Main news for 21 October 2022

Representatives of Roman authority in the provinces reacted differently to accusations against Paul himself and other Christians. Sometimes they took the side of orthodox Jews, and sometimes they preferred not to interfere in the situation, as happened in Achaia. This is understandable: the authorities had no formal legal ground for intervention; the ground could only be political, and this had already become clear in the story of Pilate, who confirmed the death sentence against Jesus for purely political reasons.

In Achaia everything happened differently. The local proconsul, Gallio, preferred to remain faithful to Roman laws and Roman ideas of fairness and justice. He said directly to the Jews who came to him with a complaint that their complaint concerned only their internal affairs and disputes, and that Roman law in this case had not been violated. Therefore the authorities had no reason to interfere in this conflict. The proconsul's mention of a certain 'dispute about names' is interesting. Evidently in the diaspora communities Paul spoke about the same thing that all the apostles spoke about in Judea: about the name of Jesus, by calling on which one can be saved. Already then, in Judea, this preaching had caused at least bewilderment and resistance from the Sanhedrin.

Apparently now in the diaspora, disputes about the name became an echo of those disputes in Judea that had provoked sanctions from the religious authorities there. But these disputes in any case did not concern the Roman authorities; that is what the proconsul believed. This does not mean that Roman authorities allowed complete freedom of religious life. All religious communities had to be officially registered, and registration was allowed only for representatives of religions considered 'traditional' in the Roman Empire: the Roman cults themselves and the traditional cults of peoples conquered by Rome.

But the Synagogue was officially registered, Judaism was considered a traditional religion, and the authorities had no legal grounds to interfere in an internal communal dispute. In this sense the proconsul answers the Jews who came to him with the complaint. It would seem to be a normal answer, but... from Pilate, for example, such a normal answer could not be obtained. Of course, Achaia is not Jerusalem, the situation there was far less tense, and the scale of the conflict is incomparable. But the choice always remains with the person.

Of course, here it is not yet the choice of a Christian, not a choice between the Kingdom and the evil in which the world lies. But any choice between truth, as a person understands it, and falsehood either brings a person closer to the Kingdom or moves him away from the Kingdom. Regardless of what the person himself thinks about this, and even regardless of whether he knows about the Kingdom or thinks about God. Spiritual laws are the same for all. And choice is always a spiritual phenomenon. As is the action that follows it.