# Paul, Idol Food, and the Jerusalem Council **P**AUL\'s teaching on food sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 8-10 has sparked considerable debate among scholars. Many have come to the conclusion that Paul takes a position on this issue that directly contradicts the position of the early Church. It is said that Paul himself considers eating idol food a matter of indifference, and yet the consumption of idol food was forbidden by the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:29; 21:25; Rev 2:14, 20) and by the writings of the early Christian centuries (*Didache,* Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria). Is it true that Paul considered idol food *harmless* when the rest of Christianity considered it *dangerous?* Or is it possible that this conflict is more apparent than real and that Paul held a position in agreement with the rest of early Christian teaching? Attempts to ease the tension between Paul and the Jerusalem Council approach the issue from different directions. **1.** Some argue that Paul believed idol food was actually contaminated by demonic influences and thus objectively dangerous (1 Cor 10:20-22). This would seem to move Paul into harmony with the Jerusalem Council, which forbade Gentile Christians to eat it, yet it fails to account for other statements at the beginning and end of his argument. How, for instance, could Paul say that the Corinthians were technically at \"liberty\" to eat it (1 Cor 8:9)? And why would he permit them to eat idol food that was sold in the marketplace, so long as no one else would be scandalized by it (1 Cor 10:23-30)? Paul could not have made such statements if he believed idol food was always and everywhere dangerous. **2.** Others argue that the decree of the Jerusalem Council was primarily concerned about idolatry and not idol food per se, for the decree mandates abstinence from \"what has been sacrificed to idols\" (Acts 15:29). This view is true to an extent, but it remains a fact that the Council imposed an eating restriction on the Gentiles, not just a ban on false worship. It is because these solutions prove unsatisfactory that we must look for another. It seems undeniable that Paul sees nothing intrinsically wrong with idol food that makes it objectively different from any other food that God has given us (1 Cor 8:8-9; 10:23-30). What concerns Paul in 1 Cor 8-10 is the danger of participating in conscious idolatry (1 Cor 10:14). The position of the Jerusalem Council, however, is more difficult to assess. According to many scholars, the apostles must have believed that idol food was contaminated with evil. This interpretation is understandable, given the firmness of the prohibition, but it is ultimately unfounded. Nowhere does the NT state that this is the theological rationale underlying the pastoral program of the Council. In fact, from the hindsight of Church history, we can state with certainty that the Council did not hold that eating food consecrated to idols was intrinsically sacrilegious. The Council of Florence declared in 1442 that the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15:22-29 was only a temporary restriction placed upon the Gentiles to encourage fellowship between Jewish and Gentile converts in the early Church. This restriction was lifted once these ethnic circumstances had changed. So the prohibition against idol food in the Apostolic Decree was a temporary rather than a timeless measure to help Gentiles make a clean break with their native pagan culture. Its goal was, not to promote a distinctively Christian diet, but to bring Gentile converts together with Jewish Christians into a single community of fellowship and life. These clarifications help to demonstrate that Paul and the Jerusalem Council were not in conflict at the theological level. Paul\'s *theological* assessment that idol food is technically harmless is essentially no different from that of the Jerusalem Decree, since the force of the decree was relaxed later in history when the ethnic situation that made it necessary was no longer a factor. Paul took a different *pastoral* approach, however, because he addressed a different pastoral situation from that envisioned by the Jerusalem Council. The reason Paul sometimes allows what the Council forbids is that the idol food controversy in Corinth was an intramural problem among Gentiles that had nothing to do with Jewish-Gentile relations in the early Christian community. In the end, it is the combined light of biblical exegesis and the Church\'s dogmatic tradition that points the way toward a solution to this problem. It leads us to see that Paul had a much deeper insight into the issues underlying the Jerusalem Decree than many have recognized in modern times. « Back to 1 Corinthians 9:1. --- > Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch, *The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: New Testament*, Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010).