“Separati epulis, discreti cubilibus.”—TAC. H.v. 5.
“At ais Ecclesia est sancta, Patres sunt sancti Bene; sed Ecclesia quamlibet sancta tamen cogitur dicere Remitte nobis peccata nostra. Sic Patres quamlibet sancti per remissionem peccatorum salvati sunt.”—LUTHER, Comm. onGalat.i.
SUCH, then, was the result of the appeal upon which the Judaisers had insisted; and so far as the main issue was concerned the Judaisers had been defeated. The Apostles, in almost indignantly repudiating the claim of these men to express their opinions, had given them a rebuff. They had intimated their dislike that the peace of Churches should be thus agitated, and had declared that circumcision was not to be demanded from the Gentiles. It needed but a small power of logic to see that, Christianity being what it was, the decision at least implied that converts, whether Jews or Gentiles, were to bear and forbear, and to meet together as equals in all religious and social gatherings. The return of the delegates was therefore hailed with joy in Antioch, and the presence of able and enlightened teachers like Judas and Silas, who really were what the Pharisaic party had falsely claimed to be—the direct exponents of the views of the Apostles—diffused a general sense of unity and confidence. After a brief stay, these two emissaries returned to Jerusalem.1 On Silas, however, the spell of Paul’s greatness had been so powerfully exercised that he came back to Antioch, and threw in his lot for some time with the great Apostle of the Gentiles.2
Paul, in fact, by the intensity of his convictions, the enlightenment of his understanding, the singleness of his purpose, had made himself completely master of the situation. He had come to the very forefront in the guidance of the Church. The future of Christianity rested with the Gentiles, and to the Gentiles the acts and writings of Paul were to be of greater importance than those of all the other Apostles. His Apostolate had been decisively recognised. He had met Peter and John, and even the awe–inspiring brother of the Lord, in conference, and found himself so completely their equal in the gifts of the Holy Ghost, that it was impossible for them to resist his credentials. He had greatly enlarged their horizon, and they had added nothing to him. He had returned from Jerusalem more than ever conscious of himself, conscious of his own power, clear in his future purposes. He inspired into the Church of Antioch his own convictions with a force which no one could resist.
But since the letter from Jerusalem suggested so many inquiries, and laid down no universal principle, it was inevitable that serious complications should subsequently arise. A scene shortly occurred which tested to the extremest degree the intellectual firmness and moral courage of St. Paul. St. Peter seems about this time to have begun that course of wider journeys which, little as we know of them, carried him in some way or other to his final martyrdom at Rome. We do not again hear of his presence at Jerusalem. John continued there in all probability for many years, and Peter may have felt his presence needless; nor is it unlikely that, as Peter dwelt on the wider views which he had learnt from intercourse with his brother Apostle, he may have found himself less able to sympathise with the more Judaic Christianity of James. At any rate, we find him not long after this period at Antioch, and there so frankly adopting the views of St. Paul, that he not only extended to all Gentiles the free intercourse which he had long ago interchanged with Cornelius, but seems in other and more marked ways to have laid aside the burden of Judaism.3 Paul could not but have rejoiced at this public proof that the views of the Apostle of the circumcision were, on this momentous subject, identical with his own. But this happiness was destined to be seriously disturbed. As the peace of the Church of Antioch had been previously troubled by “certain which came down from Jerusalem,” so it was now broken by the arrival of “certain from James.” Up to this time, in the Agapæ of Antioch, the distinction of Jew and Gentile had been merged in a common Christianity, and this equal brotherhood had been countenanced by the presence of the Apostle who had lived from earliest discipleship in the closest intercourse with Christ. But now a cloud suddenly came over this frank intercourse.4 Under the influence of timidity, the plastic nature of Peter, susceptible as it always was to the impress of the moment, began to assume a new aspect. His attitude to the Gentile converts was altered. “He began to draw away and separate himself,” in order not to offend the rigid adherents of the Lord’s brother.5 It is not said that they claimed any direct authority, or were armed with any express commission; but they were strict Jews, who, however much they might tolerate the non–observance of the Law by Gentiles, looked with suspicion—perhaps almost with horror—on any Jew who repudiated obligations which, for himat any rate, they regarded as stringent and sacred.6 A false shame, a fear of what these men might say, dislike to face a censure which would acquire force from those accumulated years of habit which the vision of Joppa had modified, but not neutralised—perhaps too a bitter recollection of all he had gone through on a former occasion when he “had gone in unto men uncircumcised and eaten with them”—led Peter into downright hypocrisy.7 Without any acknowledged change of view, without a word of public explanation, he suddenly changed his course of life, and it was almost inevitable that the other Jewish Christians should follow this weak and vacillating example. The Apostle who “seemed to be a pillar” proved to be a “reed shaken with the wind.”8 To the grief and shame of Paul, even Barnabas—Barnabas, his fellow–worker in the Churches of the Gentiles—even Barnabas, who had stood side by side with him to plead for the liberty of the Gentiles at Jerusalem, was swept away by the flood of inconsistency, and in remembering that he was a Levite forgot that he was a Christian. In fact, a strong Jewish reaction set in. There was no question of charity here, but a question of principle. To eat with the Gentiles, to live as do the Gentiles, was for a Jew either right or wrong. Interpreted in the light of those truths which lay at the very bases of the Gospel, it was right; and if the Church was to be one and indivisible, the agreement that the Gentiles were not to put on the yoke of Mosaism seemed to imply that they were not to lose status by declining to do so. But to shilly–shally on the matter, to act in one way to–day and in a different way to–morrow, to let the question of friendly intercourse depend on the presence or absence of people who were supposed to represent the stern personality of James, could not under anycircumstances be right. It was monstrous that the uncircumcised Gentile convert was at one time to be treated as a brother, and at another to be shunned as though he were a Pariah. This was an uncertain, underhand sort of procedure, which St. Paul could not for a moment sanction. He could not stand by to see the triumph of the Pharisaic party over the indecision of men like Peter and Barnabas. For the moral weakness which succumbs to impulse he had the deepest tenderness, but he never permitted himself to maintain a truce with the interested selfishness which, at a moment’s notice, would sacrifice a duty to avoid an inconvenience. Paul saw at a glance that Kephas9 (and the Hebrew name seemed best to suit the Hebraic defection) was wrong—wrong intellectually, if not morally—and that he was mainly responsible for the wrong into which the others had been betrayed by his example. He did not, therefore, hesitate to withstand him to the face. It was no occasion for private remonstrance; the reproof must be as public as the wrong, or the whole cause might be permanently imperilled. Perhaps few things demand a firmer resolution than the open blame of those who in age and position are superior to ourselves. For one who had been a fierce persecutor of Christians to rebuke one who had lived in daily intercourse with Christ was a very hard task. It was still more painful to involve Barnabas and other friends in the same censure; but that was what duty demanded, and duty was a thing from which Paul never shrank.
Rising at some public gathering of the Church, at which both Jews and Gentiles were present, he pointedly addressed Peter in language well calculated to show him that he stood condemned.10 “If thou,” he said before them all, “being a born Jew, art living Gentile fashion and not Jew fashion, how11 canst thou try12 to compel the Gentiles to Judaise?”13 So far his language complained of his brother Apostle’s inconsistency rather than of his present conduct. It was intended to reveal the inconsistency which Peter had wished to hide. It directly charged him with having done the very thing which his present withdrawal from Gentile communion was meant to veil. “You have been living as a Gentile Christian in the midst of Gentile Christians; you may alter your line at this moment, but such has been your deliberate conduct. Now if it is unnecessary for you, a born Jew, to keep the Law, how can it be necessary, even as a counsel of perfection, that the Gentiles should do so? Yet it must be necessary, or at least desirable, if, short of this, you do not even consider the Gentiles worthy of your daily intercourse. If your present separation means that you consider it to be a contamination to eat with them, you are practically forcing them to be like you in all respects. Be it so, if such is your view; but let that view be clearly understood. The Church must not be deceived as to what your example hasbeen. If indeed that conduct was wrong, then say so, and let us know your reasons; but if that conduct was notwrong, then it concedes the entire equality and liberty which in the name of Christ we claim for our Gentile brethren, and you have left yourself no further right to cast a doubt on this by your present behaviour.” It has been the opinion of some that St. Paul’s actual speech to Peter ended with this question, and that the rest of the chapter is an argument addressed to the Galatians. But though, in his eager writing, St. Paul may unconsciously pass from what he said in the assembly at Antioch to the argument which he addressed to apostatising converts in Galatia, yet he can hardly have thrown away the opportunity of impressing his clear convictions on this subject upon Peter and the Church of Antioch. He wished to drive home the sole legitimate and logical consequence of the points already established; and we can scarcely doubt that he used on this occasion some of those striking arguments which we shall subsequently examine in the Epistle to the Galatians.14
They all turn on the great truth over which the Holy Spirit had now given him so firm a grasp—the truth of Justification by Faith alone. If no man could see salvation save by means of faith, and on account of Christ’s mercy, then even for the Jew the Law was superfluous. The Jew, however, might, on grounds of national patriotism, blamelessly continue the observances which were ancient and venerable,15 provided that he did not trust in them. But the Gentile was in no way bound by them, and to treat him as an inferior because of this immunity was to act in contradiction to the first principles of Christian faith. The contrasted views of St. Paul and of the Judaists were here brought into distinct collision, and thereby into the full light on which depended their solution. Faith without the Law, said the Judaists, means a state of Gentile “sinfulness.” Faith with the Law, replied St. Paul, means that Christ has died in vain.16 Among good and holy men love would still be the girdle of perfectness; but when the controversy waxed fierce between inspired conviction on the one side, and designing particularism on the other, hard terms were used. “Your principle is a nullification of Moses, of inspiration, of religion itself,” said the Judaists; “it is downright rationalism; it is rank apostasy.” “Your Gospel,” replied the Apostle, “is no Gospel at all; it is the abnegation of the Gospel; it is a bondage to carnal rudiments; it is a denial of Christ.”
A reproof is intolerable when it is administered out of pride or hatred, but the wounds of a friend are better at all times than the precious balms of an enemy that break the head. We are not told the immediate effect of Paul’s words upon Peter and Barnabas, and in the case of the latter we may fear that, even if unconsciously, they may have tended, since human nature is very frail and weak, to exasperate the subsequent quarrel by a sense of previous difference. But if Peter’s weakness was in exact accordance with all we know of his character, so too would be the rebound of a noble nature which restored him at once to strength. The needle of the compass may tremble and be deflected, but yet it is its nature to point true to the north; and if Peter was sometimes swept aside from perfectness by gusts of impulse and temptation; if after being the first to confess Christ’s divinity he is the first to treat Him with presumption; if at one moment he becomes His disciple, and at another bids Him depart because he is himself a sinful man; if now he plunges into the sea all faith, and now sinks into the waves all fear; if now single–handed he draws the sword for His Master against a multitude, and now denies Him with curses at the question of a servant–maid—we are not surprised to find that one who on occasion could be the boldest champion of Gentile equality was suddenly tempted by fear of man to betray the cause which he had helped to win.17 But the best proof that he regretted his weakness, and was too noble–hearted to bear any grudge, is seen in the terms of honour and affection in which he speaks of Paul and his Epistles.18 It is still more clearly shown by his adopting the very thoughts and arguments of Paul, and in his reference, while writing among others to the Galatians, to the very words of the Epistle in which his own conduct stood so strongly condemned.19 The legend which is commemorated in the little Church of “Dominequovadis” near Rome, is another interesting proof either that this tendency to vacillation in Peter’s actions was well understood in Christian antiquity, or that he continued to the last to be the same Peter—“consistently inconsistent,” as he has most happily been called—liable to weakness and error, but ever ready to confess himself in the wrong, and to repent, and to amend:—
“And as the water–lily starts and slides
Upon the level in little puffs of wind,
Though anchored to the bottom—such was he.”
But while to a simple and lofty soul like that of Peter there might almost be something of joy in the frank acknowledgment of error and the crushing down of all anger against the younger, and, at that period, far less celebrated man who had publicly denounced him, such was by no means the case with the many adherents who chose to elevate him into the head of a faction.20 What may have been the particular tenets of the Kephas–party at Corinth, we have no means for deciding, and the only thing which we can imagine likely was that their views were identical with those of the least heretical Ebionites, who held the Mosaic Law to be binding in its entirety on all Jews. Whatever may have been the action of James, or of those who assumed his authority,21 neither in the New Testament, nor in the earliest Christian writings, is there any trace of enmity between Paul and Peter, or of radical opposition between their views.22 The notion that there was, has simply grown up from the pernicious habit of an over–ingenious criticism which “neglects plain facts and dwells on doubtful allusions.” Critics of this school have eagerly seized upon the Clementines—a malignant and cowardly Ebionite forgery of uncertain date—as furnishing the real clue to the New Testament history, while they deliberately ignore and set aside authority incomparably more weighty. Thus the silence23 of Justin Martyr about the name and writings of St. Paul is interpreted into direct hostility, while the allusions of the genuineClement, which indicate the unanimity between the Apostles, are sacrificed to the covert attacks of the forger who assumes his name. But St. Paul’s whole argument turns, not on the supposition that he is setting up a counter–gospel to the other Apostles, but on Peter’s temporary treason to his own faith, his own convictions, his own habitual professions;24 and all subsequent facts prove that the two Apostles held each other in the highest mutual esteem; they were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in death they were not divided.25
Thus, then, thanks to St. Paul, the battle was again won, and the Judaisers, who were so anxious to steer the little ship of the Church to certain wreck and ruin on the rocks of national bigotry, could no longer claim the sanction of the relapsing Peter. But no sooner was all smooth in the Church of Antioch than the old mission–hunger seized the heart of Paul, and urged him with noble restlessness from the semblance of inactivity. Going to his former comrade Barnabas, he said, “Come, let us re–traverse our old ground, and see for ourselves how our brethren are in every city in which we preached the word of the Lord.” Barnabas readily acceded to the proposal, but suggested that they should take with them his cousin Mark.26 But to this Paul at once objected. The young man who had suddenly gone away home from Pamphylia, and left them, when it was too late to get any other companion, to face the difficulties and dangers of the journey alone. Paul did not think it right to take with them. Neither would give way; neither put in practice the exquisite and humble Christian lesson of putting up with less than his due. A quarrel rose between these two faithful servants of God as bitter as it was deplorable,27 and the only hope of peace under such circumstances lay in mutual separation. They parted, and they suffered for their common fault. They parted to forgive each other indeed, and to love and honour each other, and speak of each other hereafter with affection and respect, but never to work together again: never to help each other and the cause of God by the union of their several gifts; never to share with one another in the glory of Churches won to Christ from the heathen; and in all probability to rue, in the regret of lifelong memories, the self–will, the want of mutual concession, the unspoken soft answer which turneth away wrath, which, in a few bitter moments, too late repented of, robbed them both of the inestimable solace of a friend.
Which was right? which was wrong? We are not careful to apportion between them the sad measure of blame,28 or to dwell on the weaknesses which marred the perfection of men who have left the legacy of bright examples to all the world. In the mere matter of judgment each was partly right, each partly wrong;29 their error lay in the persistency which did not admit of mutual accommodation. Each was like himself. St. Barnabas may have suffered himself too strongly to be influenced by partiality for a relative; St. Paul by the memory of personal indignation. Barnabas may have erred on the side of leniency; Paul on the side of sternness. St. Paul’s was so far the worst fault, yet the very fault may have risen from his loftier ideal.30 There was a “severe earnestness” about him, a sort of intense whole–heartedness, which could make no allowance whatever for one who, at the very point at which dangers began to thicken, deserted a great and sacred work. Mark had put his hand to the plough, and had looked back; and, conscious of the serious hindrance which would arise from a second defection, conscious of the lofty qualities which were essential to any one who was honoured with such Divine responsibilities, St. Paul might fairly have argued that a cause must not be risked out of tenderness for a person.31 Barnabas, on the other hand, might have urged that it was most unlikely that one who was now willing to face the work again should again voluntarily abandon it, and he might fairly have asked whether one failure was to stamp a life–time. Both persisted, and both suffered. Paul went his way, and many a time, in the stormy and agitated days which followed, must he have sorely missed, amid the provoking of all men and the strife of tongues, the repose and generosity which breathed through the life and character of the Son of Exhortation. Barnabas went his way, and, dissevered from the grandeur and vehemence of Paul, passed into comparative obscurity, in which, so far from sharing the immortal gratitude which embalms the memory of his colleague, his name is never heard again, except in the isolated allusions of the letters of his friend.
For their friendship was not broken. Barnabas did not become a Judaiser, or in any way discountenance the work of Paul. The Epistle which passed by his name is spurious,32 but its tendency is anti–Judaic, which would not have been the case if, after the dispute at Antioch, he had permanently sided with the anti–Pauline faction. In the Acts of the Apostles he is not again mentioned. Whether he confined his mission–work to his native island, whither he almost immediately sailed with Mark, or whether, as seems to be implied by the allusion in the Epistle to the Corinthians, he extended it more widely, he certainly continued to work on the same principles as before, taking with him no female companion, and accepting nothing from the Churches to which he preached.33
And though, so far as they erred, the Apostles suffered for their error, God overruled evil for good. Henceforth they were engaged in two spheres of mission action instead of one, and henceforth also the bearing and the views of Paul were more free and vigorous, less shackled by associations, less liable to reaction. Hitherto his position in the Church of Jerusalem had depended much upon the countenance of Barnabas. Henceforth he had to stand alone, to depend solely on himself and his own Apostolic dignity, and to rely on no favourable reception for his views, except such as he won by the force of right and reason, and by the large benefits which accrued to the Church of Jerusalem from the alms which he collected from Gentile Churches.
And Mark also profited by the difference of which he was the unhappy cause. If the lenient partiality of one Apostle still kept open for him the missionary career, the stern judgment of the other must have helped to make him a more earnest man. All that we henceforth know of him shows alike his great gifts and his self–denying energy. In his Gospel he has reflected for us with admirable vividness the knowledge and experience of his friend and master St. Peter, to whom, in his later years, he stood in the same relation that Timothy occupied towards St. Paul.34 But even St. Paul saw good en use not only to modify his unfavourable opinion, but to invite him again as a fellow–labourer.35 He urges the Colossians to give him a kindly welcome,36 and even writes to Timothy an express request that he would bring him to Rome to solace his last imprisonment, because he had found him—that which he had once failed to be—“profitable to him for ministry.”37