The Making of the New Testament

by Benjamin Wisner Bacon

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](!). 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.

Approaches were made on both sides. It is true the ill-advised attempt of the Judaizers to secure unity by a renewal of their propaganda of the Law, seducing the Greek churches from their loyalty to Paul and his gospel, provoked from him only such thunderbolts as Galatians, with its defence of "the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free," or 2nd Cor. x. 1 to xiii. 10, with its denunciation of the "ministers of Satan." Peace through surrender was not to Paul's mind. But the sincere attempt of the followers of Peter to find a modus vivendi, even if they did not venture to claim liberty from the Law for themselves, found Paul prepared to go more than half-way. His epistles are not more remarkable for their strenuous defence of the liberty of Son ship, than for their insistence on the obligation of brotherly love. His churches must be not only morally pure for their own sakes, but must avoid offences to the more scrupulous. Even that which Christian liberty allows must be sacrificed to the scruples of the 'weak,' if only it be not "unto doubtful disputations," or demanded as of right. From 1st Thessalonians (Corinth, a.d. 50), where, in the absence of all Judaizing opposition Paul merely exhibits his simple gospel of the resurrection and judgment to come, unaffected by questions of Law and Grace, on through Galatians with its sublime polemic for the liberty of sons, to the Corinthian correspondence, with its insistence on the duty of consideration and forbearance, its stronger note of love, its revelation of the widespread, strenuous exertions of Paul to promote his great 'offering,' down to Romans, where the 'offering of the Gentiles' is ready to be made (Rom. xv. 16-33), and Paul is sedulously preparing to enter a great new field already partially occupied, by presenting a full and superlatively conciliatory statement of his entire 'gospel' (i. 15-17), there is steady progress toward the "peace" and "acceptance" which he hopes to find in Jerusalem. The later Epistles, with their different phase of conflict, the very attitude of 'apostolic' Christianity toward Paul, as exhibited in Acts, make it incredible that substantial unity was not in fact secured.[13] We cannot, indeed, accept Luke's representation of Paul as performing the Nazarite ceremonial in the temple in order to prove that he does not teach that the Law is not binding on Jews. But it does not follow that Paul may not have done even this to prove that his principle of accommodation to the weak (1st Cor. ix. 19-22) left ample room for fellowship with the Jewish Christian—except when (as with Peter and Barnabas at Antioch) the needless scruples of the legalist were made a pretext for "compelling the Gentiles to live as do the Jews."

Had unity been attained through the simple process imagined by Luke, obedient acquiescence of Paul and the Gentiles in the divinely inspired verdict of "the apostles and elders in Jerusalem," Christianity would have been an immeasurably poorer thing than it became. Indeed, it is questionable whether a gospel of mere simplification, extension and supplementation of the Law would ever have made permanent conquest of the Gentile world. It is because Paul stood out on this question of 'meats' for the equal right of his independent gospel, refusing submission until his great ten-years' work of evangelization by tongue and pen had made Gentile Christianity a factor of at least equal importance with Jewish, that our religion was enriched by its Hellenistic strain. The deeper insight into the real significance of Jesus' work and fate born of Paul's peculiar experience and his Hellenistic apprehension of the gospel found embodiment in the beginnings of a New Testament literature. The writings of this period must accordingly be viewed against the background of a critical history. Luke's account, written in the interest of "apostolic" authority, must receive such modifications as the contemporary documents require.