The Making of the New Testament

But while the transition of a. d. 50-150 was both deeper and more complex than Baur conceived, the transfer of the gospel during that century from Jewish to Gentile soil is really the great outstanding fact, against which as a background the literature must be read; and the initial stage of the process is marked by the controversy of Paul with the Galilean apostles. What we must call, in distinction from Paulinism, 'apostolic' Christianity is well represented in the Book of Acts. Paul's writings show that he felt himself and his churches to represent an independent type of Christianity in all respects equal to the 'apostolic,' the problem being unification of the two. Now it is axiomatic that the investigator must proceed from the relatively known and determinable to the unknown and disputable. Accordingly it is in reality from the Epistolary literature of the church, in particular the greater Pauline Epistles, that he must take his start. As a source for our understanding of the development of the life of the church the Literature of the Apostle, directly participant in the conflicts and issues of the times, even if in its later elements of doubtful or pseudonymous authorship, takes precedence as a whole over the Literature of the Catechist, with its later and more or less idealized narration, exemplified in the Book of Acts.

Modern criticism acknowledges, then, its indebtedness to the Tübingen school for a clearer definition of both its task and method, by concentrating attention upon the contrast between the Petrine and the Pauline conception of 'the gospel.' Still it must be admitted that most of the inferences first drawn have since been overthrown. In their chronological scheme of the New Testament writings the Tübingen critics under-estimated the force of the external evidences (including early tradition) and misinterpreted the internal. New discovery and more careful study of literary relations have inverted Baur's views as to dates of the Johannine writings. Four of these (the Gospel and three Epistles) are anonymous. Baur's date for these has been forced back by no less than half a century. The fifth (Revelation) bears the name of John, but was hotly disputed as pseudonymous in the second century, and even by its supporters was dated so late as "the end of the reign of Domitian" (95). The Tübingen school placed Revelation thirty years earlier, and attributed it to the Apostle. Modern criticism emphatically reverts to the ancient date, and regards the book as pseudonymous, or as written by "some other John."

Again the relative dates of the Synoptic writings (Matthew, Mark, Luke-Acts) were inverted by the Tübingen critics, primarily through wrong application of their theory of doctrinal development; secondarily, and as a consequence, through misinterpretation of the intricate literary relationships. Present-day criticism considers it established that Mark is the oldest of the three, taken up by each of the other two. There is almost equal unanimity in regarding the discourse material common to Matthew and Luke and variously combined by each with Mark, as independently drawn by them from the book of the "Precepts of the Lord," reported by Papias to have been compiled by Matthew "in the Hebrew (i. e. Aramaic) tongue." Tübingen gospel criticism is thus almost entirely set aside, in favour of the so-called 'Two-document' theory.

So with the Pauline Epistles of the second period. Doubt still clings to Ephesians. It had been treated by some as pseudo-Pauline even before the time of Baur; but Baur's own followers soon receded from his extreme application of his theory to the internal evidence of Philippians, Colossians and Philemon. It became evident that Paul's "gospel" included something more than the mere antithesis of Law and Grace. He had other opponents than the Judaizers, and had to defend his doctrine against perversion by Grecizing mystics as well as against opposition by Pharisaic legalists.

Two generations of research and controversy have greatly advanced the cause of constructive criticism. Hand in hand with a more accurate dating of the literature, secured through more impartial judgment of both the external and internal evidence, there has gone a reconstruction of our conception of the course of events. The tendencies in the early church were not two only, but four; corresponding, perhaps, to those rebuked by Paul at Corinth, which called themselves by the names respectively of Peter, of Paul, of Apollos and of Christ. It seems probable from the bitterness with which in 2nd Cor. x. 7 Paul denounces the man who says, "I am of Christ," that this party-cry was employed in the sense of following the example of Jesus as respects obedience to the Law (for even Paul acknowledged that Christ had been "made a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God"). If so, the Corinthian "Christ-party" may be identified with those "ministers of the circumcision" who denied both the apostleship and the gospel of Paul. At all events those "of Cephas" were relatively harmless. They may be identified with the so-called 'weak' of Romans, for whose scruples on the score of 'pollutions of idols' Paul demands such consideration both at Corinth and at Rome. His own adherents both at Corinth (those 'of Paul') and at Rome (the 'strong') are to follow his example not merely in recognizing that: "No idol is anything in the world," that "there is nothing unclean of itself," and that "all things are lawful." It is to be followed also in recognizing the limitations of this liberty. Limits are imposed among other things by the scruples of others, so that Paul himself becomes "as under the Law" when among Jews, though "as without the Law" among the Gentiles. The "weak" are to be resisted only when the admission of themselves or their claims would lead to "doubtful disputations," or to a rebuilding of walls of separation that had been torn down through faith in Christ. Galatians sounds the battle-cry of endangered liberty. Corinthians (and Romans in still higher degree) shows the magnanimity of the victor.

Whether it be possible to identify those "of Apollos" at Corinth with the beginnings of that Hellenistic perversion of the Pauline gospel into a mystical theosophy which afterwards passed into Gnosticism may be left an open question. At least we have come to see that the conditions of the church's growth were far more complex than Baur imagined. In particular it is necessary to distinguish four different attitudes on the single question of the obligation of the Law. There were (1) Judaizers who insisted on complete submission to the Law as the condition of salvation, for both Jews and Gentiles; (2) imitators of Cephas, who considered believers of Jewish birth to be "under the Law," but asked of Gentiles only such consideration for it as the special conditions seemed to require; (3) Paulinists, who held that neither Jews nor Gentiles are under the law, yet felt that consideration should be shown for the scrupulous when asked not as of right, but as of charity; (4) radicals, who recognized no limits to their freedom save the one new commandment.

But while conflict first broke out over the mere concrete question of Gentile liberty, the real distinction of Paul's gospel from that of the older apostles was far deeper. The question as Tübingen critics conceived it concerned primarily the extent of the gospel message, – to how large a circle was it offered? Modern criticism has come to see that the difference was in higher degree a difference of quality. Paul's whole message of redemption through the cross and resurrection started from other premises than those of the Galilean apostles, and was conceived in other terms. For this reason it leads over to a new Christology. In short, the transition of Christianity from its Jewish to its Gentile form is not a mere enlargement of its field by the abolition of particularistic barriers. The background we must study for the understanding of it is not so much mere contemporary history as the contemporary history of religion. The development from the Petrine gospel broadly characteristic of the Synoptic writings, through the Pauline Epistles to that of the Johannine writings, is a transition from Hebrew to Hellenistic conceptions of what redemption is, and how it is effected. Modern criticism expresses the contrast in its distinction of the gospel of Jesus from the gospel about Jesus.

In the case of both Paul and his predecessors in the faith there is a common starting-point. It was the doctrine that God had raised Jesus from the dead and exalted Him as Christ and Lord to the throne of glory. Its proofs were the ecstatic phenomena of the Spirit, those strange manifestations of 'prophecy,' 'tongues,' and the like in the Christian assembly. The inference from this resurrection faith for an apostle of the Galilean group was that he must "teach all men everywhere to observe all things whatsoever Jesus had commanded." Jesus had been raised up in Israel as the Prophet like unto Moses; His apostle must repeat the remembered word of commandment and the word of promise. He will have an authority derived from the manifestations of signs and wonders. These had accompanied Jesus' own career, and now, by grace of His endowment of His disciples with the Spirit, they will be repeated by their hands. The 'apostolic' gospel is thus primarily historical. The Pauline gospel centres at the other pole of religious conviction. It is primarily psychological. For Paul the immediate effect of the revelation of God's Son "in" him is an irresistible impulse to relate his own soul's experience. The gospel he preaches is not so much what Jesus did or said while on earth, as what God has done, and is still doing, through the "life-giving Spirit" which emanates from the risen Lord. Signs and wonders are tokens of the Spirit, but are of less value, and must vanish before the "abiding" ethical gifts. Both the Pauline and the Petrine gospel start from the common confession of "Jesus as Lord"; but the Christology of the Synoptic literature is an Apotheosis doctrine, falling back on the historical Jesus. That of the Epistles is a doctrine of Incarnation, appealing to the eternal manifestation of God in man. For the former, Jesus was "a prophet mighty in deed and word," raised up by God in accordance with the promise of Deut. xviii. 18, to turn Israel to repentance. Having fulfilled this mission in rejection and martyrdom Jesus had been exalted to God's "right hand" and "made both Lord and Christ." He there awaits the subjection of all His enemies. In the Pauline gospel the story of Jesus is a drama of the supernal regions, wherein His earthly career as prophet, leader, teacher, sinks to the level of the merest episode. As pre-existent spirit, Jesus had been from the beginning of the creation "in the form of God." As the period of its consummation drew near He took upon Him human form, descended through suffering and death to the lowest depths of the underworld, and by divine power had reascended above all the heavens with their ranks of angelic hierarchies. Whether Paul himself so conceived it or not, the Gentile world had no other moulds of thought wherein to formulate such a Christology than the current myths of Redeemer-gods. The value of the individual soul had at last been discovered, and men resorted to the ancient personifications of the forces of nature as deliverers of this new-found soul from its weakness and mortality. The influential religions of the time were those of personal redemption by mystic union with a dying and resurrected "Saviour-god," an Osiris, an Adonis, an Attis, a Mithra. Religions of this type were everywhere displacing the old national faiths. The Gentile could not think of "the Christ" primarily as a Son of David who restores the kingdom to Israel, shatters the Gentiles like a potter's vessel and rules them with a rod of iron. If he employed this Old Testament language at all, it had for him a purely symbolical sense. The whole conception was spiritualized. The "enemies" overcome were the spiritual foes of humanity, sin and death; "redemption" was not the deliverance of Israel out of the hand of all their enemies, that (together with all afar off that call upon the name of this merciful God) they may "serve Him in holiness and righteousness all their days." It was the rescue of the sons of Adam out of the bondage to evil Powers incurred through inheritance of Adam's sinful flesh. This had been the tendency already of Jewish apocalypse. The starting-point of Paul's own conceptions was not Israel's bondage in Egypt, but a conception already tinged, like the late book of Jewish philosophy called the Wisdom of Solomon, with the Stoic conception of 'flesh' as prison-house of 'spirit,' already inflamed, like the contemporary Jewish apocalypses of Esdras and Baruch, with lurid visions of a universe rescued by superhuman power from a thraldom of demonic rule. Paul's preaching was made real by his own experience. For if ever there was an evangelist whose message was his own experience, Paul was such. And Paul's experience was not so much that of a Palestinian Jew, as that of a Hellenist, one whose whole idea of 'redemption' has been unconsciously universalized, individualized, and spiritualized, by contact with Greek and Hellenistic thought. Paul and the Galilean apostles were not far apart in their expectations of the future. Both stood gazing up into heaven. But for his authority Paul inevitably looked inwards, the Galilean apostles looked backwards.

It is hopeless at the present stage of acquaintance with the history of religion, particularly the spread of the various 'mysteries' and religions of personal redemption in the early empire, to deny this contrast between the gospel of Paul and the gospel of "the apostles and elders at Jerusalem." It is shortsighted to overlook its significance in the transition of the faith. Whereas the Jewish-Christian had as its principal background the national history, more or less transcendentalized in the forms of apocalypse, Paul's had as its principal background the speculative mythology of the Hellenistic world, more or less adapted to the forms of Judaism. Only ignorance of the function of mythology, especially as then employed to express the aspiration of the soul for purity, life and fellowship with God, can make these mythologically framed religious ideas seem an inappropriate vehicle to convey Paul's sense of the significance of Jesus' message and life of "Son ship." They were at least the best expression those times and that environment could afford of the greater Kingdom God had proclaimed in the resurrection of the Christ, and was bringing to pass through the outpouring of His Spirit.

Modern criticism must therefore recognize that the beginnings of our religion were not a mere enlargement of Judaism by abolition of the barriers of the Law, but a fusion of the two great streams of religious thought distinctive of the Jewish and the Hellenistic world in a higher unity. Alexander's hoped-for "marriage of Europe and Asia" was consummated at last in the field of religion itself. Denationalized Judaism contributed the social ideal: the messianic hope of a world-wide Kingdom of God. It is the worthy contribution of a highly ethical national religion. Hellenism contributed the individual ideal: personal redemption in mystic union with the life of God. It is a concept derived from the Greek's newly-awakened consciousness of a personality agonizing for deliverance out of the bondage of the material and transitory, alien and degrading to its proper life. The critic who has become a historian of ideas will find his study of the literature of the apostolic and post-apostolic age here widening out into a prospect of unsuspected largeness and significance. He will see as the two great divisions of his subject, (1) the gospel of Jesus, represented, as we are told, in the first beginnings of literary development by an Aramaic compilation of the Precepts of the Lord by the Apostle Matthew, circulating possibly even before the great Pauline Epistles among the Palestinian churches; (2) the gospel about Jesus, represented in the Pauline Epistles, and these based on their author's personal experience. It is a gospel of God's action "in Christ, reconciling the world." It interprets the personality of Jesus and his experience of the cross and resurrection as manifestations of the divine idea. The interpretation employs Hellenistically coloured forms of thought, and is forced to vindicate itself first against subjection to legalism, afterwards against perversion into an unethical, superstitious theosophy. But surely the doctrine about Jesus, interpreting the significance of His person and work as the culmination of redemption through the indwelling of God in men and among men belongs as much to the essence of Christianity as the gospel of love and faith proclaimed by Jesus.

Besides these two principal types of gospel and their subordinate combinations the critical historian may see ultimately emerging a type of 'spiritual' gospel, growing upon Gentile soil, in fact, receiving its first literary expression in the early years of the second century at the very headquarters of the Pauline mission-field. This third type aims to be comprehensive of the other two. It is essentially a gospel about Jesus, though it takes the form for its main literary expression of a gospel preached by Jesus. The fourth evangelist is the true successor of Paul, though the conditions of the age compel him to go beyond the literary form of the Epistle and to construct a Gospel wherein both factors of the sacred tradition shall appear, the words and works, the Precepts and the Saving Ministry of Jesus. But it is in no mechanical or slavish sense that the fourth evangelist appeals to this supreme authority. He lifts the whole message above the level of mere baptized legalism, even while he guards it against the unbridled licence of Gnostic theosophy, applying to this purpose his doctrine of the Incarnate Logos. His basis is psychology as well as history. It is the Life which is the light of men, that life whose source is God, and which permeates and redeems His creation; even "the eternal Life which was with the Father and was manifested to us."

In the critical grouping of our New Testament writings the Gospel and Epistles of John can occupy, then, no lesser place than that of the keystone of the arch.

To sum up: the Literature of the Apostle owed its early development and long continuance among the Pauline churches of Asia Minor and Greece, to the impetus and example of Paul's apostolic authority. The Literature of the Teacher and Prophet, growing up around Jerusalem and its daughter churches at Antioch and Rome, came slowly to surpass in influence the "commandment of the apostles," as the church became more and more exclusively dependent upon it for the "teaching of the Lord." It was the function of the great "theologian" of Ephesus (as he came early to be called), linking the authority of both, to furnish the fundamental basis for the catholic faith.

PART II

THE LITERATURE OF THE APOSTLE

CHAPTER III

PAUL AS MISSIONARY AND DEFENDER OF THE GOSPEL OF GRACE

Most vital of all passages for historical appreciation of the great period of Paul's missionary activity and its literature is the retrospect over his career as apostle to the Gentiles and defender of a gospel "without the yoke of the Law" in Gal. i. – ii. Especially must the contrast be observed between this and the very different account in Acts ix. – xvi.

Galatians aims to counteract the encroachments of certain Judaizing interlopers upon Paul's field, and seems to have been written from Corinth, shortly after his arrival there (c. 50) on the Second Missionary Journey (Acts xv. 36 – xviii. 22). We take "the churches of Galatia" to be those founded by Paul in company with Barnabas on the First Missionary Journey (Acts xiii. – xiv.), and revisited with Silas after a division of the recently evangelized territory whereby Cyprus had been left to Barnabas and Mark (Acts xv. 36 – xvi. 5; cf. Gal. iv. 13).

The retrospect is in two parts: (1) a proof of the divine origin of Paul's apostleship and gospel by the independence of his conversion and missionary career; (2) an account of his defence of his "gospel of uncircumcision" on the two occasions when it had been threatened. Visiting Jerusalem for the second time some fifteen years[7 - Or perhaps thirteen. Gal. ii. 1 may reckon from the conversion (31-33). In both periods (Gal. i. 18, and ii. 1) both termini are counted.] after his conversion, he secured from its "pillars," James, Peter, and John, an unqualified, though "private," endorsement. At Antioch subsequently he overcame renewed opposition by public exposure of the inconsistency of Peter, who had been won over by the reactionaries.

Acts reverses Paul's point of view, making his career in the period of unobstructed evangelization one of labour for Jews alone, in complete dependence on the Twelve. It practically excludes the period of opposition by a determination of the Gentile status in an 'Apostolic Council.' Paul is represented as simply acquiescing in this decision.

As described by Paul, the whole earlier period of fifteen years had been occupied by missionary effort for Gentiles, first at Damascus, afterwards "in the regions of Syria and Cilicia." It was interrupted only by a journey "to Arabia," and later, three years after his conversion, by a two-weeks' private visit to Peter in Jerusalem. In this period must fall most of the journeys and adventures of 2nd Cor. xi. 23-33. It was practically without contact with Judæa. His "gospel" was what God alone had taught him through an inward manifestation of the risen Jesus.

As described by Luke[8 - We apply the name to the writer of Luke-Acts without prejudice to the question of authorship.] the whole period was spent in the evangelization of Greek-speaking Jews, principally at Jerusalem. This was Paul's chosen field, worked under direction of "the apostles." Only against his will[9 - Acts xxii. 10-21 is not quite consistent with xxvi. 15-18; but the general sense is clear.] was he driven for refuge to Tarsus, whence Barnabas, who had first introduced him to the apostles, brought him to Antioch. There was no Gentile mission until Barnabas and he were by that church made its 'apostles.' This mission was on express direction of "the Spirit" (Acts ix. 19-30; xi. 25 f.; xiii. 1-3; cf. xxii. 10-21). Paul's apostleship to the Gentiles begins, then, according to Luke, with the First Missionary Journey, when in company with (and at first in subordination to) Barnabas he evangelizes Cyprus and southern Galatia. The two are agents of Antioch, with "letters of commendation" from "the apostles and elders in Jerusalem" (Acts xv. 23-26). Paul is not an apostle of Christ in the same sense as the Twelve (cf. Acts i. 21 f.). He is a providential "vessel of the Spirit," ordained "by men and through men." His gospel is Peter's unaltered (cf. Acts xxvi. 16-23).

There is even wider disparity regarding the period of opposition. Luke slightly postpones its beginning and very greatly antedates its suppression. Moreover, he makes Paul accept a solution which his letters emphatically repudiate.

According to Acts there was no opposition before the First Missionary Journey, for the excellent reason that there had been no Gentile propaganda.[10 - Cornelius' case (Acts x. – xi. 18) is exceptional, and no propaganda follows. The reading "Greeks" in Acts xi. 20, though required by the sense and therefore adopted by the English translators, is not supported by the textual evidence. Luke has here corrected his source to suit his theory, just as in x. 1 – xi. 18 he passes by the true significance of the story, which really deals with the question of eating with Gentiles (xi. 3, 7 f.).] There was no opposition after the Council called to consider it (Acts xv.), for the conclusive reason that "the apostles and elders" left nothing to dispute about. As soon as the objections were raised the church in Antioch laid the question before these authorities, sending Paul and Barnabas to testify. On their witness to the grace of God among the Gentiles, Peter (explicitly claiming for himself (!) this special apostleship, Acts xv. 7) proposes unconditional acknowledgment of Gentile liberty, referring to the precedent of Cornelius. In this there was general acquiescence. In fact the matter had really been decided before (Acts xi. 1-18). The only wholly new point was that raised by James in behalf of "the Jews among the Gentiles" (Acts xv. 21; cf. xxi. 21). For their sake it is held "necessary" to limit Gentile freedom on four points. They must abstain from three prohibited meats, and from fornication, for these convey the "pollution of idols." The "necessity" lies in the fact that liberty from the Law is not conceded to Jews. They will be (involuntarily) defiled if they eat with their Gentile brethren unprotected. "Fornication" is added because (in the words of an ancient Jewish Christian) it "differs from all other sins in that it defiles not only the sinner, but those also who eat or associate with him." Paul and Barnabas, according to Luke, gladly accepted these "decrees," and Paul distributed them "for to keep" among his converts in Galatia (!). Peter is the apostle to the Gentiles. Antioch and Jerusalem decide the question of their status. The terms of fellowship are those of James and Peter.

Paul has no mention of either Council or 'decrees.' His terms of fellowship positively exclude both. He falls back upon the private Conference, and lays bare a story of agonizing struggle to make effective its recognition of the equality and independence of Gentile Christianity. The struggle is a result of his resistance to emissaries "from James" at Antioch, who had brought over all the Jewish element in that mixed church, including Peter and "even Barnabas" to terms of fellowship acceptable to the Pillars. After the collision at Antioch Paul leaves the "regions of Syria and Cilicia," and transfers the scene of his missionary efforts to the Greek world between the Taurus range and the Adriatic. For the next ten years we see him on the one side conducting an independent mission, proclaiming the doctrine of the Cross as inaugurating a new era, wherein law has been done away, and Jew and Gentile have "access in one Spirit unto the Father." On the other he is defending this gospel of 'grace' against unscrupulous Jewish-Christian traducers, and labouring to reconcile differences between his own followers and those of 'the circumcision' who are not actively hostile, but only have taken 'offence.' Throughout the period, until the arrest in Jerusalem which ends his career as an evangelist, Paul stands alone as champion of unrestricted Gentile liberty and equality. He cannot admit terms of fellowship which imply a continuance of the legal dispensation. Jewish Christians may keep circumcision and the customs if they wish; but may not hold or recommend them as conferring the slightest advantage in God's sight. He will not admit the doctrine of salvation by faith with works of law. Jew as well as Gentile must have "died to the Law." There is no "justification" except "by faith apart from works of law."[11 - The assertion has recently been made in very high quarters on the basis of 1st Cor. vii. 18 that Paul also took the "apostolic" view that the Christian of Jewish birth remains under obligation to keep the law. One would think Paul had not added verse 19!]

Unless we distinctly apprehend the deep difference, almost casually brought out by this question of the (converted) Jew among Gentiles and his obligation to eat with his Gentile brother, a difference between 'apostolic' Christianity as Luke gives it, and the 'gospel' of Paul, we can have no adequate appreciation of the great Epistles produced during this period of conflict. The basis of Luke's pleasing picture of peace and concord is a fundamentally different conception of the relation of Law and Grace. Paul and Luke both hold that the Mosaic commandments are not binding on Gentiles. The point of difference – and Paul's own account of his Conference with the Pillars goes to show that Luke's idea is also theirs; else why need there be a division of 'spheres of influence'? – is Paul's doctrine that the believing Jew as well as the Gentile is "dead to the Law." And this doctrine was never accepted south of the Taurus range.

Agreement and union were sure to come, if only by the rapid disappearance from the church after 70 a. d. of the element of the circumcised, and the progressive realization in 'Syria and Cilicia' of the impracticability of the Jerusalem-Antioch plan of requiring Gentiles to make their tables innocuous to the legalist. If only the participation of Paul and Barnabas be excluded from the story of Acts xv. (or better, restored to its proper sequence after Acts xi. 30) we have every reason to accept Luke's account of an Apostolic Council held at Jerusalem not long after "Peter came to Antioch" to settle between the churches of northern and southern Syria the knotty question of the Christian Jew's eating or not eating with Gentiles. It is almost certain that Syria did adopt this modus vivendi for "the brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia" (Acts xv. 23); for we can trace its gradual obsolescence there. In Revelation (a book of Palestinian origin republished at Ephesus c. 95; cf. Rev. ii. 14, 20, 24) in the Teaching of the Twelve (125), and in the 'Western' text of Acts xv. (150?) there is a progressive scaling down of the 'burden.' Gentiles are at last asked to do almost nothing more than Paul had demanded on moral grounds without recognition of the validity of "distinctions of meats." In a. d. 120 the 'burden' is: "Concerning meats, keep what thou art able; however, abstain at all events from things offered to idols, for it is the food of dead gods."

But to take Luke's account of how peace was restored, with its implication that the Pauline gospel as developed in Greek Christendom between the Taurus range and the Adriatic was nothing more than a branch from the parent stock of the 'apostolic' church in "Syria and Cilicia," would be like viewing the history of the United States from the standpoint of a British imperialist of a period of Anglo-Saxon reunion in a. d. 2000, who should omit entirely the American War of Independence, holding that Washington and Franklin after bearing testimony before Parliament accepted for the colonies a plan of settlement prepared by a Liberal Government which reduced to a minimum the obnoxious requirements of the Tories.

The history of this period of the development of the independent 'gospel' of Paul and of his independent churches is so vital, and so confused by generations of well-meaning 'harmonizers,' that we must take time to contrast once more Luke's theory of the process of reunion with Paul's.

In Acts Paul takes precisely the view of Peter and James. He is himself 'under the Law.' He does not disregard it even among Gentiles. On the contrary, he sets an example of scrupulous legality to the Jews among the Gentiles, himself 'walking orderly, keeping the Law.' The statement that he "teaches them to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children, nor to obey the customs" is a calumny (!) which he takes public occasion to disprove (Acts xxi. 20-26). Before the Sanhedrin he emphatically declares himself a consistent Pharisee (Acts xxiii. 1, 6); before Felix and Festus, blameless by the standard of Law and Prophets (xxiv. 14-16; xxv. 8); before Agrippa, a strict Pharisee in his conduct hitherto (xxvi. 5, 22 f.). Titus, whose circumcision Paul strenuously resisted, is never mentioned in Acts. Conversely Timothy (a Jew only on his mother's side) Paul "took and circumcised" immediately after the Jerusalem Council "because of the Jews that were in those parts" (Galatia!). His visit with Barnabas to Jerusalem is not occasioned by opposition to Gentile missions, though it falls between Barnabas' mission from Jerusalem to investigate the alarming reports of Gentile conversions at Antioch, and the First Missionary Journey on which the two take with them Mark, who had accompanied them from Jerusalem. No; according to Luke Gentile missions did not yet exist[12 - On the reading "Greeks" in Acts xi. 20 see footnote 10 (#cn_9)](!). This visit (that of the Conference, Gal. ii. 1-10) was merely to convey a gift from the Antioch church to that of Jerusalem because of the famine "about that time" (it occurred in 46-47). Conversely the great 'offering of the Gentiles' made at the risk of Paul's life in company with delegates from each province of his field, as a proffer of peace, the enterprise which occupies so large a place in his effort and his letters of this period (1st Cor. xvi. 1-6; 2nd Cor. 8-9; Rom. xv. 15, 16, 25-32), has in Acts no relation to the controversy – for the demonstration of Paul's exemplary legalism in the temple is merely incidental. The gift Paul brought was "alms to my nation" (!) (Acts xxiv. 17). The reader asks in vain what necessitates this dangerous journey. The only motives assigned are a Nazarite vow assumed in Cenchreæ (xviii. 18; xxi. 24), and regard for the Jewish feasts (xx. 16).

The background of history against which the modern reader must place the great letters of Paul of the first period, is manifestly something quite different from the mere unsifted story of Acts. Their real origin is in a profound difference in Paul's idea of 'the gospel' and the necessity of defending the independence of it and of the Gentile churches founded on it. The difference originates in Paul's own religious experience. It found its first expression in his antithesis of Law and Grace, his doctrine that the cross marks the abolition of the economy of Law.

Both in Galatians and everywhere else Paul treats on equal terms with the representatives of the "apostleship of the circumcision." He denounces Peter and "the rest of the Jews," including "even Barnabas," at Antioch, after they have withdrawn from Gentile fellowship in order to preserve their legal 'cleanness,' and the point of the denunciation is that this is inconsistent with their (implied) abandonment of the Law as a means of salvation when they "sought to be justified by faith in Christ." This makes their conduct not only inconsistent but cowardly and "hypocritical."

Here is something far deeper than a mere question of policy. Paul's attitude shows that from the beginning he has really been preaching "a different gospel." A gospel about Christ in which the central fact is the cross as the token of the abolition of a dispensation of Law wherein Jew and Gentile alike were in a servile relation to God, under angelic (or demonic) "stewards and governors," and the inauguration of a dispensation of Grace, wherein all who have 'faith' and receive in baptism the gift of 'the Spirit,' are thereby adopted to be God's sons. Beside this cosmic drama of the cross and resurrection wherein God reveals his redemptive purpose for the world, the mere inculcation of the easy yoke of Jesus as a new Law, simplifying and supplementing the old by restoring the doctrine of forgiveness for the repentant believer (cf. Matt. xxviii. 20; Acts x. 42 f.; xiii. 39; xxvi. 22 f.) seems only half a gospel.

Paul can never surrender the independence of his God-given message, nor the liberty wherewith Christ has made all believers free in abolishing the economy of law and making them "sons" by the Spirit. And yet he is even more determined to achieve peace and reunion than the apostles 'of the circumcision'; only he has a different plan. Paul and his churches fall back upon the Jerusalem Conference, not upon the 'Apostolic Council.' The Conference is their Magna Carta. Its recognition of Paul's independent gospel and apostleship as no less divine than Peter's is their guarantee of liberty and equality; its request for brotherly aid is their promise of fraternity.