[OBW]

KSA,

While I generally agree with the notion that it is not something human that is the authority but rather the Holy Spirit, it would appear that Acts 15 shows something of the authority of the church.

But that authority was not something presumed, but was the result of an interaction between a group of believers and the Holy Spirit. I think that this was what Jesus was speaking when he said he would build his church and that he gave the “keys.”

While I have not done original research, I have found others who indicate that the “keys,” binding and loosing, even fulfilling and destroying the law were terms well understood by the disciples as “tools of the trade” of the Jewish religious leaders and teachers of the law, rabbis, etc. They sought to properly live the law (fulfill it) rather than live contrary to it (destroy it). They would bind (deny) or loose (allow) consistent with their understanding of scripture applied to real life. That is exactly what that council did in Acts 15.

In that manner, there is authority in the church. For centuries we have seen abuse of this granting of authority in the RCC, and now more recently in the LC. The answer is not every man for himself. As individuals, our clarity concerning any “word” from the Holy Spirit is suspect. But in Biblical community, in the church, there is a place for testing of our private considerations. In Acts, one might have decided that the answer was more severe than what was actually recorded. Another might have thought, just leave them alone. (We might agree with that today). But these men joined in prayer and consideration, then put aside their personal preference for the sense of the group from their deliberations. It seemed good to both them and the Holy Spirit. And they ate some crow in the process. They were effectively admitting that they had not acted righteously toward their Gentile brothers.

Unfortunately, that is not what we see from the LC. It is about subservience to another human based on some notion of spiritual superiority. Their goals are not the furtherance of the growth of their flocks, but the perpetuation of their system which grants them authority and pays their salaries. They deflect criticism at all costs. The Gentiles might have been quarantined if they had dared to send that letter to Anaheim instead of Jerusalem.