Chapter VII: Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles (4)

such circumstances than the circumcision with his own hands of a convert who, if the son of a Jewess, was likewise the son of a Greek, and had remained uncircumcised until he had actually embraced that faith which, Paul taught, superseded circumcision? The Apostle who declared: "Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing,"(1) could not have circumcised the Christian Timothy; and if any utterance of Paul more distinctly and explicitly applicable to the present case be required, it is aptly supplied by the following: "Was any man called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised. Hath any man been called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised.... Let each abide in the same calling wherein he was called."(2)

Apologists quote very glibly the saying of Paul: "Unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain Jews," as sufficiently justifying the act which we are considering; but it is neither applicable to the case, nor is the passage susceptible of such interpretation. The special object of Paul at that time, according to his own showing,(3) was not to gain Jews but to gain Gentiles; and the circumcision of Timothy would certainly not have tended to gain Gentiles. If we quote the whole passage from which the above is extracted, the sense at once becomes clear and different from that assigned to it: "For being free from all men, I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more; and unto the Jews I became as a Jew that I might gain Jews; to them under law, as under law, not being myself under law, that I might gain them under law; to them without law, as without law,--not being without law to God, but under law to Christ,--

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that I might gain them without law; to the weak I became weak that I might gain the weak: I am become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. And all things I do for the Gospel's sake, that I may become a partaker thereof with them."(l) It is clear that a man who could become "all things to all men," in the sense of yielding any point of principle, must be considered without principle at all, and no one could maintain that Paul was apt to concede principles. Judged by his own statements, indeed, his character was the very reverse of this. There is no shade of conciliation when he declares: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach any Gospel unto you other than that we preached unto you, let him be accursed.... For am I now making men my friends, or God? or am I seeking to please men? if I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ."(2) The Gospel of which he speaks, and which he protests "is not after men," but received "through a revelation of Jesus Christ,"(3) is that Gospel which Paul preached among the Gentiles, and which proclaimed the abrogation of the law and of circumcision. Paul might in one sense say that "circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God;"(4) but such a statement, simply intended to express that there was neither merit in the one nor in the other, clearly does not apply to the case before us, and no way lessens the force of the words we have quoted above: "If ye be circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing." In Paul such a concession would have been in the highest degree a sacrifice of principle, and one which he not only refused to make in the case of Titus, "that the truth of the

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Gospel might abide," but equally maintained in the face of the pillar Apostles, when he left them and returned to the Gentiles whilst they went back to the circumcision. Paul's idea of being "all things to all men" is illustrated by his rebuke to Peter,--once more to refer to the scene at Antioch. Peter apparently practised a little of that conciliation, which apologists, defending the unknown author of the Acts at the expense of Paul, consider to be the sense of the Apostle's words. Paul repudiated such an inference, by withstanding Peter to the face as condemned, and guilty of hypocrisy. Paul became all things to all men by considering their feelings, and exhibiting charity and forbearance, in matters indifferent He was careful not to make his liberty a stumbling block to the weak. "If food maketh my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh for ever lest I make my brother to offend."(1) Self-abnegation in the use of enlightened liberty, however, is a very different thing from the concession of a rite, which it was the purpose of his whole Gospel to discredit, and the labour of his life to resist. Once more we repeat that the narrative of the Acts regarding the circumcision of Timothy is contradictory to the character and teaching of Paul as ascertained from his Epistles, and like so many other portions of that work which we have already examined must, as it stands, be rejected as unhistorical.

We have already tested the narrative of the author of the Acts by the statements of Paul in the first two chapters of the Galatians at such length that, although the subject is far from exhausted, we must not proceed further. We think that there can be no doubt that the role assigned to the Apostle Paul in Acts xv. is unhistorical,(2)

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and it is unnecessary for us to point out the reasons which led the writer to present him in such subdued colours. We must, however, before finally leaving the subject, very briefly point out a few circumstances which throw a singular light upon the relations which actually existed between Paul and the elder Apostles, and tend to show their real, if covert, antagonism to the Gospel of the uncircumcision. We may at the outset remark, in reference to an objection frequently made that Paul does not distinctly refer to the Apostles as opposing his teaching and does not personally attack them, that such a course would have been suicidal in the Apostle of the Gentiles, whilst on the other hand it could not but have hindered the acceptance of his Gospel, for which he was ever ready to endure so much. The man who wrote: "If it be possible, as much as dependeth on you, be at peace with all men,"(1) could well be silent in such a cause. Paul, in venturing to preach the Gospel of the uncircumcision, laboured under the singular disadvantage of not having, like the Twelve, been an immediate disciple of the Master. He had been "as the one born out of due time,"(2) and although he claimed that his Gospel had not been taught to him by man but had been received by direct revelation from Jesus, there can be no doubt that his apostolic position was constantly assailed. The countenance of the elder Apostles, even if merely tacit, was of great

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importance to the success of his work; and he felt this so much that, as he himself states, he went up to Jerusalem to communicate to them the Gospel which he preached among the Gentiles: "lest by any means I might be running or did run in vain."(1) Any open breach between them would have frustrated his labours. Had Paul been in recognized enmity with the Twelve who had been selected as his special disciples by the Master, and been repudiated and denounced by them, it is obvious that his position would have been a precarious one. He had no desire for schism. His Gospel, besides, was merely a development of that of the elder Apostles; and, however much they might resent his doctrine of the abrogation of the law and of the inutility of circumcision, they could still regard his Gentile converts as at least in some sort Proselytes of the Gate. With every inducement to preserve peace if by any means possible, and to suppress every expression of disagreement with the Twelve, it is not surprising that we find so little direct reference to the elder Apostles in his epistles. During his visit to Jerusalem he did not succeed in converting them to his views. They still limited their ministry to the circumcision, and he had to be content with a tacit consent to his work amongst the heathen. But although we have no open utterance of his irritation, the suppressed impatience of his spirit, even at the recollection of the incidents of his visit, betrays itself in abrupt sentences, unfinished expressions, and grammar which breaks down in the struggle of repressed emotion. We have already said enough regarding his ironical references to those "who seem to be something," to the "overmuch Apostles," and we need not again point

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to the altercation between Paul and Cephas at Antioch, and the strong language used by the former.

Nothing is more certain than the fact that, during his whole career, the Apostle Paul had to contend with systematic opposition from the Judaic Christian party;(1) and the only point regarding which there is any difference of opinion is the share in this taken by the Twelve. As we cannot reasonably expect to find any plain statement of this in the writings of the Apostle, we are forced to take advantage of such indications as can be discovered. Upon one point we are not left in doubt. The withdrawal of Peter and the others at Antioch from communion with the Gentile Christians, and consequently from the side of Paul, was owing to the arrival of certain men from James, for the Apostle expressly states so. No surprise is expressed, however, at the effect produced by these [------], and the clear inference is that they represented the views of a naturally antagonistic party, an inference which is in accordance with all that we elsewhere read of James. It is difficult to separate the [------] from the [------] of the preceding chapter (i.7) who "trouble" the Galatians, and "desire to pervert the Gospel of Christ," asserting the necessity of circumcision, against whom the epistle is directed. Again we meet with the same vague and cautious designation of judaistic opponents in his second Epistle to the Corinthians (iii. 1), where

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"some" [------] bearers of "letters of commendation" [------] from persons unnamed, were attacking the Apostle and endeavouring to discredit his teaching. By whom were these letters written? We cannot of course give an authoritative reply, but we may ask: by whom could letters of commendation possessing an authority which could have weight against that of Paul be written, except by the elder Apostles?' We have certain evidence in the first Epistle to the Corinthians that parties had arisen in the Church of Corinth in opposition to Paul. These parties were distinguished, as the Apostle himself states, by the cries: "I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ."(2) [------]. Whatever differences of opinion there may be as to the precise nature of these parties, there can be no doubt that both the party "of Cephas" and the party "of Christ" held strong Judaistic views and assailed the teaching of Paul, and his apostolic authority. It is very evident that the persons to whom the Apostle refers in connection with "letters of commendation" were of these parties.

Apologists argue that: "in claiming Cephas as the head of their party they had probably neither more nor

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less ground than their rivals who sheltered themselves under the names of Apollos and of Paul."(1) It is obvious, however, that, in a Church founded by Paul, there could have been no party created with the necessity to take his name as their watchword, except as a reply to another party which, having intruded itself, attacked him, and forced those who maintained the views of their own Apostle to raise such a counter-cry. The parties "of Cephas" and "of Christ" were manifestly aggressive, intruding themselves, as the Apostle complains, into "other men's labours,"(2) and this in some manner seems to point to that convention between the Apostle and the Three, that he should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcision which, barely more than passive neutrality at the beginning, soon became covertly antagonistic. The fact that the party "of Paul" was not an organized body, so to say, directed by the Apostle as a party leader, in no way renders it probable that the party of Cephas, which carried on active and offensive measures, had not much more ground in claiming Cephas as their head. One point is indisputable, that no party ever claims any man as its leader who is not clearly associated with the views it maintains. The party "of Cephas," representing judaistic views, opposing the teaching of Paul, and joining in denying his apostolic claims, certainly would not have taken Peter's name as their watch-cry if he had been known to hold and express such Pauline sentiments as are put into his mouth in the Acts, or had not, on the contrary, been intimately identified with judaistic principles. To illustrate the case by a modern instance: Is it possible to suppose that, in any considerable city in this country,

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a party holding ritualistic opinions could possibly claim the present Archbishop of Canterbury as its leader, or one professing "broad-church" views could think of sheltering itself under the name of the Archbishop of York? Religious parties may very probably mistake the delicate details of a leader's teaching, but they can scarcely be wrong in regard to his general principles. If Peter had been so unfortunate as to be flagrantly misunderstood by his followers and, whilst this party preached in his name judaistic doctrines and anti-Pauline opinions, the Apostle himself advocated the abrogation of the law, as a burden which the Jews themselves were not able to bear, and actively shared Pauline convictions, is it possible to suppose that Paul would not have pointed out the absurdity of such a party claiming such a leader?

The fact is, however, that Paul never denies the claim of those who shelter themselves under the names of Peter and James, never questions their veracity, and never adopts the simple and natural course of stating that, in advancing these names, they are imposters or mistaken. On the contrary, upon all occasions he evidently admits, by his silence, the validity of the claim.(1) We are not left to mere inference that the adopted head of the party actually shared the views of the party. Paul himself distinguishes Peter as the head of the party of the circumcision in a passage in his letter to the Galatians already frequently referred to,(2) and the episode at Antioch confirms the description, and leaves no doubt that Peter's permanent practice was to force the Gentiles to judaize. For reasons which we have already stated, Paul could not but have desired to preserve peace, or even the

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semblance of it, with the elder Apostles, for the Gospel's sake; and he, therefore, wisely leaves them as much as possible out of the question and deals with their disciples. It is obvious that policy must have dictated such a course. By ignoring the leaders and attacking their followers, he suppressed the chief strength of his opponents and kept out of sight the most formidable argument against himself: the concurrence with them of the elder Apostles. On the one hand, the epistles of Paul bear no evidence to any active sympathy and co-operation with his views and work on the part of the elder Apostles. On the other, Paul is everywhere assailed by judaistic adversaries who oppose his Gospel and deny his apostle-ship, and who claim as their leaders the elder Apostles.

If, even without pressing expressions to their extreme and probable point, we take the contrast drawn between his own Gospel and that of the circumcision, the reality of the antagonism must be apparent. "For we are not as the many [------](1) which adulterate the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as of God, before God, speak we in Christ."(2) Later on in the letter, after referring to the intrusion of the opposite party into the circle of his labours, Paul declares that his impatience and anxiety proceed from godly jealousy at the possible effect of the judaistic intruders upon the Corinthians. "But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, your thoughts should

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be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus whom we did not preach, or if ye receive another spirit which ye received not, or another Gospel which ye did not accept, ye bear well with him. For I think I am not a whit behind the overmuch Apostles [------]."(1)

This reference to the elder Apostles gives point to much of the epistle which is ambiguous, and more especially when the judaistic nature of the opposition is so clearly indicated a few verses further on: "Are they Hebrews? so am I. Are they Israelites? so am I. Are they Abraham's seed? so am I. Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool), I am more; in labours more abundantly, in prisons exceedingly, in deaths often," &c, &c.(2)

It is argued that the Twelve had not sufficient authority over their followers to prevent such interference with Paul, and that the relation of the Apostle to the Twelve was: "separation, not opposition, antagonism of the followers rather than of the leaders, personal antipathy of the Judaizers to St. Paul, rather than of St. Paul to the Twelve."(3) It is not difficult to believe that the antipathy of Paul to the Judaizers was less than that felt by them towards him. The superiority of the man must have rendered him somewhat callous to such dislike.(4) But the mitigated form of difference between Paul and the Twelve here assumed, although still very different from the representations of the Acts,

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cannot be established, but on the contrary must be much widened before it can justly be taken as that existing between Paul and the elder Apostles. We do not go so far as to say that there was open enmity between them, or active antagonism of any distinct character on the part of the Twelve to the Apostle of the Gentiles, but there is every reason to believe that they not only disliked his teaching, but endeavoured to counteract it by their own ministry of the circumcision. They not only did not restrain the opposition of their followers, but they abetted them in their counter-assertion of judaistic views. Had the Twelve felt any cordial friendship for Paul, and exhibited any active desire for the success of his ministry of the uncircumcision, it is quite impossible that his work could have been so continuously and vexatiously impeded by the persecution of the Jewish Christian party. The Apostles may not have possessed sufficient influence or authority entirely to control the action of adherents, but it would be folly to suppose that, if unanimity of views had prevailed between them and Paul, and a firm and consistent support had been extended to him, such systematic resistance as he everywhere encountered from the party professing to be led by the "pillar" Apostles could have been seriously maintained, or that he could have been left alone and unaided to struggle against it. If the relations between Paul and the Twelve had been such as are intimated in the Acts of the Apostles, his epistles must have presented undoubted evidence of the fact Both negatively and positively they testify the absence of all support, and the existence of antagonistic influence on the part of the elder Apostles, and external evidence fully confirms the impression which the epistles produce.(1)

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From any point of view which may be taken, the Apocalypse is an important document in connection with this point. If it be accepted as a work of the Apostle John--the preponderance of evidence and critical opinion assigns it to him--this book, of course, possesses the greatest value as an indication of his views. If it be merely regarded as a contemporary writing, it still is most interesting as an illustration of the religious feeling of the period. The question is: Does the Apocalypse contain any reference to the Apostle Paul, or throw light upon the relations between him and the elder Apostles? If it does so, and be the work of one of the [------], nothing obviously could be more

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instructive. In the messages to the seven churches, there are references and denunciations which, in the opinion of many able critics, are directed against the Apostle of the Gentiles and his characteristic teaching.(1) Who but Paul and his followers can be referred to in the Epistle to the Church of Ephesus: "I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and that thou canst not bear wicked persons: and didst try them which say they are Apostles and are not, and didst find them liars"?(2) Paul himself informs us not only of his sojourn in Ephesus, where he believed that "a great and effectual door" was opened to him, but adds, "there are many adversaries" [------].(3) The foremost charge brought against the churches is that they have those that hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the sons of Israel, "to eat things offered unto idols."(4) The teaching of Paul upon this point is

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well known, 1 Cor. viii. 1 ff., x. 25 ff., Rom. xiv. 2 ff., and the reference here cannot be mistaken; and when in the Epistle to the church of Thyatira, after denouncing the teaching "to eat things offered unto idols," the Apocalyptist goes on to encourage those who have not this teaching, "who knew not the depths of Satan, [------],(1) as they say" the expression of Paul himself is taken to denounce his doctrine; for the Apostle, defending himself against the attacks of those parties "of Cephas" and "of Christ" in Corinth, writes: "But God revealed (them) to us through his Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, even the depths of God" [------]--"the depths of Satan" rather, retorts the judaistic author of the Apocalypse. [------] does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament Again, in the address to the churches of Smyrna and Philadelphia, when the writer denounces those "who say that they are Jews, and are not, but a synagogue of Satan,"(2) whom has he in view but those Christians whom Paul had taught to consider circumcision unnecessary and the law abrogated? We find Paul in the Epistle to the Corinthians, so often quoted, obliged to defend himself against these judaising parties upon this very point: "Are they Hebrews? so am I. Are they Israelites? so am I. Are they Abraham's seed? so am I."(3) It is manifest that his adversaries had vaunted their own Jewish origin as a title of superiority over the Apostle of the Gentiles. We

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have, however, further evidence of the same attack upon Paul regarding this point. Epiphanius points out that the Ebionites denied that Paul was a Jew, and asserted that he was born of a Gentile father and mother, but that, having gone up to Jerusalem, he became a proselyte and submitted to circumcision in the hope of marrying a daughter of the high priest. But afterwards, according to them, enraged at not securing the maiden for his wife, Paul wrote against circumcision and the Sabbath and the law.(1) The Apostle Paul, whose constant labour it was to destroy the particularism of the Jew, and raise the Gentile to full, free, and equal participation with him in the benefits of the New Covenant, could not but incur the bitter displeasure of the Apocalyptist, for whom the Gentiles were, as such, the type of all that was common and unclean. In the utterances of the seer of Patmos we seem to hear the expression of all that judaistic hatred and opposition which pursued the Apostle who laid the axe to the root of Mosaism and, in his efforts to free Christianity from trammels which, more than any other, retarded its triumphant development, aroused against himself all the virulence of Jewish illiberality and prejudice. The results at which we have arrived might be singularly confirmed by an examination of the writings of the first two centuries, and by observing the attitude

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assumed towards the Apostle of the Gentiles by such men as Justin Martyr, Papias, Hegesippus, and the author of the Clementines; but we have already devoted too much space to this subject, and here we must reluctantly leave it.

The steps by which Christianity was gradually freed from the trammels of Judaism and became a religion of unlimited range and universal fitness were clearly not those stated in the Acts of the Apostles. Its emancipation from Mosaism was not effected by any liberal action or enlightened guidance on the part of the elder Apostles. At the death of their Master, the Twelve remained closely united to Judaism, and evidently were left without any understanding that Christianity was a new religion which must displace Mosaic institutions, and replace the unbearable yoke of the law by the divine liberty of the Gospel. To the last moment regarding which we have any trustworthy information, the Twelve, as might have been expected, retained all their early religious customs and all their Jewish prejudices. They were simply Jews believing that Jesus was the Messiah; and if the influence of Paul enlarged their views upon some minor points, we have no reason to believe that they ever abandoned their belief in the continued obligation of the law, and the necessity of circumcision for full participation in the benefits of the Covenant. The author of the Acts would have us believe that they required no persuasion, but anticipated Paul in the Gospel of uncircumcision. It is not within the scope of this work to inquire how Paul originally formed his views of Christian universalism. Once formed, it is easy to understand how rapidly they must have been developed and confirmed by experience amongst

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the Gentiles. Whilst the Twelve still remained in the narrow circle of Judaism and could not be moved beyond the ministry of the circumcision, Paul, in the larger and freer field of the world, must daily have felt more convinced that the abrogation of the Law and the abandonment of circumcision were essential to the extension of Christianity amongst the Gentiles. He had no easy task, however, to convince others of this, and he never succeeded in bringing his elder colleagues over to his views. To the end of his life, Paul had to contend with bigoted and narrow-minded opposition within the Christian body, and if his views ultimately triumphed, and the seed which he sowed eventually yielded a rich harvest, he himself did not live to see the day, and the end was attained only by slow and natural changes. The new religion gradually extended beyond the limits of Judaism. Gentile Christians soon outnumbered Jewish believers. The Twelve whose names were the strength of the judaistic opposition one by one passed away; but, above all, the fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Christian community secured the success of Pauline principles and the universalism of Christianity. The Church of Jerusalem could not bear transplanting. In the uncongenial soil of Pella it gradually dwindled away, losing first its influence and soon after its nationality. The divided members of the Jewish party, scattered amongst the Gentiles, and deprived of their influential leaders, could not long retard the progress of the liberalism which they still continued to oppose and to misrepresent. In a word, the emancipation of Christianity was not effected by the Twelve, was no work of councils, and no result of dreams; but, receiving its first great impulse from the genius and the energy of Paul, its ultimate

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achievement was the result of time and natural development.

We have now patiently considered the "Acts of the Apostles," and although it has in no way been our design exhaustively to examine its contents, we have more than sufficiently done so to enable the reader to understand the true character of the document. The author is unknown, and it is no longer possible to identify him. If he were actually the Luke whom the Church indicates, our results would not be materially affected; but the mere fact that the writer is unknown is obviously fatal to the Acts as a guarantee of miracles. A cycle of supernatural occurrences could scarcely, in the estimation of any rational mind, be established by the statement of an anonymous author, and more especially one who not only does not pretend to have been an eye-witness of most of the miracles, but whose narrative is either uncorroborated by other testimony or inconsistent with itself, and contradicted on many points by contemporary documents. The phenomena presented by the Acts of the Apostles become perfectly intelligible when we recognize that it is the work of a writer living long after the occurrences related, whose pious imagination furnished the apostolic age with an elaborate system of supernatural agency, far beyond the conception of any other New Testament writer, by which, according to his view, the proceedings of the Apostles were furthered and directed, and the infant Church miraculously fostered. On examining other portions of his narrative, we find that they present the features which the miraculous elements rendered antecedently probable. The speeches attributed to

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different speakers are all cast in the same mould, and betray the composition of one and the same writer. The sentiments expressed are inconsistent with what we know of the various speakers. And when we test the circumstances related by previous or subsequent incidents and by trustworthy documents, it becomes apparent that the narrative is not an impartial statement of facts, but a reproduction of legends or a development of tradition, shaped and coloured according to the purpose or the pious views of the writer. The Acts of the Apostles, therefore, is not only an anonymous work, but upon due examination its claims to be considered sober and veracious history must be emphatically rejected. It cannot strengthen the foundations of supernatural Religion, but, on the contrary, by its profuse and indiscriminate use of the miraculous it discredits miracles, and affords a clearer insight into their origin and fictitious character.