The Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15): How the First Church Decided and Why It Matters for Today

About the year 50, a question threatened to split the young Church: must a Gentile become a Jew in order to be a Christian? The answer did not come from a lone teacher, nor from each believer reading a text alone. The apostles and elders met in Jerusalem, heard what God had done, searched the Scriptures, and wrote in words every later council would borrow: "it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us" (Acts 15:28).¹ That meeting is the pattern of how the Orthodox Church still decides.

This article follows the Council through Acts 15 and Galatians 2, asks who led it, traces the decree in East and West, and answers two modern readings: that the Bible alone is enough, and that Gentiles must keep the Law. For the later councils, see how the Orthodox Church knows which councils are ecumenical and what the seven councils decided; for the wider biblical case, The Biblical Case for Holy Tradition and our Why Orthodoxy page.

In brief

Men from Judea taught the Gentile believers at Antioch, "Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved" (Acts 15:1). Paul and Barnabas went up to Jerusalem "unto the apostles and elders about this question" (15:2). After much debate Peter spoke, Barnabas and Paul reported, and James gave the sentence. The apostles, elders and brethren wrote a letter freeing the Gentiles from circumcision and asking them to keep from four things: what is offered to idols, blood, things strangled, and fornication.

Thesis: Acts 15 shows the Church deciding in council, under the Holy Spirit, with Scripture, the testimony of experience and apostolic authority acting together. It gives no support to a Peter ruling above the council, none to the idea that each believer settles such questions with the Bible alone, and none to the view that Gentile Christians must keep the Law.

The crisis

The first Christians were Jews, and for some years the Church was almost wholly Jewish. The question was forced on her by events. The Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius and his household while Peter was still speaking, and Peter asked, "Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?" (Acts 10:47). When he came up to Jerusalem, "they that were of the circumcision contended with him" (11:2); they were silenced by what God had done: "Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life" (11:18).

At Antioch the claim grew harder. It was no longer whether Gentiles might be admitted but whether they could be saved without circumcision. St John Chrysostom notes how grave it was: the teachers "did not merely speak of circumcision, but they said, You cannot even be saved. Whereas the very opposite to this was the case, that receiving circumcision they could not be saved."² Paul says the same of Gentile believers in Galatia who were turning to circumcision: "if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing" (Galatians 5:2). The Council concerned the sufficiency of Christ.

How the Council proceeded

The church at Antioch did not decide alone, and Paul did not announce his apostolic authority. They "determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem" (Acts 15:2). There the delegates "were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders," and some Pharisees who believed insisted "that it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses" (15:4-5). Then "the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter" (15:6). Four things followed.

1. Debate. "There had been much disputing" (15:7).
2. Peter's testimony. God "made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel," and "put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith." Peter asked, "why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?" and confessed: "we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they" (15:7-11).
3. The report of Barnabas and Paul. "All the multitude kept silence," while they described "what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them" (15:12).
4. James's judgment from Scripture. James said, "Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. And to this agree the words of the prophets," and quoted Amos 9:11-12. He concluded, "my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God: But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood" (15:13-20).

The Spirit's work among the Gentiles and the Spirit's word in Amos agreed; the assembly read the one in the light of the other. The Fathers of the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553) drew the same lesson. The apostles, though the grace of the Holy Spirit abounded in each, "were not willing to define on the question then raised touching the circumcision of the Gentiles, until being gathered together they had confirmed their own several sayings by the testimony of the divine Scriptures." They add that later councils settled disputes the same way, since "by common discussion when the matter in dispute was presented by each side, the light of truth expels the darkness of falsehood."³

{{very-strong: Acts 15 records a decision of the Jerusalem church, apostles and elders together, that Gentile Christians need not be circumcised or keep the Law of Moses.}}

Who led the Council: Peter or James?

The Roman Catholic reading deserves its strongest statement. The Catholic Encyclopedia says that "Peter naturally exercised a decisive influence. When a great divergence of views had manifested itself in the assembly, Peter spoke the deciding word," and that James "adopted Peter's view."⁴ This rests on real features of the text: Peter's is the first recorded speech, and James begins with "Simeon hath declared."

Orthodoxy honours St Peter as a leading apostle and chief spokesman of the Twelve, and his testimony weighs heavily. But four features of Acts 15 point away from a Peter who rules the council.

• James gives the sentence. The speaker who says "my sentence is" is James (15:19). Chrysostom writes: "No word speaks John here, no word the other Apostles, but held their peace, for James was invested with the chief rule." He observes that "Peter indeed spoke more strongly, but James here more mildly: for thus it behooves one in high authority," and recalls the tradition that "This (James) was bishop, as they say, and therefore he speaks last."⁵
• The same pattern appears elsewhere. Peter, freed from prison, says "Go shew these things unto James, and to the brethren" (12:17). Paul "went in with us unto James; and all the elders were present" (21:18). In Galatians 2:9 the pillars are "James, Cephas, and John," with James first. Eusebius preserves from Clement of Alexandria the report that "Peter and James and John after the ascension of our Saviour, as if also preferred by our Lord, strove not after honor, but chose James the Just bishop of Jerusalem."⁶
• The letter is the whole assembly's. It opens "The apostles and elders and brethren send greeting" (15:23) and speaks of what "seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord" (15:25). It does not mention Peter at all.
• Peter was not beyond correction. At Antioch, in a related episode, Paul "withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed" (Galatians 2:11).

What Acts 15 shows is what the Orthodox Church has always said: Peter was a leading apostle and a weighty witness. It does not show a Peter whose personal sentence settles questions for the rest, or a bishop of Rome inheriting such a role; the one whose sentence Chrysostom says was spoken "with authority" is James, the bishop of the local church. The Roman claim of universal jurisdiction and infallible teaching cannot be read out of this chapter, and the Orthodox Church holds that claim to be an error. See how the Fathers read Matthew 16:18, whether Peter was ever in Rome, the early Church and papal supremacy and what the councils said about Rome.

{{strong: In Acts 15 James gives the sentence, the letter goes out in the name of the apostles, elders and brethren, and Peter is a leading witness, not a judge over the council.}}

The decree and how the Church kept it

The letter said that the troublers had gone out "from us" without commission, "to whom we gave no such commandment," and that "it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication" (Acts 15:24, 28-29). Paul and Silas then "delivered them the decrees for to keep" in the cities (16:4), and years later James and the elders reminded Paul that the Gentiles were to "keep themselves from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication" (21:25). The decree was received as binding.

What the four things meant

Idolatry and fornication need no explanation. The Didache takes the same line on food: "against that which is sacrificed to idols be exceedingly on your guard; for it is the service of dead gods."⁷ Paul handled the practical cases pastorally, allowing market meat but forbidding the pagan temple feast, because "ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils" (1 Corinthians 10:21).

The ban on blood is less obvious, and the early Church did not read it only one way. Some texts of Acts, the so-called Western text, give the decree in another form. St Irenaeus quotes James as saying that the Gentiles are to "abstain from the vanities of idols, and from fornication, and from blood; and whatsoever they wish not to be done to themselves, let them not do to others."⁸ There "blood" is easily taken as bloodshed, and a moral rule is added. Tertullian likewise took "the interdict upon blood" to be "much more upon human blood," and treated the decree as the first rule the apostles sent out "on the authority of the Holy Spirit."⁹ (He wrote that treatise as a Montanist, outside the Church; the point here is only that he treated the decree as binding.) Others kept the food rule literally. In the persecution at Lyons (usually dated 177) Biblias, under torture, answered the charge that Christians ate children: "How," she said, "could those eat children who do not think it lawful to taste the blood even of irrational animals?"¹⁰ Tertullian, defending Christians in North Africa, says they abstain "from things strangled and that die a natural death."¹¹

East and West

The halves of the Church later parted on the food law. St Augustine, replying to the Manichaean Faustus, noted that the decree was read in two ways, as forbidding animal blood or the crime of murder, and said "It would take too long to settle this question." If it meant animal blood, he thought, the apostles chose "an easy observance" for the time when Jew and Gentile were being joined in one Church; "no Christian feels bound to abstain from thrushes or small birds because their blood has not been poured out."¹² In the Latin West the food rule lapsed. In the East it was kept. Canon 67 of the Council in Trullo (692), whose canons the Orthodox Church receives (Pope Sergius I refused to sign them, and later popes accepted them only in part), says: "The divine Scripture commands us to abstain from blood, from things strangled, and from fornication... If anyone henceforth venture to eat in any way the blood of an animal, if he be a clergyman, let him be deposed; if a layman, let him be cut off."¹³ How strictly this is applied today varies by region and by pastor.

{{strong: The apostolic decree was received as binding by the early churches. East and West later differed on its food rule: the Orthodox Church kept it in her canons, while the West let it lapse.}}

Acts 15 and Galatians 2

Paul also describes a Jerusalem meeting. He went up "by revelation" with Barnabas and Titus and set before the leaders the gospel he preached among the Gentiles; "neither Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised." The pillars saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision had been committed to him as that of the circumcision was to Peter, and "gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship" (Galatians 2:1-9).

Many interpreters identify this visit with Acts 15: Luke tells the public meeting, Paul what it meant for his mission. Others, such as William Ramsay, date Galatians before the Council and so read Galatians 2 as an earlier visit, the famine visit of Acts 11:30; the Catholic Encyclopedia notes that this solution was offered "to obviate apparent discrepancies between Galatians 2 and Acts 15."¹⁴ The question is open in scholarship. The Church's teaching does not hang on it: both accounts agree that the Gentiles were not to be circumcised and that the Jerusalem church received the Gentile mission. See Paul in Acts versus Paul's own letters and Did Paul hijack the Jerusalem church?

What the Council settles

Does the Church need councils, or is the Bible enough?

The classic Protestant statement is the Westminster Confession (for the doctrine behind it, see What is sola scriptura? and Did the early Church believe it?). It allows that "it belongeth to synods and councils, ministerially to determine controversies of faith," but concludes: "All synods or councils, since the Apostles' times, whether general or particular, may err; and many have erred. Therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith, or practice; but to be used as a help in both."¹⁵ Councils are not above Scripture, and the Orthodox Church agrees: a council is received because it confesses what the Church has always believed, not because it adds a revelation.

But Acts 15 shows what Westminster does not allow. The apostles did not settle the dispute with texts alone; Amos was read in the light of the Spirit's work among the Gentiles. They issued a letter that bound the churches ("the decrees for to keep," 16:4) in the language of the Spirit's guidance. Christ had promised that where two or three are gathered in his name he is in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20), and that the Spirit of truth would "guide you into all truth" (John 16:13). Westminster exempts the apostles' own council from its rule, but Christ's promise of the Spirit was made to the Church and did not end with the apostles' lifetime. A council is received as ecumenical when its definition is received by the whole body, and the principle that each reader settles Scripture alone is an error that finds no support in Acts 15. {{very-strong: Acts 15 gives the Church a model of authoritative decision in council, distinct from decision by individual interpretation alone.}}

Must Gentile Christians keep the Law?

Some groups today, among them Hebrew Roots and other Torah-observant movements, argue that Gentile believers must keep the Sabbath, food laws and feasts of Moses. They often point to Acts 15:21, "For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day," as showing that the four commands were a beginning, to be followed by more as the Gentiles learned the Law. One such ministry, 119 Ministries, says the apostles "welcomed Gentiles with four starting rules" and then "pointed them to learn Torah in the synagogues each Sabbath."¹⁶ The reading does not fit the text. The letter calls the demand for the Law a subversion of souls to which "we gave no such commandment" (15:24) and lays on the Gentiles "no greater burden than these necessary things" (15:28). Peter calls the Law "a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear" (15:10). Chrysostom reads verse 21 differently: James gives the four commands "not as from Moses but from the Apostles," and mentions the Law only to honour it: "Since then they had heard of the Law, with good reason he enjoins these things from the Law, that he may not seem to make it of no authority."⁵ Paul's judgment in Galatians 5:2 is the same. The Church keeps the moral commandments and the Scriptures as Christ's body, but not the ceremonial law as a requirement for salvation. See Did Paul abolish the Law of Moses?

How does the Church decide today?

Every later council, from Nicaea (325) through Constantinople (381) and Ephesus (431) to Nicaea II (787), followed the same pattern in outline: bishops gathered, heard the arguments, tested them by Scripture and by what the Church had received, and spoke for the whole body. The Orthodox Church receives the seven councils as ecumenical because she recognises in them the same Spirit and the same faith, and no decision of a single man, whatever his throne, can replace that pattern.

What we can say confidently

• The Antioch church sent Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem, where the apostles and elders met and decided that Gentile believers need not be circumcised or keep the Law of Moses (Acts 15:1-29).
• James gave the concluding sentence, and the letter went out in the name of the apostles, elders and brethren with the words "it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us."
• The decree was delivered to the churches as binding (Acts 16:4; 21:25); the East still has its food rule in her canons (Trullo, Canon 67).
• Acts 15 shows neither a Peter who rules the council nor a Church that decides by private reading of the Bible alone.

What remains disputed

• Whether Galatians 2:1-10 describes the same meeting as Acts 15 or an earlier visit (Acts 11:30) is debated by scholars; the Church's teaching does not depend on it.
• Which form of the decree is original, the ritual one (idols, blood, strangled, fornication) or the shorter "ethical" one found in some Western witnesses, is a question of textual criticism; the early Fathers knew both.
• How strictly the food rule should be applied today is a pastoral question on which Orthodox jurisdictions and priests differ.

Conclusion

The first Council answered a question that could have broken the Church in two, and its way of answering became the model for all that followed. It met, listened to what God had done, read the prophets, and spoke as a body in the Spirit. The Orthodox Church, which keeps the apostolic faith and the apostolic way of deciding, still does so, and her bishops still write, with the apostles, "it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us." To see the passages gathered, continue to Why Orthodoxy.

Notes

1. Scripture is quoted from the King James Version (1769 text), checked against the KJV text served by this site's Bible reader (https://honestapologist.com/api/bible/connections/texts?v=kjv); words the KJV prints in italics are given without brackets.
2. St John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily 32 (on Acts 15:1-2), trans. J. Walker, J. Sheppard and H. Browne, rev. George B. Stevens, NPNF1 vol. 11, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/210132.htm.
3. Second Council of Constantinople (553), the Sentence of the Synod, trans. Henry R. Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3812.htm.
4. Johann Peter Kirsch, "St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 11 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1911), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11744a.htm.
5. St John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily 33 (on Acts 15:12-21), NPNF1 vol. 11, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/210133.htm. Bracketed alphabetic markers in the translation are omitted.
6. Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History 2.1.3-4 (quoting Clement of Alexandria, Hypotyposes 6), trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, NPNF2 vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250102.htm.
7. The Didache 6.2-3, trans. Roberts and Donaldson (New Advent text), https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm.
8. St Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.12.14, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, ANF vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103312.htm. On the Western form of the decree, which Codex Bezae (D) and a few other witnesses give without "things strangled" and with a negative form of the Golden Rule added, see the textual notes on Acts 15:29 in the NET Bible, https://biblia.com/bible/gs-netbible/acts/15/23-29, which judge that form a later expansion of the text.
9. Tertullian, On Modesty 12, trans. S. Thelwall, ANF vol. 4, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0407.htm. That Tertullian wrote it as a Montanist, denying forgiveness for the gravest sins: John Chapman, "Tertullian," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 14 (1912), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14520c.htm.
10. Eusebius, Church History 5.1.25-26 (the letter of the churches of Lyons and Vienne), NPNF2 vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250105.htm. Eusebius places the persecution "in the seventeenth year of the Emperor Antoninus Verus" (Marcus Aurelius), that is, 177 (Book 5, preface).
11. Tertullian, Apology 9, trans. S. Thelwall, ANF vol. 3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0301.htm.
12. St Augustine, Reply to Faustus the Manichaean 32.13, trans. Richard Stothert, NPNF1 vol. 4, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/140632.htm.
13. Council in Trullo (Quinisext, 692), Canon 67, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm. On Rome's reception (Pope Sergius I's refusal to sign; Pope John VIII's acceptance of only "those canons which did not contradict the true faith, good morals, and the decrees of Rome"), see Henry R. Percival's Historical Introduction to the council in the same volume, as reproduced in the Internet Medieval Sourcebook, https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/basis/trullo.asp.
14. Cornelius Aherne, "Epistle to the Galatians," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 6 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1909), "Date of the epistle," https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06336a.htm.
15. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chapter 31, "Of Synods and Councils," sections 2 and 3, as published by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, https://www.opc.org/wcf.html.
16. 119 Ministries, "Moses is Proclaimed Every Sabbath in the Synagogues (Acts 15:21)," teaching page dated 26 August 2025, https://119ministries.com/sermon/moses-is-proclaimed-every-sabbath-in-the-synagogues-acts-1521 (page summary, read 2026-11-06).

Bibliography

Scripture

• The Holy Bible, King James Version (1769 text).

Fathers, councils and early texts

• The Didache. New Advent text.
• Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies, Book 3. ANF vol. 1.
• Tertullian. Apology. ANF vol. 3. On Modesty. ANF vol. 4.
• Eusebius of Caesarea. Church History. NPNF2 vol. 1.
• Augustine of Hippo. Reply to Faustus the Manichaean. NPNF1 vol. 4.
• John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles. NPNF1 vol. 11.
• Second Council of Constantinople (553), Sentence of the Synod, and the Council in Trullo (692), Canons. NPNF2 vol. 14.

Catholic and Protestant sources

• Kirsch, J. P. "St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles." The Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 11, 1911.
• The Westminster Confession of Faith. Orthodox Presbyterian Church edition.
• Aherne, Cornelius. "Epistle to the Galatians." The Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 6, 1909.
• Chapman, John. "Tertullian." The Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 14, 1912.
• Percival, Henry R. Historical Introduction to the Council in Trullo. NPNF2 vol. 14.
• NET Bible, textual notes on Acts 15:29.

Hebrew Roots source

• 119 Ministries. "Moses is Proclaimed Every Sabbath in the Synagogues (Acts 15:21)." 2025.