Galatians 2:1-11

Excursus on the Relation of Paul to the Jewish Apostles.

Compare here my History of the Apostolic Church (1853), pp. 245-260 and pp. 282 ff., 616 ff., and an able Excursus of Dr. Lightfoot on ‘St. Paul and the Three,' in his Com. on Galat., p. 283 ff. (second ed. 1866).

The Epistle to the Galatians and the entire history of the Apostolic Church cannot be understood without keeping constantly in view the fact that the Apostolic Church embraced two distinct, and yet essentially harmonious sections of Jewish and Gentile Christians, which ultimately grew together into one community. The distinction disappeared after the destruction of Jerusalem, when the last link between the old and the new religion was broken. Before that event there was more or less friction arising from educational prejudices and congenial surroundings. In the second chapter of the Galatians and the fifteenth chapter of the Acts the friction is distinctly brought out, and, at the same time, the underlying Apostolic harmony. In the second century the antagonism without the harmony reappeared in the distorted and heretical forms of the Judaizing Ebionitism and the antinomian Gnosticism.

The Jewish Christianity clung closely to the Mosaic traditions and usages and hoped for a conversion of the Jewish nation until that hope was annihilated by the terrible judgment of the destruction of the temple, and the Jewish theocracy. The Gentile Christianity was free from those traditions and established on a liberal and independent basis. The older Apostles, especially James, Peter, and John (in his earlier period) represented the church of the circumcision (Galatians 2:9); James the brother of the Lord and head of the mother church at Jerusalem, being the most strict and conservative, Peter the most authoritative, John the most liberal and holding himself in mysterious reserve for his later comprehensive position. Paul and Barnabas represented the Apostolate of the Gentiles, and the independent, progressive type of Christianity.

Once, and as far as we know, once only these great leaders of Apostolic Christianity came together for public and private conference, at Jerusalem, to decide the great and vital question whether Christianity should be forever confined to the narrow limits of Jewish traditions with circumcision as the necessary term of membership, or whether it should break through these boundaries and become as universal as the human race on the sole basis of a living faith in Christ as the all-sufficient Saviour of men. Of this critical turning point we have but two accounts, one from the chief actor on the part of a free gospel for the Gentiles, in the second chapter of this Epistle, and one from his pupil and companion, ion, Luke, in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts. Neither James, Peter, or John make any direct allusion to these memorable transactions. The two accounts are not contradictory, but supplementary. Both represent the conference as a sharp controversy, ending in a peaceful understanding which saved the unity of the Church. The great principle for which Paul contended triumphed, that faith in Christ alone, without circumcision, is necessary to salvation, and consequently that circumcision should not be imposed upon the Gentile converts. Without this principle Christianity could never have conquered the world. On the other hand a temporary concession was made to the Jewish party, namely that the Gentiles should “ abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication,” that is from practices which were peculiarly offensive to the conscience of the Jews. Paul was fully recognized by the Jewish Apostles as the Apostle of the Gentiles and received from them the right hand of fellowship and brotherhood on the sole condition that he should remember the poor brethren in Judaea by the exercise of practical charity, which he had done before and which he did afterwards with all his heart. Nevertheless the old controversy continued, not, indeed, among the Apostles (excepting the dispute between Peter and Paul, at Antioch, which referred only to conduct, not to doctrine), but among the unconverted Pharisaical Judaizers and Paul; and the whole career of the great Apostle of the Gentiles was a continual struggle against those pseudo-apostles who could never forget that he had been a fanatical persecutor, and, who looked upon him as a dangerous radical. To this life-long conflict we owe his greatest Epistles, especially the Galatians and the Romans, with their vigorous defence of Christian liberty and their profound expositions of the doctrines of sin and grace. Thus error has been providentially overruled for the exposition and vindication of truth. (See the next Excursus on Paul and Peter.)