The life and work of St. Paul

236 THE LIFE AND WORK OF SI. PAUL.
by any consideration for him? Might he not naturally have said, "I am
grieved that there should be all this uproar and heart-burning on my account,
and I am quite willing to allay it by becoming a proselyte of righteousness " ?
If Titus took this generous line, Paul's reluctance to take advantage of his
generosity might have been increased, and yet an additional argument would
"
have been supplied to his opponents. Moses," they would have said,
" commanded circumcision ; we cannot let this Gentile sit at our Agapze without
it ; he is himself, much to his credit, quite ready to consent to it ; why do you
persist in troubliug our Israel "
by your refusal to consent P
For whatever may be urged against this view, I cannot imagine if why,
Paul did not yield, he should use language so ambiguous, so involved, that
whether we retain the negative or not his language has still led many as it
did in the earliest ages of the Church to believe that he did the very thing
which he is generally supposed to be denying. Nothing could have been
easier or pleasanter than to say, '' I did not circumcise Titus, though every
possible effort was made to force me to do so. My not doing so even at
Jerusalem, even at the beginning of the whole controversy, even at the headquarters
of the Judfeo-Christian tyranny, even in the face of the evident wish
of the Apostles proves, once for all, both my independence and my consistency."
But it was immensely more difficult to explain why he really had
given ivay in that important instance. It may be that Titus was by his side
while he penned this very paragraph, and, if so, it would be to Paul a yet
more bitter reminder of a concession which, more than aught else, had been
quoted to prove his subjection and his insincerity. He is therefore so anxious
to show why ho did it, and what were not his motives, that ultimately he uncon-
sciously omits to say it in so many words at all.1 And if, after the decision
of the meeting, and the battle which ho had fought, Paul still thought it
advisable to circumcise Timothy merely to avoid offending the Jews whom he
was about to visit, would not the same motives work with him at this earlier
period when he saw how the presence of Titus threw the whole Church into
confusion? If the false inferences which might be deduced from the concession
were greater in the case of a pure-bloodod Gentile, on the other hand
the necessity for diminishing offence was also more pressing, and tho obligatormess
of circumcision had at that timo been loss seriously impugned. And
it is even doubtful whether such a course was not overruled for good. But
for this step would it, for instance, have been possible for Titus to be overseer
of tho Church of Crete ? Would any circumcised Jew have tolerated at this
epoch the " episcopate " of an uncircuincised Gentile ? I have dwelt long
1 "Cette transaction cofttA bcaucoup a Paul, ct la phrase Jans laquelle il en parlo est
\iiic dcs plus originales qu'il ait ccritca. Lc mot qui lui couto scmble ne pouvoir couler
do sa plurao.
La phrase au premier coup d'oiil parait dire que Titus ne fut p;is circoncis,
t.iiidis qu'eile implique qu'il le fut" (lienan, St. Paul, p. 92). It need hardly be said that
tliore ia no question of suppression here, because I assume that the fact was perfectly well
known. We find a similar characteristic of style and character in Rom. ix. Baur, on the
other hand (but on very insufficient grounds), thinks that "nothing can bo more absurd."
Yet it wa.3 the view of Tertullian (c. Marc. Y. 3), and Baur equally disbelieves the ex-
pressly asserted circumcision of Timothy f