The Origin of Paul's Religion

by J. Gresham Machen

The influence of Peter's withdrawal from the Gentile Christians soon began to make itself felt; other Jewish Christians followed Peter's example, and even Barnabas was carried away. A serious crisis had arisen. But God had not deserted His Church. The Church was saved through the instrumentality of Paul.

To Paul had been revealed the full implications of the gospel; to him the freedom of the Gentiles was a matter of principle, and when principle was at stake he never kept silent. Regardless of all petty calculations about the influence that might be lost or the friendships that might be sacrificed, he spoke out boldly for Christ; he rebuked Peter openly before the assembled Church. It should always be observed, however, that it was not the principles of Peter, but his conduct, which Paul was rebuking. The incident is therefore misused when it is made to establish a fundamental disagreement between Paul and Peter. On the contrary, in the very act of condemning the practice of Peter, Paul approves his principles; he is rebuking Peter just for the concealment of his correct principles for fear of men. He and Peter, he says, were perfectly agreed about the inadequacy of the Law, and the all-sufficiency of faith in Christ; why then should Peter act in contradiction to these great convictions? The passage, Gal. ii. 11-21, therefore, far from establishing a fundamental disagreement between Peter and Paul really furnishes the strongest possible evidence for their fundamental unity.

But how did Peter take the rebuke which was administered to him? There should be no real doubt about the answer to this question. Details, indeed, are uncertain; it may perhaps be doubtful when Peter acquiesced or how he expressed his acquiescence. But that he acquiesced at some time and in some manner is indicated by the whole subsequent history of the Church. A contrary conclusion has, indeed, sometimes been drawn from the silence of Paul. If Peter was convinced by Paul at Antioch, would not Paul have been sure to mention so gratifying a result? Would he not have appealed, against the contentions of the Judaizers in Galatia, to so signal a recognition of his apostolic authority? This argument ignores the true character of the passage. During the writing of Gal. ii. 11-21 Paul has altogether ceased to think of Peter. What he had said to Peter at Antioch happened to be exactly the same thing that he desired to say, at the time of the writing of the letter, to the Galatians. In reporting, not with pedantic verbal accuracy but in substance, what he had said to Peter at Antioch, he has entered upon the very heart of his gospel, which had been despised by the Judaizers in Galatia. Long before the end of the glorious passage, Gal. ii. 11-21, he has forgotten all about Peter and Barnabas and Antioch, and is thinking only about the grace of Christ and the way in which it was being made of none effect by those who would desert it for a religion of works. To expect him to descend from the heights in order to narrate the outcome of the incident at Antioch is to do woeful injustice to the character of the apostle's mind and the manner of his literary activity. Gal. ii. 11-21 forms a transition between the first main division of the Epistle, in which Paul is answering the personal attack of the Judaizers, and the second main division, in which he is defending the contents of his gospel. Before the end of the passage Paul has plunged into the principal thing that he wanted to say to the Galatians, who were making void the cross of Christ. The presentation in Gal. ii. 11-21 of what Bengel[61] called the "marrow of Christianity" leads inevitably, therefore, not to a pedantic narration of what Peter did, but to the exclamation of Gal. iii. 1, "O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth crucified?"

Thus the silence of Paul about the outcome of the incident at Antioch does not at all establish the outcome as unfavorable. But there are positive indications on the other side. Of course, if Gal. ii. 1-10 were identified with the famine visit, the whole question would be settled. In that case, the incident of Gal. ii. 11-21 would have been followed by the Apostolic Council, at which the harmony of Peter and Paul found full expression. But even if the identification of Gal. ii. 1-10 with the Apostolic Council be adopted, there are still plain indications that the outcome of the Antioch incident was favorable.

In the first place, Paul mentions Peter in 1 Cor. ix. 5 with respect, as an apostle to whose example appeal may be made; in 1 Cor. iii. 22 he classes Peter with himself and with Apollos as a possession of all Christians;[62] and in 1 Cor. xv. 1-11 he includes as part of his fundamental missionary preaching the appearance of the risen Christ to Peter, and appeals to the unity which existed between his own preaching and that of the other apostles (verses 5, 11).[63]

In the second place, Paul concerned himself earnestly, according to 1 and 2 Corinthians and Romans, with the collection for the Jerusalem poor. If the incident at Antioch had meant a repudiation of the "right hand of fellowship" which Peter in common with James and John had given to Paul at Jerusalem (Gal. ii. 9), it is difficult to see how Paul could have continued to engage in a form of brotherly service which was the most touching expression of that fellowship. If there was a permanent breach between Peter and Paul, the contribution for the poor saints at Jerusalem could hardly have been collected.

In the third place, the agitation of the Judaizers seems to have died down during the third missionary journey. It appears, indeed, at Corinth, according to the Corinthian Epistles, but seems there to have lacked that insistence upon the keeping of the Law which had made it so dangerous in Galatia. In the epistles of the captivity—Colossians and Philemon, Ephesians, Philippians—it appears, if at all, only in the obscure reference in Phil. iii. 2ff., which may relate to non-Christian Judaism rather than to Jewish Christianity. This subsidence of the Judaizing activity is difficult to understand if the benefits of the Jerusalem conference had been annulled by a serious breach at Antioch.

Finally, the whole subsequent history of the Church is explicable only if there was fundamental unity between Peter and Paul. Ever since the formation of the Old Catholic Church at the close of the second century the Church was founded upon the twin pillars of Peter and Paul. How was this unity produced if in the apostolic age there was fundamental disunion? The existence of this problem was fully recognized by F. C. Baur, and the recognition of it constitutes one element of greatness in Baur's work. But the elaborate solution which Baur proposed has had to be abandoned. Baur supposed that the harmony between Pauline and Petrine Christianity was produced by a gradual compromise effected during the second century. Subsequent investigation has pushed the harmony very much further back. The unity between Peter and Paul appears, for example, plainly expressed in the letter of Clement of Rome (about 95 A. D.), who appeals to the two great apostles as though both were of recognized authority; it appears also in the first Epistle of Peter, which even if not genuine is important as attributing to Peter, as though the attribution were a matter of course, a conception of the gospel thoroughly in harmony with that of Paul; it appears in the early traditional account of John Mark, by which Mark is made to be a follower of Peter (compare 1 Peter v. 13) and to have received from Peter the substance of his Gospel, so that when his cordial relations with Paul are remembered (Col. iv. 10; Philem. 24) he constitutes an important link between Peter and Paul. What is more important, however, than all details, is the undoubted fact that before the end of the first century epistles of Paul and genuine tradition about Jesus, which latter must at first have been connected with the Jerusalem Church, appear side by side as possessing high authority in the Church. Finally, the testimony of the Book of Acts is now admitted to be at any rate very much earlier than Baur supposed; and that testimony, so far as the harmony between Paul and Peter is concerned, is unequivocal. Thus the explanation which Baur proposed for the final healing of the supposed breach between Peter and Paul is unsatisfactory. But no other explanation has been discovered to take its place. The very existence of the Church would have been impossible if there had been a permanent breach between the leader in the Gentile mission and the leader among the original disciples of Jesus.

The Book of Acts does not mention the difficulty which arose at Antioch with regard to table companionship between Jews and Gentiles. But it does mention another disagreement between Paul and Barnabas. Barnabas desired to take John Mark along on the second missionary journey, while Paul was unwilling to take with him again the one who had turned back on the former journey and had not gone to those South Galatian churches which it was now proposed to revisit. It was maintained by the Tübingen school of criticism that the lesser quarrel has here been inserted by the author of Acts with the express purpose of covering up the more serious disagreement which was the real reason for the separation of Barnabas and Paul. But the insertion of a quarrel is rather an unnatural way to cover up the fact that there was another quarrel; it would have been better to keep altogether silent about the disagreement. Moreover, the good faith of the author is now generally accepted. There is another possible way of explaining the omission of the incident of Gal. ii. 11-21 from the Book of Acts. It may be surmised that the incident was so unimportant in its consequences, Peter and Barnabas were so quickly convinced by Paul, that a historian who was concerned, not with personal details about the relations between Paul and the other leaders, but with the external progress of the gospel, did not find it necessary to mention the incident at all.

After the separation of Barnabas from Paul at the beginning of the second missionary journey, it is not recorded that the two men were ever associated again in missionary work. But in 1 Cor. ix. 6 Barnabas is spoken of with respect—"Or I only and Barnabas, have we not a right to forbear working." Evidently Paul was interested in the work of Barnabas, and was not ashamed to appeal to his example. In Col. iv. 10, moreover, "Mark, the cousin of Barnabas" is mentioned, and is commended to the attention of the Colossian Christians. Mark here forms a link between Paul and Barnabas as he does between Paul and Peter. Evidently the estrangement at Antioch was not permanent even in the case of Mark, against whom there was the special objection that he had withdrawn from the work at Perga. According to 2 Tim. iv. 11, Mark became exactly what he had not been at Perga, "useful" to Paul "for ministering." And if the testimony of 2 Timothy be rejected, the same cordial relationship between Paul and Mark appears also in Col. iv. 10, 11; Philem. 24. The scanty indications all point very decidedly away from any permanent estrangement as resulting from the incidents at Antioch.