Two Lees and the Council of Jerusalem

[OBW]

What I find most notable about the Jerusalem decree was not that it made the small restriction on the Gentile churches, but that it freed them from most of the restrictions that the Jews practiced out of history (rightly or wrongly). When you consider the full complaint of the Gentiles, the letter was more like freedom from Jewish ritual than a list of restrictions. (Yes there was a little restriction, but nothing like what had been pushed by the Judaizers.)

And I'm not sure that they really considered the Jews bound to the old rituals as much as free to continue them as to God. Hard to tell. They really didn't say that Jews were bound to them, only that Gentiles were free from them. In the same way, the Jews should be free to follow them.

In any case, the letter did not decree a sameness, but instead decreed a freedom to be different. It seems that Lee completely missed the point of the Jerusalem conference and its result. Or worse, he got it backward. Instead of dictating a change from one sameness to a new sameness, the brothers in Jerusalem freed the Gentiles (and probably the Jews) from any requirement to be "the same."