The life and work of St. Paul

ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL AT ANTIOCH. 249
who repudiated obligations which, for him at any rate, they regarded as
stringent and sacred. 1 say,
A false shame, a fear of what these men might
dislike to face a censure which would acquire force from those
accumulated years of habit which the vision of Joppa had modified, but not
neutralised perhaps too a bitter recollection of all he had gone through on a
former occasion when he " had gone in unto men uucircumcised and eaten
with them "
2
led Peter into downright hypocrisy. Without any acknowledged
change of view, without a word of public explanation, he suddenly changed his
course of life, and it was almost inevitable that the other Jewish Christians
should follow this weak and vacillating example. The Apostle who " seemed
"
to be a pillar proved to be a " reed shaken with the wind." 3 To the grief
and shame of Paul, even Barnabas Barnabas, his fellow-worker in the
Churches of the Gentiles even Barnabas, who had stood side by side with him
to plead for the liberty of the Gentiles at Jerusalem, was swept away by the
flood of inconsistency, and in remembering that he was a Levite forgot that he
was a Christian. In fact, a strong Jewish reaction set in. There was no
question of charity here, but a question of principle. To eat with the Gentiles,
to live as do the Gentiles, was for a Jew either right or wrong. Interpreted in
the light of those truths which lay at the very bases of the Gospel, it was
and if the Church was to be one and indivisible, the agreement that the
right ;
Gentiles were not to put on the yoke of Mosaism seemed to imply that they
were not to lose status by declining to do so. But to shilly-shally on the
matter, to act in one way to-day and in a different way tc-morrow, to let the
question of friendly intercourse depend on the presence or absence of people
who were supposed to represent the stern personality of James, could not under
any circumstances bo right. It was monstrous that the uucircumcised Gontiln
convert was at one time to be treated as a brother, and at another to be shunned
as though ho were a Pariah. This was an uncertain, underhand sort of procedure,
which St. Paul could not for a moment sanction. He could not stand
by to see the triumph of the Pharisaic party over the indecision of men like
Peter and Baraabas. For the moral weakness which succumbs to impulse he
had the deepest tenderness, but he nover permitted himself to maintain a truce
with the interested selfishness which, at a moment's notice, would sacrifice a
duty to avoid an inconvenience. Paul saw at a glance that Kophas* (and tho
Hebrew name seemed best to suit the Hebraic defection) was wrongwrong
1 How anxious James was to conciliate the inflammable multitude who were "zealous
for tlie Law " is apparent from Acts xxi. 24.
- The forger of the letter of Peter to James, printed at the head of the Clementina
Homilies, deeply resents the expression, 2. But St. Peter's " hypocrisy " consisted in
"having impHed an objection which he did not really feel, or which his ""
pr
itnm
"
did notlustify (Jowett, Ghd, i. 246). It is idle to say that this shows the non-existence
of the "decree;" that, as I have shown, left the question of intercourse with th
Gentiles entirely undefined.
3 See Hausrath, p. 252. " Boldness and timidity first boldness, then timidity were,
the characteristics of his nature" (Jowett, i. 243). See aJso Excursus XVIL, " Bt. John
and St. Paul."
4
Gal. il. 11, K>54>a (H. A, B, G):