Ἐλεύθερος ὢν ἐκ πάντων, πᾶσιν ἐμαυτὸν ἘΔΟΥΛΩΣΑ, ἵνα τοὺς πλείονας κερδήσω.—1 COR. 9:19.
THE first step of Paul and Barnabas on their arrival at Antioch had been to summon a meeting of the Church, and give a report of their mission and its success, dwelling specially on the proof which it afforded that God had now opened to the Gentiles “a door of faith.” God Himself had, by His direct blessing, shown that the dauntless experiment of a mission to the heathen was in accordance with His will.
For some time the two Apostles continued to rest from their toils and perils amid the peaceful ministrations of the new metropolis of Christianity. But it is not intended that unbroken peace should ever in this world continue for long to be the lot of man. The Church soon began to be troubled by a controversy which was not only of pressing importance, but which seemed likely to endanger the entire destiny of the Christian faith.
Jewish and Gentile converts were living side by side at Antioch, waiving the differences of view and habit which sprang from their previous training, and united heart and soul in the bonds of a common love for their common Lord. Had they entered into doubtful disputations,1 they would soon have found themselves face to face with problems which it was difficult to solve; but they preferred to dwell only on those infinite spiritual privileges of which they regarded themselves as equal sharers.
Into this bright fraternal community came the stealthy sidelong intrusion of certain personages from Judæa,2 who, for a time, profoundly disturbed the peace of the Church. Pharisees scarcely emancipated from their Pharisaism— Jews still in bondage to their narrowest preconceptions— brethren to whom the sacred name of brethren could barely be conceded3—they insinuated themselves into the Church in the petty spirit of jealousy and espionage,4 not with any high aims, but with the object of betraying the citadel of liberty, and reducing the free Christians of Antioch to their own bondage. St. Luke, true to his conciliatory purpose, merely speaks of them as “certain from Judæa;” but St. Paul, in the heat of indignant controversy, and writing under a more intense impression of their mischievous influence, vehemently calls them “the false brethren secretly introduced.”5 But though, throughout their allusions to this most memorable episode in the history of early Christianity, the Apostle and the Evangelist are writing from different points of view, they are in complete accordance as regards the main facts. The combination of the details which they separately furnish enables us to reproduce the most important circumstances of a contest which decided for ever the future of the Gentile Church.6
These brethren in name, but aliens in heart, came with a hard, plausible, ready–made dogma—one of those shibboleths in which formalists delight, and which usually involve the death–blow of spiritual religion. It demanded obedience to the Law of Moses, especially the immediate acceptance of circumcision7 as its most typical rite; and it denied the possibility of salvation on any other terms. It is possible that hitherto St. Paul may have regarded circumcision as a rule for Jews, and a charitable concession on the part of Gentiles. On these aspects of the question he was waiting for the light of God, which came to him in the rapid course of circumstances, as it came to the whole world in the fall of Jerusalem. But even among the Jews of the day, the more sensible and the more enlightened had seen that for a pious Gentile a mere external mutilation could not possibly be essential. Ananias, who had the honour of converting the royal family of Adiabene, had distinctly advised Izates that it was not desirable to risk his crown by external compliance to a needless rite.8 It was only when men like Eleazar—fierce and narrow literalists of the school of Shammai—intervened, that Proselytes of the Gate were taught that their faith and their holiness were valueless unless they assumed the badge of Proselytes of Righteousness.9 Izates and Monobazus, as was sure to be the case with timid and superstitious natures, had risked all to meet the views of these uncompromising zealots, just as from baser motives Aziz, King of Emesa, and Polemo of Cilicia had yielded in order to win the hands of the wealthy and beautiful princesses of the house of Herod.10 But it was quite certain that such an acceptance of Mosaism would continue to be, as it always had been, extremely exceptional; and Paul saw that if Christianity was to be degraded into the mere superimposition of a belief in Christ as the Jewish Messiah upon the self–satisfaction of Shammaite fanaticism,11 or even on the mere menace of the Law, it was not possible, it was not even desirable, that it should continue to exist. The force of habit might, in one who had been born a Jew, freshen with the new wine of the Gospel the old ceremonialism which had run to the lees of Rabbinic tradition. In Jerusalem a Christian might not be sensible of the loss he suffered by chaining his new life to the corpse of meaningless halachôth;but in Antioch, at any rate, and still more in the new mission–fields of Asia, such bondage could never be allowed.
We can imagine the indignant grief with which St. Paul watched this continuous, this systematic12 attempt to undo all that had been done, and to render impossible all further progress. Was the living and life–giving spirit to be thus sacrificed to the dead letter? Were these new Pharisees to compass sea and land to make one proselyte, only that they might add the pride of the Jew to the vice of the Gentile, and make him ten times more narrow than themselves? Was the superstitious adoration of dead ordinances to dominate over the heaven–sent liberty of the children of God? If Moses had, under Divine guidance, imposed upon a nation of sensual and stiff–necked slaves not only a moral law of which Christ Himself had indefinitely deepened the obligation, but also the crushing yoke of “statutes which were not good, and ordinances whereby they could not live,”13 was this yoke—now that it had been abolished, now that it had become partly impossible and mostly meaningless—to be disastrously imposed on necks for which its only effect would be to madden or to gall?14 Was a Titus, young, and manly, and free, and pure, with the love of Christ burning like a fire on the altar of his soul, to be held at arm’s length by some unregenerate Pharisee, who while he wore broad tephillin, and lsitsith with exactly the right number of threads and knots, was yet an utter stranger to the love of Christ, and ignorant as a child of His free salvation? Were Christians, who were all brethren, all a chosen generation and a royal priesthood, to be treated by Jews, who had no merit beyond the very dubious merit of being Jews, as though they were unclean creatures with whom it was not even fit to eat? The Jews freely indulged in language of contemptuous superiority towards the proselytes, but was such language to be for one moment tolerated in the brotherhood of Christ?15
It is easy to understand in what a flame of fire Paul must often have stood up to urge these questions during the passionate debates which immediately arose.16 It may be imagined with what eager interest the Gentile proselytes would await the result of a controversy which was to decide whether it was enough that they should bring forth the fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, long–suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance—or whether they must also stick up mezuzôth on their houses, and submit to a concision, and abstain from the free purchases of the market, and not touch perfectly harmless kinds of food, and petrify one day out of every seven with a rigidity of small and conventionalised observances. To us it may seem amazing that the utterances of the prophets were not sufficient to show that the essence of religion is faith, not outward service; and that so far from requiring petty accuracies of posture, and dress, and food, what the Lord requires of us is that we should do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.17 But the Judaisers had tradition, authority, and the Pentateuch on their side, and the paralysis of custom rendered many Jewish converts incapable of resisting conclusions which yet they felt to be false. So far as they were true Christians at all, they could not but feel that the end of the commandment was love out of a good heart and a pure conscience, and faith unfeigned; but when their opponents flourished in their faces the Thorah–rolls, and asked them whether they dared to despise the immemorial sanctities of Sinai, or diminish the obligation of laws uttered by Moses amid its burning glow, the ordinary Jew and the ordinary Gentile were perplexed. On these points the words of Jesus had been but a beam in the darkness, certain indeed to grow, but as yet only shining amid deep midnight. They did not yet understand that Christ’s fulfilment of the Law was its abrogation, and that to maintain the type in the presence of the antitype was to hold up superfluous candles to the sun. From this imminent peril of absorption in exclusive ritual one man saved the Church, and that man was Paul. With all the force of his argument, with all the weight of his authority, he affirmed and insisted that the Gentile converts should remain in the free conditions under which they had first accepted the faith of Christ.18
When there appeared likely to be no end to the dispute,19 it became necessary to refer it to the decision of the Church at Jerusalem, and especially of those Apostles who had lived with the living Jesus. It is far from improbable that this plan was urged—nay, demanded—by the Judaisers themselves,20 who must have been well aware that the majority of that Church looked with alarm and suspicion on what they regarded as anti–Judaic innovations. There may even have been a certain insolence (which accounts for the almost irritable language of St. Paul long afterwards) in their manner of parading the immensely superior authority of living witnesses of the life of Jesus like James and Kephas. They doubtless represented the deputation to Jerusalem as a necessary act of submission a going up of Paul and Barnabas to be judged by the Jerusalem synod.21 At this period Paul would not openly repudiate the paraded superiority of the Twelve Apostles. When he says to the Galatians that “he consulted them about the Gospel he was preaching, lest he might be, or had been, running to no purpose,” he shows that at this period he had not arrived at the quite unshaken conviction, which made him subsequently say that “whether he or an angel from heaven preached any other gospel, let him be anathema.”22 In point of fact it was at this interview that he learnt that his own insight and authority were fully equal to those of the Apostles who were in Christ before him; that they had nothing to tell him and nothing to add to him; that, on the contrary, there were spheres of work which belonged rather to him than to them, and in which they stood to him in the position of learners;23 that Jesus had fulfilled His own promise that it was betterfor His children that He should go away, because His communion with them by the gift of His Holy Spirit was closer and more absolute than by His actual presence. But even now Paul must have chafed to submit the decision of truths which he felt to be true to any human authority. But for one circumstance he must have felt like an able Roman Catholic bishop—a Strossmeyer or a Dupanloup—who has to await a decision respecting tenets which he deems irrefragable, from a Pope in all respects his inferior in ability and in enlightenment. That circumstance was the inward voice, the spiritual intimation which revealed to him that this course was wise and necessary. St. Luke, of course, tells the external side of the event, which was that Paul went by desire of the Church of Antioch; but St. Paul himself, omitting this as irrelevant to his purpose, or regarding it as an expression of the will of Heaven, tells his converts that he went up “by revelation.” From Paul also we learn the interesting circumstance that among those who accompanied himself and Barnabas was Titus, perhaps a Cretan Gentile whom he had converted at Cyprus during his first journey.24 Paul took him as a Gentile representative of his own converts, a living pledge and witness that uncircumcised Greeks, seeing that they were equal partakers of the gift of the Holy Ghost, were not to be treated as dogs and outcasts. The declared approval of God was not to be set aside for the fantastic demands of man, and the supercilious tolerance or undisguised contempt of Jews for proselytes was at once a crime and an ignorance when displayed towards a brother in the faith.
Alike the commencement and the course of their overland journey was cheered by open sympathy with their views. From Antioch they were honourably escorted on their way; and as they passed through Berytus, Tyre, Sidon, and Samaria, narrating to the Churches the conversion of the Gentiles, they—like Luther on his way to the Diet of Worms—were encouraged by unanimous expressions of approval and joy. On arriving at Jerusalem they were received by the Apostles and elders, and narrated to them the story of their preaching and its results, together with the inevitable question to which it had given rise. It was on this occasion apparently that some of the Christian Pharisees at once got up, and broadly insisted on the moral necessity of Mosaism and circumcision, implying, therefore, a direct censure of the principles on which Paul and Barnabas had conducted their mission.25 The question thus stated by the opposing parties was far too grave to be decided by any immediate vote; the deliberate judgment of the Church on so momentous a problem could only be pronounced at a subsequent meeting. Paul used the interval with his usual sagacity and power. Knowing how liable to a thousand varying accidents are the decisions arrived at by promiscuous assemblies—fearing lest the voice of a mixed gathering might only express the collective incapacity or the collective prejudice—he endeavoured to win over the leaders of the Church by a private statement of the Gospel which he preached. Those leaders were, he tells us, at this time, James,26 who is mentioned first because of his position as head of the Church at Jerusalem, and Peter and John. These he so entirely succeeded in gaining over to his cause—he showed to them with such unanswerable force that they could not insist on making Gentile Christians into orthodox Jews without incurring the tremendous responsibility of damming up for ever the free river of the grace of God—that they resigned to his judgment the mission to the Gentiles. Eminent as they were in their own spheres, great as was their force of character, marked as was their individuality, they could not resist the personal ascendency of Paul.27 In the presence of one whose whole nature evinced the intensity of his inspired conviction, they felt that they could not assume the position of superiors or guides.28 Whatever may have been their original prejudices, these noble–hearted men allowed neither their private predilections nor any fibre of natural jealousy to deter their acknowledgment of their great fellow–workers. They gave to Paul and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, and acknowledged them as Apostles to the Gentiles. One touching request alone they made. The Church of Jerusalem had been plunged from the first in abject poverty. It had suffered perhaps from the temporary experiment of communism; it had suffered certainly from the humble rank of its first converts, the persecutions which they had endured, and the chronic famine to which their city was liable. Paul and Barnabas were working in wealthy Antioch, and were likely to travel among Gentiles, who, if not rich, were amply supplied with the means of livelihood. Would they forget Jerusalem? Would they suffer those to starve who had walked with Jesus by the Lake of Galilee, and sat beside His feet when He preached the Sermon on the Mount? Already once they had brought from Antioch the deeply acceptable Chaluka,29 which in the fiercest moment of famine and persecution had as much relieved the brethren as the royal bounties of Helena had sustained the Jews. Surely they would not let religious differences prevent them from aiding the hunger–bitten Church? It might be that they had been treated by Jerusalem Christians of the Pharisaic party with surreptitious opposition and undisguised dislike, but surely this would not weigh with them for a moment. The three heads of the afflicted Church begged the missionaries to the luxurious world “that they would remember the poor.” It was a request in every respect agreeable to the tender and sympathetic heart of Paul.30 Apart from all urging, he had already shown spontaneous earnestness31 in this holy work of compassion, and now that it came to him as a sort of request, by way of acknowledging the full recognition which was being conceded to him, he was only too glad to have such means of showing that, while he would not yield an inch of essential truth, he would make any amount of sacrifice in the cause of charity. Thenceforth Paul threw himself into the plan of collecting alms for the poor saints at Jerusalem with characteristic eagerness. There was scarcely a Church or a nation that he visited which he did not press for contributions, and the Galatians themselves could recall the systematic plan of collection which he had urged upon their notice.32 In the very hottest moment of displeasure against those who at any rate representedthemselvesas emissaries of James, he never once relaxed his kindly efforts to prove to the Church, which more than all others suspected and thwarted him, that even theological differences, with all their exasperating bitterness, had not dulled the generous sensibility of a heart which, by many a daily affliction, had learnt to throb with sympathy for the afflicted.
One part, then, of his mission to Jerusalem was fulfilled when the Lord’s brother, and he to whom He had assigned “the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” and he who had leaned his head at the Last Supper upon His breast, had yielded to him their friendly acknowledgment. It is on this that he chiefly dwells to the Galatians. In their Churches brawling Judaisers had dared to impugn his commission and disparage his teaching, on the asserted authority of the mother Church and its bishop. It was Paul’s object to prove to them that his sacred independence had been acknowledged by the very men who were now thrust into antagonism with his sentiments. There may be in his language a little sense of wrong; but, on the other hand, no candid reader can fail to see that a fair summary of the antagonism to which he alludes is this—“Separation, not opposition; antagonism of the followers rather than of the leaders; personal antipathy of the Judaisers to St. Paul rather than of St. Paul to the Twelve.”33
But St. Luke is dealing with another side of this visit. To him the authority of Paul was not a subject of doubt, nor was it seriously questioned by those for whom he wrote; but with the teachingof Paul it was far different, and it was Luke’s object to show that the main principles involved, so far from being dangerous, had received the formal sanction of the older Apostles. That there was a severe struggle he does not attempt to conceal, but he quotes an authentic document to prove that it ended triumphantly in favour of the Apostle of the Gentiles.
A concrete form was given to this debate by the presence of Titus as one of Paul’s companions. Around this young man arose, it is evident, a wild clamour of controversy. The Judaisers insisted that he should be circumcised. So long as he remained uncircumcised they refused to eat with him, or to regard him as in any true sense a brother. They may even have been indignant with Paul for his free companionship with this Gentile, as they had previously been with Peter for sharing the hospitality of Cornelius. The Agapæ were disturbed with these contentions, and with them the celebration of the Holy Communion. Alike Titus and Paul must have had a troubled time amid this storm of conflicting opinions, urged with the rancorous intensity which Jews always display when their religious fanaticism is aroused.34 Even after the lapse of five or six years St. Paul cannot speak of this episode in his life without an agitation which affects his language to so extraordinary a degree as to render uncertain to us the result, of which doubtless the Galatians were aware, but about which we should be glad to have more complete certainty. The question is, did Paul, in this particular instance, yield or not? In other words, was Titus circumcised? In the case of Timothy, Paul avowedly took into account his Jewish parentage on the mother’s side, and therefore circumcised him as a Jew, and not as a Gentile, because otherwise it would have been impossible to secure his admission among Jews. Even this might be enough to give rise to the charges of inconsistency with which we know him to have been assailed. But if he had indeed bowed to the storm in the case of Titus—if he, the firmest champion of Christian uncircumcision, the foremost preacher of the truth that in Christ Jesus neither circumcision was anything nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love, had still allowed an adult Gentile convert to submit to a Jewish rite which had no meaning except as an acknowledgment that he was bound to keep the Mosaic Law—then, indeed, he might be charged with having sacrificed the very point at issue. He might of course urge that he had only done it for the moment by way of peace, because otherwise the very life of Titus would have been endangered, or because his presence in the Holy City might otherwise have caused false rumours and terrible riots, as the presence of Trophimus35 did in later years. He might say, “I circumcised Titus only because there was no other chance of getting the question reasonably discussed;” but if he yielded at all, however noble and charitable may have been his motives, he gave to his opponents a handle against him which assuredly they did not fail to use.
Now that he was most vehemently urged to take this step is clear, and perhaps the extraordinary convulsiveness of his expressions is only due to the memory of all that he must have undergone in that bitter struggle.36 In holding out to the last he had, doubtless, been forced to encounter the pressure of nearly the whole body of the Church at Jerusalem, including almost certainly all who were living of the twelve Apostles, and their three leaders. Perhaps even Barnabas himself might, as afterwards, have lost all firm grasp of truths which seemed sufficiently clear when he was working with Paul alone on the wild uplands of Lycaonia. Certainly St. Paul’s moral courage triumphed over the severest test, if he had the firmness and fortitude to hold out against this mass of influence. It would have been far bolder than Whitefield standing before a conclave of Bishops, or Luther pleading his cause at Rome. As far as courage was concerned, it is certain that no fear would ever have induced him to give way; but might he not have yielded adinterim, and as a charitable concession, in order to secure a permanent result?
Let us consider, in all its roughness, his own language. “Then,” he says, “fourteen years after,37 I again went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking with me also Titus.38 Now, I went up in accordance with a revelation, and I referred to them39 the Gospel which I am preaching among the Gentiles—privately, however, to those of repute, lest perchance I am now running,40 or even had run, to no purpose.41 But not even Titus, who was with me, Greek though he was, was obligedto be circumcised; but [he was only circumcised?] because of the stealthily–introduced false brethren—people who came secretly in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, in order that they shall42 utterly enslave us, [(to whom) not even]43 for an hour did we yield bywayofsubmission—in order that the truth of the Gospel may remain entirely with you;44 from those, however, who are reputed45 to be something—whatever they were46 makes no matter to me—God accepts no man’s face—well, to me those in repute added nothing.” Such is a literal translation of his actual words in this extraordinary sentence; and he then proceeds to narrate the acknowledgment of the Three, that his authority was in no sense disparate with theirs; nay, that in dealing with the Gentiles he was to be regarded as specially endowed with Divine guidance.
But does he mean that, “I never for a moment yielded and circumcised Titus, in spite of the enormous pressure which was put upon me?” or does he mean, “I admit— grieved as I am to admit it—that in the case of Titus I did yield. Titus was circumcised, but not undercompulsion. I yielded, but not out of submission. The concession which I made—vast as it was, mistaken as it may have been—was not an abandonment of principle, but a stretch of charity?”
It must be remembered that Paul “cared for ideas, not for forms;” the fact that circumcision was a matter in itself indifferent—the admitted truth that men could be saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by that alone—may have induced him, under strong pressure,47 to concede that the rite should be performed—with the same kind of half–contemptuous indifference to the exaggeration of trifles which makes him say to the Galatians in a burst of bitter irony, “I wish that, while they are about it, these Judaisers, who make so much of circumcision, would go a little farther still and make themselves altogether like your priests of Agdistis.”48 When Paul took on him the Nazarite vow, when he circumcised Timothy,49 he did it out of a generous desire to remove all needless causes of offence, and not to let his work be hindered by a stiff refusal to give way in things unimportant. We know that it was his avowed principle to become all things to all men, if so be he might win some. His soul was too large to stickle about matters of no moment. Can we not imagine that in the wild strife of tongues which made Jerusalem hateful so long as the uncircumcised Titus was moving among the members of the Church, Paul might have got up and said, “I have come here to secure a decision about a matter of vast moment. If the presence of Titus looks to you like an offensive assertion of foregone conclusions—well, it is only an individual instance—and while the question is still undecided, I will have him circumcised, and we shall then be able to proceed more calmly to the consideration of the general question?” Might he not have regarded this as a case in which it was advisable “reculer pour mieux sauter?” and to his own friends who shared his sentiments might he not have said, “What does it matter in this particular instance? It canmean nothing. Titus himself is generous enough to wish it for the sake of peace; he fully understands that he is merely yielding to a violent prejudice. It may be most useful to him in securing future admission to Jewish assemblies. To him, to us, it will be regarded as ‘concision,’ not ‘circumcision;’ an outward observance submitted to from voluntary good nature; not by any means a solemn precedent, or a significant rite?” And would not Titus have also urged the Apostle not to be deterred by any consideration for him? Might he not naturally have said, “I am grieved that there should be all this uproar and heart–burning on my account, and I am quite willing to allay it by becoming a proselyte of righteousness?” If Titus took this generous line, Paul’s reluctance to take advantage of his generosity might have been increased, and yet an additional argument would have been supplied to his opponents. “Moses,” they would have said, “commanded circumcision; we cannot let this Gentile sit at our Agapæ without it; he is himself, much to his credit, quite ready to consent to it; why do you persist in troubling our Israel by your refusal to consent?”
For whatever may be urged against this view, I cannot imagine why, if Paul did notyield, he should use language so ambiguous, so involved, that whether we retain the negativeornothis language has still led many—as it did in the earliest ages of the Church—to believe that he did the very thing which he is generally supposed to be denying. Nothing could have been easier or pleasanter than to say, “I did notcircumcise Titus, though every possible effort was made to force me to do so. My not doing so—even at Jerusalem, even at the beginning of the whole controversy, even at the head–quarters of the Judæo–Christian tyranny, even in the face of the evident wish of the Apostles— proves, once for all, both my independence and my consistency.” But it was immensely more difficult to explain why he reallyhadgivenway in that important instance. It may be that Titus was by his side while he penned this very paragraph, and, if so, it would be to Paul a yet more bitter reminder of a concession which, more than aught else, had been quoted to prove his subjection and his insincerity. He is therefore so anxious to show why he did it, and what were not his motives, that ultimately ho unconsciously omits to say it in so many words at all.50 And if, after the decision of the meeting, and the battle which he had fought, Paul still thought it advisableto circumcise Timothy merely to avoid offending the Jews whom he was about to visit, would not the same motives work with him at this earlier period when he saw how the presence of Titus threw the whole Church into confusion? If the false inferences which might be deduced from the concession were greater in the case of a pure–blooded Gentile, on the other hand the necessity for diminishing offence was also more pressing, and the obligatoriness of circumcision had at that time been less seriously impugned. And it is even doubtful whether such a course was not overruled for good. But for this step would it, for instance, have been possible for Titus to be overseer of the Church of Crete? Would any circumcised Jew have tolerated at this epoch the “episcopate” of an uncircumcised Gentile? I have dwelt long upon this incident because, if I am right, there are few events in the biography of St. Paul more illustrative alike of his own character and of the circumstances of his day. He would rather have died, would rather have suffered a schism between the Church of Jerusalem and the Churches of her Gentile converts, than admit that there could be no salvation out of the pale of Mosaism. In this or that instance he was ready enough— perhaps, in the largeness of this heart, too ready for his own peace—to go almost any length rather than bring himself and, what was infinitely more dear to him, the Gospel with which he had been entrusted, into collision with the adamantine walls of Pharisaic bigotry. But he always let it be understood that his principle remained intact—that Christ had in every sense abolished the curse of the Law— that, except in its universal moral precepts, it was no longer binding on the Gentiles—that the “traditions of the fathers” had for them no further significance. He intended at all costs, by almost unlimited concession in the case of individuals, by unflinching resistance when principles were endangered, to establish, as far at any rate as the Gentiles were concerned, the truth that Christ had obliterated the handwriting in force against us, and taken it out of the way, nailing the torn fragments of its decrees to His cross.51
And so the great debate came on. The Apostles—at any rate, their leaders—had to a great extent been won over in private conferences; the opponents had been partially silenced by a personal concession. Paul must have looked forward with breathless interest to the result of the meeting which should decide whether Jerusalem was still to be the metropolis of the Faith, or whether she was to be abandoned to the isolation of unprogressive literalism, while the Gospel of Christ started on a new career from Antioch and from the West. One thing only must not be. She must not swathe the dailystrengthening youth of Christianity in the dusty cerements of an abolished system; she must not make Christianity a religion of washings and cleansings, of times and seasons, of meats and drinks, but a religion of holiness and of the heart—a religion in which men might eat or not as they pleased, and might regard every day as alike sacred, so that they strove with all their power to reveal in their lives a love to man springing out of the root of love to God.
We are not surprised to hear that there was much eager and passionate debate.52 Doubtless, as in all similar gatherings of the Church to settle disputed questions, there were mutual recriminations and misunderstandings, instances of untenable argument, of inaccurate language, of confused conceptions. The Holy Spirit, indeed, was among them then, as now, in all gatherings of faithful Christian men: He was with them to guide and to inspire. But neither then nor now—as we see by the clearest evidence of the New Testament then, and as we see by daily experience now—did His influence work to the miraculous extinction of human differences, or obliteration of human imperfections. Those who supported the cause of Paul rendered themselves liable to those charges, so terrible to a Jew, of laxness, of irreligion, of apostasy, of unpatriotism, of not being believers in revealed truth. Was not Moses inspired? Was the Sacred Pentateuch to be reduced to a dead letter? Were all the curses of Ebal to be braved? Were the Thorah–rolls to be flung contemptuously into the Dead Sea? On the other hand, those who maintained the necessity of circumcision and of obedience to the Law, laid themselves open to the fatal question, “If the Law is essential to salvation, what, then, has been the work of Christ?”
But when the subject had been amply discussed, Peter arose.53 Which side he would take could be hardly doubtful. He had, in fact, already braved and overborne the brunt of a similar opposition. But an exceptional instance was felt to be a very different thing from a universal rule. It was true that Peter did not now stand alone, but found the moral support, which was so necessary to him, in the calm dignity of Barnabas and the fervid genius of Paul. But in all other respects his task was even more difficult than it had been before, and, rising to the occasion, he spoke with corresponding boldness and force.54 His speech was in accordance with the practical, forthright, non–argumentative turn of his mind. Filled with energetic conviction by the logic of facts, he reminded them how, long ago,55 the question had been practically settled. God had selected him to win over the first little body of converts from the Gentile world; and the gift of the Spirit to them had showed that they were cleansed by faith. To lay on them the burden of the Law—a burden to the daily life which it surrounded with unpractical and often all but impracticable observances—a burden to the conscience because it created a sense of obligation of which it could neither inspire the fulfilment nor remedy the shortcoming—a burden which had therefore been found intolerable both by their fathers and themselves56—was simply to tempt God by hindering His manifest purposes, and resisting His manifest will. In one doctrine all present were agreed;57 it was that alike the Jews and the Gentile converts should be saved only by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. The inference then was obvious, that they were not and could not be saved by the works of the Law. In the observance of those works the Jews, on whom they were originally enjoined, might naturally persevere till fresh light came; but these hereditary customs had never been addressed to the Gentiles, and, since they were unnecessary to salvation, they must obviously be to the Gentiles not burdensome only, but a positive stumbling–block.
The weight of Peter’s dignity had produced silence in the assembly. The excitement was now so far calmed that Paul and Barnabas were at least listened to without interruptions. Barnabas—who, in the Jewish Church, still retained his precedence, and who was as acceptable to the audience from his past liberality as Paul was unacceptable from his former persecutions—spoke first; but both he and Paul seem to have abstained from arguingthe question. All the arguments had been urged at private conferences when words could be deliberately considered. They were not there to impress their own views, but to hear those of the Apostles and of the Church they governed. Barnabas never seems to have been prominent in debate, and Paul was too wise to discuss theological differences before a promiscuous audience. They confined themselves, therefore, to a simple history of their mission, dwelling especially on those “signs and wonders” wrought by their hands among the Gentiles, which were a convineing proof that, though they might not win the approval of man, they had all along enjoyed the blessing of God.
Then rose James. Every one present must have felt that the practical decision of the Church—Paul must have felt that, humanly speaking, the future of Christianity— depended on his words. A sense of awe clung about him and all he said and did. Clothed with a mysterious and indefinable dignity as “the brother of the Lord,” that dignity and mystery were enhanced by his bearing, dress, manner of life, and entire appearance. Tradition, as embodied in an Ebionite romance, and derived from thence by Hegesippus,58 represents him as wearing no wool, but clothed in fine white linen from head to foot, and—either from some priestly element in his genealogy, or to symbolise his “episcopate” at Jerusalem—as wearing on his forehead the petalon, or golden plate of High–priesthood.59 It is said that he was so holy, and so highly esteemed by the whole Jewish prople, that he alone was allowed, like the High Priest, to enter the Holy Place; that he lived a celibate60 and ascetic life; that he spent long hours alone in the Temple praying for the people, till his knees became hard and callous as those of the camel; that he had the power of working miracles; that the rain fell in accordance with his prayers; that it was owing to his merits that God’s impending wrath was averted from the Jewish nation; that he received the title of “the Just” and Obliam, or “Rampart of the People;” and that he was shadowed forth in the images of the prophets.61 Some of these details must be purely imaginative; but legends, as has well been said, are like the clouds that gather upon the mountain summits, and show the height and take the shapes of the peaks about which they cling. We may readily believe that he was a Nazarite, perhaps even an ascetic—one who, by the past affinities of his character, was bound rather to Banus, and John Baptist, and the strict communities of the Essenes, than to the disciples of One who came eating and drinking, pouring on social life the brightness of His holy joy, attending the banquet of the Pharisee at Capernaum, and the feast of the bridegroom at Cana, not shrinking from the tears with which Mary of Magdala or the perfumes with which Mary of Bethany embathed his feet.
Such was the man who now rose to speak, with the long locks of the Nazarite streaming over his white robe, and with all the sternness of aspect which can hardly have failed to characterise one who was so rigid in his convictions, so uncompromising in his judgments, so incisive in his speech. The importance of his opinion lay in the certainty that it could hardly fail to be, at least nominally, adopted by the multitude, among whom he exercised an authority, purely local indeed and limited, but within those limits superior even to that of Peter. The most fanatical of bigots could hardly refuse to be bound by the judgment of one who was to the very depth of his being a loyal Jew; to whom even unconverted Jews looked up with reverence; to whom the “Law,” which neither St. Peter nor St. John so much as mention in their Epistles, was so entirely the most prominent conception that he does not once mention the Gospel, and only alludes to it under the aspect of a law, though as “the perfect law of liberty.”62
His speech—which, as in so many other instances, bears internal marks of authenticity63—was thoroughly Judaic in tone, and yet showed that the private arguments of the Apostles of the Gentiles had not been thrown away on a mind which, if in comparison with the mind of a Paul, and even of a Peter, it was somewhat stern and narrow, was yet the mind of a remarkable and holy man who would not struggle against the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God. Peter, in one of those impetuous outbursts of generous conviction which carried him beyond his ordinary self, had launtlessly laid down broad principles which are, perhaps, the echo of thoughts which Paul had impressed upon his mind. It would have been too much to expect that James would speak with equal breadth and boldness. Had he done so, we should have felt at once that he was using language unlike himself, unlike all that we know of him, unlike the language of his own Epistle. But though his speech is as different from St. Peter’s as possible—though it proposed restrictions where he had indicated liberty—it yet went farther than could have been hoped; farther than bigots either liked or cordially accepted; and, above all, it conceded the main point at issue in implying that circumcision and the ceremonial law were, as a whole, non–essential for the Gentiles.
Requesting their attention, he reminded them that Symeon64—as, using the Hebrew form of the name, he characteristically calls his brother Apostle—had narrated to them the Divine intimations which led to the call of the Gentiles, and this he shows was in accordance with ancient prophecy, and, therefore, with Divine fore–ordination.65 But obviously—this was patent to all Jews alike—the Gentiles would never accept the whole Mosaic Law. His authoritative decision,66 therefore, took the form of “a concession and a reserve.” He proposed to release the converted Gentiles from all but four restrictions—which belonged to what was called the Noachian dispensation67—abstinence, namely, from things polluted by being offered to idols,68 and from fornication, and from anything strangled, and from blood.69 “For,” he adds, in words which are pregnant with more than one significance, “Moses from of old hath preachers in the synagogues in every city, being read every Sabbath day.” By this addition he probably meant to imply that since Moses was universally read in synagogues attended both by Jews and by Gentile converts, we will tell the Gentiles that this Law which they hear read is not universally binding on them, but only so far as charity to the Jew requires; and we will tell the Jews that we have no desire to abrogate forthemthat Law to whose ordinances they hear a weekly witness.
One of the most remarkable points in this speech is the argument deduced from the prophecy of Amos, which was primarily meant as a prophecy of the restoration of Israel from captivity, but which St. James, with a large insight into the ever–widening horizons of prophecy, applies to the ideal restoration, the reception of Jehovah as their common Father by the great family of man. In the rebuilding of the ruined tabernacle of David he sees the upraising of the Church of Christ as an ideal temple to which the Gentiles also shall be joined. Nor is it a little striking that in adducing this prophecy he quotes, not the Hebrew, but mainly the Septuagint.70 The Greek differs essentially from the Hebrew, and differs from it in the essence of the interpretation, which lies not only in the ideal transference from the Temple to the Church, but in direct reference to the Gentiles—viz.:
“ThattheresidueofmenmightseekaftertheLord, and all the Gentiles upon whom My name is called, saith the Lord.”
But the Hebrew says, much less appositely to the purpose of the speaker,
“ThattheymaypossesstheremnantofEdom, and of all the heathen upon whom My name is called, saith the Lord.”
The difference is due to one of those numberless and often extraordinary variations of the original text of which the Septuagint is so decisive a proof, and which makes that version so interesting a study.71 This application of James may be regarded as implicitly involved even in the Hebrew, and is yet more directly supported by other passages;72 but the fact that here and elsewhere the New Testament writers quote and argue from the undeniably variant renderings of the Septuagint, quoting them from memory, and often differing in actual words both from these and from the Hebrew, shows how utterly removed was their deep reverence for Scripture from any superstition about the literal dictation of mere words or letters.
The debate was now at an end, for all the leaders had spoken. The objections had been silenced; the voice of the chief elder had pronounced the authoritative conclusion. It only remained to make that conclusion known to those who were immediately concerned. The Apostles and Elders and the whole Church therefore ratified the decision, and selected two of their own body, men of high repute—Judas Barsabbas and Silas73—to accompany the emissaries from the Church of Antioch on their return, and to be pledges for the genuineness of their written communication. The letter which they sent embodied their resolutions, and ran as follows:—“The Apostles and Elders74 and brethren to the brethren from the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greeting.75 Since we heard that some who went out from among us troubled you with statements, subverting76 your souls, who received no injunction from us,77 we met together, and decided to select men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul,78 persons79 who have given up their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.80 We have therefore commissioned Judas and Silas to make in person the same announcement to you by word of mouth—namely, that it is our decision, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost,81 to lay no further burden82 upon you beyond these necessary things: to abstain from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication, in keeping yourselves from which it shall be well with you. Farewell.”83
It will be observed that throughout this account I have avoided the terms “Council” and “decree.” It is only by an unwarrantable extension of terms that the meeting of the Church of Jerusalem can be called a “Council,” and the word connotes a totally different order of conceptions to those that were prevalent at that early time. The so–called Council of Jerusalem in no way resembled the General Councils of the Church, either in its history, its constitution, or its object. It was not a convention of ordained delegates, but a meeting of the entire Church of Jerusalem to receive a deputation from the Church of Antioch. Even Paul and Barnabas seem to have had no vote in the decision, though the votes of a promiscuous body could certainly not be more enlightened than theirs, nor was their allegiance due in any way to James. The Church of Jerusalem might out of respect be consulted, but it had no claim to superiority, no abstract prerogative to bind its decisions on the free Church of God.84 The “decree” of the “Council” was little more than the wise recommendation of a single synod, addressed to a particular district, and possessing only a temporary validity.85 It was, in fact, a local concordat. Little or no attention has been paid by the universal Church to two of its restrictions; a third, not many years after, was twice discussed and settled by Paul, on the same general principles, but with a by no means identical conclusion.86 The concession which it made to the Gentiles, in not insisting on the necessity of circumcision, was equally treated as a dead letter by the Judaising party, and cost Paul the severest battle of his lifetime to maintain. If this circular letter is to be regarded as a binding and final decree, and if the meeting of a single Church, not by delegates but in the person of all its members, is to be regarded as a Council, never was the decision of a Council less appealed to, and never was a decree regarded as so entirely inoperative alike by those who repudiated the validity of its concessions,87 and by those who discussed, as though they were still an open question, no less than three of its four restrictions.88
The letter came to the Churches like a message of peace. Its very limitation was, at the time, the best proof of its inspired wisdom. Considering the then state of the Church, no decision could have more clearly evinced the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God.89 It was all the more valuable because there were so many questions which it left unsolved. The heads of the Church admitted—and that was something—that circumcision was non–essential to Gentiles, and they may seem to have indulged in an extreme liberality in not pressing the distinction between clean and unclean meats, and, above all, in not insisting on the abstinence from the flesh of swine. By these concessions they undoubtedly removed great difficulties from the path of Gentile converts. But, after all, a multitude of most pressing questions remained, and left an opening for each party to hold almost exactly the same opinions as before. A Gentile was not to be compelledto circumcision and Mosaism. Good; but might it not be infinitely betterfor him to accept them? Might there not have been in the minds of Jewish Christians, as in those of later Rabbis, a belief that “even if Gentiles observe the seven Noachian precepts, they do not receive the same reward as Israelites?”90 It is, at any rate, clear that neither now nor afterwards did the Judaisers admit Paul’s dogmatic principles, as subsequently stated to the Galatians and Romans. Probably they regarded him, at the best, as the Ananias for future Eleazers.91 Above all, the burning question of social relations remained untouched. Titus had been circumcised as the only condition on which the members of the Church at Jerusalem would let him move on an equal footing among themselves. It was all very well for them to decide with more or less indifference about “choots learets,” “the outer world,” “people elsewhere,” “those afar,”92 as though they could much more easily contemplate the toleration of uncircumcised Christians, provided that they were out of sight and out of mind in distant cities; but a Jew was a Jew, even if he lived in the wilds of Isauria or the burnt plains of Phrygia; and how did this decision at Jerusalem help him to face the practical question, “Am I, or am I not, to share a common table with, to submit to the daily contact of people that eat freely of that which no true Jew can think of without a thrill of horror— the unclean beast?”
These were the questions which, after all, could only be left to the solution of time. The prejudices of fifteen centuries could not be removed in a day. Alike the more enlightened and the more bigoted of Jews and Gentiles continued to think very much as they had thought before, until the darkness of prejudice was scattered by the broadening light of history and of reason.
The genuineness of this cyclical letter is evinced by its extreme naturalness. A religious romancist could not possibly have invented anything which left so much unsolved. And this genuineness also accounts for the startling appearance of a grave moral crime among things so purely ceremonial as particular kinds of food. There is probably no other period in the history of the world at which the Apostles would have found it needful to tell their Gentile converts to abstain from fornication, as well as from things offered to idols, things strangled, and blood. The first of these four prohibitions was perfectly intelligible, because it must have been often necessary for a Gentile Christian to prove to his Jewish brethren that he had no hankering after the “abominable idolatries” which he had so recently abandoned. The two next prohibitions were desirable as a concession to the indefinable horror with which the Jews and many other Eastern races regarded the eating of the blood, which they considered to be “the very life.”93 But only at such a period as this could a moral pollution have been placed on even apparently the same footing as matters of purely national prejudice. That the reading is correct,94 and that the thing forbidden is the sin of fornication, not idolatry, or mixed marriages, or marriages between blood relations (1 Cor. 5:1), or second marriages (1 Tim. 3:2), or any of the other explanations in which an astonished exegesis has taken refuge, must be regarded as certain. How, then, can the fact be accounted for? Only by the boundless profligacy of heathendom; only by the stern purity of Christian morals. The Jews, as a nation, were probably the purest among all the races of mankind; yet even they did not regard this sin as being the moral crime which Christianity teaches us to consider it;95 and they lived in the midst of a world which regarded it as so completely a matter of indifference that Socrates has no censure for it,96 and Cicero declares that no Pagan moralist had ever dreamt of meeting it with an absolute prohibition.97 What is it that has made the difference in the aspect which sensuality wears to the ancient and to the modern conscience? I have no hesitation in answering that the reason is to be found in the purity which every page of the New Testament breathes and inspires, and specially in the words of our Blessed Lord, and in the arguments of St. Paul. If the blush of modesty on youthful cheeks is a holy thing, if it be fatal alike to individuals and to nations “to burn away in mad waste” the most precious gifts of life, if debauchery be a curse and stain which more than any other has eaten into the heart of human happiness, then the saintly benefactor to whose spirituality we owe the inestimable boon of having impressed these truths upon the youth of every Christian land is he who—taught by the Spirit of the Lord—showed more clearly, more calmly, more convincingly than any human being has ever shown, the true heinousness, the debasing tendency, the infusive virulence of sins which, through the body, strike their venom and infix their cancer into the soul; of sins which have this peculiar sinfulness—that they not only destroy the peace and endanger the salvation of the soul which is responsible for itself, but also the souls of others, which, in consequence of the sinner’s guilty influence, may remain impenitent, yet for the sake of which, no less than for his own, Christ died.