‘What lengths are we willing to go, to win a theological argument?’ by Owen Lynch - 25 May 2025

From the series ‘A community of hope’ on the book Acts of the Apostles.

Script

We are studying the book of Acts together and you can listen to all of these talks on our podcast, or on Severn’s website. We are almost at the end of the book and what has become clear to me, is that what we traditionally call the early Christian church, was actually perceived then, as a revolutionary Jewish sect that threatened the stability of Jewish and Roman society.

It was a tumultuous time for the main characters in the story, principally Peter, Paul and James. There was much argument and division around issues of theology which over led to violence.

As we study Acts 22 and 23 today, I want to invite us to consider how far are we willing to go, to win a theological argument?

Acts 21:37-40

37 As the soldiers were about to take Paul into the barracks, he asked the commander, “May I say something to you?”

“Do you speak Greek?” he replied. 38 “Aren’t you the Egyptian who started a revolt and led four thousand terrorists out into the wilderness some time ago?”

39 Paul answered, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city [a regional capital]. Please let me speak to the people.”

40 After receiving the commander’s permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned to the crowd. When they were all silent, he said to them in Aramaic

Notice here that Paul is not what the Roman soldiers think he is. They think he is a revolutionary terrorist leader who mobilised a guerrilla army of 4000! This is a window into the febrile atmosphere of violence and insurrection that was endemic throughout the Roman Empire.

Anyway, Paul is a Jew of high social standing and so he is given permission to speak to the Jewish crowd.

Acts 22:1-21

1 “Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.”

2 When they heard him speak to them in Aramaic, they became very quiet.

Notice that they became silent, when they realised that he was one of their own, because he spoke the local language of Aramaic. The Roman soldier had the same response when he also realised that Paul was a Roman citizen - one of his own.

Do you ever notice the tendency to think the worst of, or behave unkindly to someone with whom you disagree strongly? Then when you actually talk to them deeply about the disagreement, you discover that they aren’t quite as disagreeable as you imagined that they are.

Recently, Liverpool mens football team won the Premier League, but sadly one of their key players - Trent Alexander Arnold has decided to leave the club to start a new contract with Real Madrid. Trent has helped Liverpool win two premier league titles and a European Champions league title. You might think that in his last two matches the fans would have celebrated his contribution with the song: “He’s one of our own, he’s one of our own, Trent Alexander he’s one of our own!”

But no, the Liverpool fans surprised many neutrals by booing Trent every time he touched the ball during his last two matches.

Now I imagine if everyone of those fans was able to sit down and chat to Trent about his reasons for leaving and get to know him a bit more, I imagine they may have had more grace and kindness for him.

But isn’t it human nature to think or speak badly of someone who has upset us or with whom we disagree passionately? We forget that they are one of our own, a fellow member of the human race and we want to silence them, hurt them, curse them, even kill them. That’s what happened to Paul here.

Paul tells them his story - he starts by telling them that he is one of their own:

Then Paul said: 3 “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city [Jerusalem]. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. 4 I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, 5 as the high priest and all the Council can themselves testify. I even obtained letters from them to their associates in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished.

6 “About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. 7 I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’

8 “‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked.

“ ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. 9 My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.

10 “‘What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked.

“ ‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’ 11 My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me.

12 “A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. 13 He stood beside me and said, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ And at that very moment I was able to see him.

14 “Then he said: ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. 15 You will be his witness to all people of what you have seen and heard. 16 And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.’

17 “When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying at the temple, I fell into a trance 18 and saw the Lord speaking to me. ‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Leave Jerusalem immediately, because the people here will not accept your testimony about me.’

19 “‘Lord,’ I replied, ‘these people know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. 20 And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’

21 “Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’ ” 22 The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!”

This crowd hears his story, but in this context they are not convinced. Perhaps it’s a bit like Trent with a microphone at the end of the match trying to convince 60,000 Liverpool fans inside Anfield about his reasons for leaving?

Perhaps if each one of the crowd spent time with Paul and listened with an open mind, they may see the person, feel the personal story and temper their anger and zeal. Perhaps not.

Paul’s speech falls flat and the crowd, whipped up into a religious ideological frenzy, call for his death.

Ironically, Paul is now the victim of the frenzied violence that he originally incited, prior to his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. Paul knows exactly how the crowd feel, he too was seduced by anger and violence in order to silence his adversaries.

Perhaps it was through his Damascus road experience of Christ, that Paul realised that the only way to deal with the systematic violence of human conflict is sacrificial love?

It requires sacrificial love to humbly get to know someone with whom you profoundly disagree. It is hard to listen and harder to live alongside someone with whom you passionately disagree.

The crowd surrounding Paul were acting out of fear and anxiety - in their minds perhaps Paul represents an existential threat to the Jewish way of life, the holiness of the temple and the purity of their traditions and values.

The Gentiles were the ubiquitous enemy, the ocean that would wash away the holiness and uniqueness of the Jewish people. So how can this Jesus to whom Paul testifies be anything other than the destroyer of Jewish life and identity? The crowd speaks from its place of anxiety and fear: kill this man, before he destroys us!

23 As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, 24 the commander ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this.

The Roman commander doesn’t have a clue why the crowd want to kill Paul, so he orders the use of violence and torture to get him to tell them his secrets! Surely, this crowd don’t want to kill Paul simply because of a difference of doctrine? The Roman commander is clearly not able to understand the fears and anxieties that were fuelling this mob violence.

But he does understand the Roman law and when he finds out that Paul is a Roman citizen by birth, he immediately withdraws the use of violence to interrogate Paul.

Instead he calls the Jewish leaders together for a more rational conversation with Paul away from the frenzied mob.

Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, “My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.” 2 At this the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth. 3 Then Paul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!”

Emotions are running high and here theological discussion breaks down into violence. All the fear and anxiety of the Jewish leaders is focussed on Paul and their fear gives birth to hatred and violence.

Theological discussion often ends this way. Perhaps not in violence, but perhaps with attempts to silence our critic, attempts to cancel them, or make a heretic out of them.

Paul’s response is to call out the hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders, but his response is also unsettling because it echos the laws of retribution, an eye for an eye, that Jesus repudiated. Perhaps Paul spoke instinctively out of his own shock at being assaulted.

Either way, Paul appears to apologise and changes tack by attempting to divide and conquer the Jewish leaders.

4 Those who were standing near Paul said, “How dare you insult God’s high priest!”

5 Paul replied, “Brothers, I did not realise that he was the high priest; for it is written: ‘Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people.’”

6 Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.” 7 When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 (The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees believe all these things.)

9 There was a great uproar, and some of the teachers of the law who were Pharisees stood up and argued vigorously. “We find nothing wrong with this man,” they said. “What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?” 10 The dispute became so violent that the commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them. He ordered the troops to go down and take him away from them by force and bring him into the barracks.

11 The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, “Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.”

Although this developed into a violent and terrifying tug of war with Paul as the rope between these two groups, it is hard to not laugh at the absurdity of the situation!

Paul’s description of the gospel as the “hope of the resurrection of the dead” capture something neither the Pharisees or the Sadducees are ready to hear. The Pharisees, because they did not accept that the resurrected Jesus was the Messiah; and the Sadducees, because they believed that there is no resurrection of the dead!

It’s a little glimpse into Paul’s theological genius and his appetite for mischief!

Just the mention of the resurrection of Christ opens this longstanding sectarian argument between two groups of Jews. Instead of love and respect for each others theological perspectives, they choose violence over hope and death over resurrection.

Luke alludes to Paul’s terror at being literally ripped to pieces by this riot of Jewish leaders, by noting that Jesus appeared to Paul in the night to encourage him - Paul must have been terrified at the ratcheting up of violence against him.

With good reason, because Luke goes on to tell us the following:

12 The next morning some Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul. 13 More than forty men were involved in this plot. 14 They went to the chief priests and the elders and said, “We have taken a solemn oath not to eat anything until we have killed Paul. 15 Now then, you and the Sanhedrin petition the commander to bring him before you on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about his case. We are ready to kill him before he gets here.”

16 But when the son of Paul’s sister heard of this plot, he went into the barracks and told Paul.

There have been plots against Paul’s life before this, but this is different, because those forty assassins commit themselves to a long, slow, agonising death if they do not succeed in killing Paul!!

This is religious extremism on the level of suicide bombers! They have lost their minds! We don’t know if they kept their vow and starved to death, but tradition has it that Paul was legally executed in Rome, so they either starved to death or broke their religious vow.

Just like Ananias the High Priest, these men became hypocrites, because in their anger and passion for their idea of righteousness they became very unrighteous in their actions. They exchanged death for resurrection and violence for hope.

I wonder if we do that?

As Christians, are we so passionate to be righteous, that our passion leads to unrighteous behaviour?

How far are we willing to go, to win a theological argument?

Are we willing to respect other people’s theological perspectives, or is it only us that has the truth?

Are we willing to behave unrighteously in our pursuit of righteousness?

These are the difficult questions that the gospel of Jesus asks of each of us.

Let’s pray.

More in this series