Acts 15:35

Acts 15:35. Paul also and Barnabas continued in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord. During this residence of Paul in the Syrian metropolis the dispute took place between Paul and Peter related in the Galatian letter, Galatians 2:11-16. This is not told here. The writer of the ‘Acts' did not omit this episode because he wished to pass over in silence this grave difference of opinion between the two great Christian leaders; the purpose of this early church history was not to record the principal events in the lives of either Peter or Paul, but simply to tell the story of the foundation of the Christian Church, and how in the first thirty years the doctrines of Jesus were carried by the first missionary preachers from Jerusalem to Antioch, and from Antioch to Rome. The dispute in question was followed by no important consequences. The sorrowful incident is thus graphically related (in the Life of Paul, Conybeare and Howson, chap. 7): ‘At this time certain Jewish brethren came “from James,” who presided over the Church at Jerusalem. Whether they were really sent on some mission by the Apostle James, or we are merely to understand that they came from Jerusalem, they brought with them their old Hebrew repugnance against social intercourse with the uncircumcised; and Peter in their society began to vacillate. In weak compliance with their prejudices, he “withdrew and separated himself” from those whom he had lately treated as brethren and equals in Christ. Just as in an earlier part of his life he had first asserted his readiness to follow his Master to death, and then denied Him through fear of a maid-servant; so now, after publicly protesting against the notion of making any difference between the Jew and the Gentile, and against laying on the neck of the latter a yoke which the former had never been able to bear, we find him contradicting his own principles, and, through fear of those who were of the circumcision, giving all the sanction of his example to the introduction of caste into the Church of Christ.... Other Jewish Christians, as was naturally to be expected, were led away by his example; and even Barnabas, the chosen companion of the Apostle of the Gentiles, who had been a witness and an actor in all the great transactions in Cyprus, in Pisidia, and Lycaonia, even Barnabas the missionary was “carried away” with the dissimulation of the rest. When St. Paul was a spectator of such inconsistency, and perceived both the motive in which it originated and the results to which it was leading, he would have been a traitor to his Master's cause if he had hesitated (to use his own emphatic words) to rebuke Peter “before all,” and to “withstand him to the face.”‘

How long the division between Peter and Paul continued we know not, but it is ‘very pleasant to turn to a passage at the conclusion of one of St. Peter's letters, where, in speaking of the long- suffering of our Lord, and of the prospect of sinless happiness in the world to come, he alludes in touching words to the epistles of our beloved brother Paul. We see how entirely past differences are forgotten, how all earthly misunderstandings are absorbed and lost in the contemplation of Christ and the eternal life.' Respecting St. Peter's visit to and connection with Antioch, there is an ancient and well-known tradition which represents St. Peter as having held the see of Antioch for seven years before that of Rome. The tradition, however, cannot be said to be supported by what we know of the history of the apostle.