such circumstances than the circumcision with his own hands of a convert who, if the son of a Jewess, was likewise the son of a Greek, and had remained uncircumcised until he had actually embraced that faith which, Paul taught, superseded circumcision? The Apostle who declared: "Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing,"(1) could not have circumcised the Christian Timothy; and if any utterance of Paul more distinctly and explicitly applicable to the present case be required, it is aptly supplied by the following: "Was any man called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised. Hath any man been called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised.... Let each abide in the same calling wherein he was called."(2)
Apologists quote very glibly the saying of Paul: "Unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain Jews," as sufficiently justifying the act which we are considering; but it is neither applicable to the case, nor is the passage susceptible of such interpretation. The special object of Paul at that time, according to his own showing,(3) was not to gain Jews but to gain Gentiles; and the circumcision of Timothy would certainly not have tended to gain Gentiles. If we quote the whole passage from which the above is extracted, the sense at once becomes clear and different from that assigned to it: "For being free from all men, I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more; and unto the Jews I became as a Jew that I might gain Jews; to them under law, as under law, not being myself under law, that I might gain them under law; to them without law, as without law,—not being without law to God, but under law to Christ,—
that I might gain them without law; to the weak I became weak that I might gain the weak: I am become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. And all things I do for the Gospel's sake, that I may become a partaker thereof with them."(l) It is clear that a man who could become "all things to all men," in the sense of yielding any point of principle, must be considered without principle at all, and no one could maintain that Paul was apt to concede principles. Judged by his own statements, indeed, his character was the very reverse of this. There is no shade of conciliation when he declares: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach any Gospel unto you other than that we preached unto you, let him be accursed.... For am I now making men my friends, or God? or am I seeking to please men? if I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ."(2) The Gospel of which he speaks, and which he protests "is not after men," but received "through a revelation of Jesus Christ,"(3) is that Gospel which Paul preached among the Gentiles, and which proclaimed the abrogation of the law and of circumcision. Paul might in one sense say that "circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God;"(4) but such a statement, simply intended to express that there was neither merit in the one nor in the other, clearly does not apply to the case before us, and no way lessens the force of the words we have quoted above: "If ye be circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing." In Paul such a concession would have been in the highest degree a sacrifice of principle, and one which he not only refused to make in the case of Titus, "that the truth of the
Gospel might abide," but equally maintained in the face of the pillar Apostles, when he left them and returned to the Gentiles whilst they went back to the circumcision. Paul's idea of being "all things to all men" is illustrated by his rebuke to Peter,—once more to refer to the scene at Antioch. Peter apparently practised a little of that conciliation, which apologists, defending the unknown author of the Acts at the expense of Paul, consider to be the sense of the Apostle's words. Paul repudiated such an inference, by withstanding Peter to the face as condemned, and guilty of hypocrisy. Paul became all things to all men by considering their feelings, and exhibiting charity and forbearance, in matters indifferent He was careful not to make his liberty a stumbling block to the weak. "If food maketh my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh for ever lest I make my brother to offend."(1) Self-abnegation in the use of enlightened liberty, however, is a very different thing from the concession of a rite, which it was the purpose of his whole Gospel to discredit, and the labour of his life to resist. Once more we repeat that the narrative of the Acts regarding the circumcision of Timothy is contradictory to the character and teaching of Paul as ascertained from his Epistles, and like so many other portions of that work which we have already examined must, as it stands, be rejected as unhistorical.
We have already tested the narrative of the author of the Acts by the statements of Paul in the first two chapters of the Galatians at such length that, although the subject is far from exhausted, we must not proceed further. We think that there can be no doubt that the role assigned to the Apostle Paul in Acts xv. is unhistorical,(2)
and it is unnecessary for us to point out the reasons which led the writer to present him in such subdued colours. We must, however, before finally leaving the subject, very briefly point out a few circumstances which throw a singular light upon the relations which actually existed between Paul and the elder Apostles, and tend to show their real, if covert, antagonism to the Gospel of the uncircumcision. We may at the outset remark, in reference to an objection frequently made that Paul does not distinctly refer to the Apostles as opposing his teaching and does not personally attack them, that such a course would have been suicidal in the Apostle of the Gentiles, whilst on the other hand it could not but have hindered the acceptance of his Gospel, for which he was ever ready to endure so much. The man who wrote: "If it be possible, as much as dependeth on you, be at peace with all men,"(1) could well be silent in such a cause. Paul, in venturing to preach the Gospel of the uncircumcision, laboured under the singular disadvantage of not having, like the Twelve, been an immediate disciple of the Master. He had been "as the one born out of due time,"(2) and although he claimed that his Gospel had not been taught to him by man but had been received by direct revelation from Jesus, there can be no doubt that his apostolic position was constantly assailed. The countenance of the elder Apostles, even if merely tacit, was of great