortunately
for him, neither one of these doctrines is taught in the NT, so he is going
to have to prove these questions rather than just begging them.
Let's hope that in his next posting he will try to answer my argument based
on the fact that the NT clearly states that the Holy Spirit fell on
Cornelius as Peter BEGAN to speak. If he's not careful, some on this list
might get the idea that he can't answer the argument.
Farrell Till
Skepticism, Inc.
jftill@midwest.net