The life and work of St. Paul

BT. PKTEB AND ST. PAUL AT AKTIOCH. 251
said in the assembly at Antioch to the argument which he addressed to apos-
tatising converts in Galatia, yet he can hardly have thrown away the opportunity
of impressing his clear convictions on this subject upon Peter and the Church
of Antioch. He wished to drive home the sole legitimate and logical consequence
of the points already established ; and we can scarcely doubt that he
used on this occasion some of those striking arguments which we shall
subsequently examine in the Epistle to the Galatians.1
They all turn on the great truth over which the Holy Spirit had now given
him so firm a grasp the truth of Justification by Faith alone. If no man
could see salvation save by means of faith, and on account of Christ's mercy,
then even for the Jew the Law was superfluous. The Jew, however, might,
on grounds of national patriotism, blamelessly continue the observances which
were ancient and venerable, 2
provided that he did not trust in them. But the
Gentile was in no way bound by them, and to treat him as an inferior because
of this immunity was to act in contradiction to the first principles of Christian
faith. The contrasted views of St. Paul and of the Judaists were here
brought into distinct collision, and thereby into the full liglit on which
depended their solution. Faith without the Law, said the Judaists, means a
state of Gentile " sinfulness." Faith with the Law, replied St. Paul, means
that Christ has died in vain. 3 Among good and holy men love would still be
'the girdle of perf ectness ; but when the controversy waxed fierce between
1 See on GaL ii. 1621, infra, p. 436.
9 See some admirable remarks on the subject in Augustine, Ep. Ixxxii. He argues
that, after the revelation of faith in Christ, the ordinances of the Law had lost their
life : but that just as the bodies of the dead ought to be honourably conducted, with no
feigned honour, but with real solemnity to the tomb, and not to be at once deserted to
the abuse of enemies or the attacks of dogs so there was need that the respect for the
Mosaic Law should not be instantly or rudely flung aside. But, he says, that even for a
Jewish Christian to observe what could still be observed of the Law after it had been
abrogated by God's own purpose in the destruction of Jerusalem, would be to act the
part, not of one who honours the dead, but of one who tears out of their restingplaces
the buried ashes of the slain.
1
Holstein, Protestantenbibel, 729. This dissension if dissension it could be called
between the two great Apostles will shock those only who, in defiance of all Scripture,
persist in regarding the Apostles as specimens of supernatural perfection. Of course, the
'errors of good men, eren if they be mere errors of timidity On one side and vehemence on
jthe other, will always expose them to the taunts of infidels. But when Celsus talks of
'the Apostles "inveighing against each other so shamefully in their quarrels," he is
jguilty so far as the New Testament account of the Apostles is concerned of gross
calumny (op. Orig. c. Celt. v. 64). The "blot of error," of which Porphyry accused St.
Peter, shows only that he was human, and neither Gospels nor Epistles attempt to
conceal his weaknesses. The "petulance of language " with which he charges St. Paul
finds no justification in the stern and solemn tone of this rebuke; stud to deduce from
"
this dispute the lie of a pretended decree " is a mere abuse of argument. We may set
aside at once, not without a feeling of shame and sorrow, the suggestion (Clem. Alex. a.
Euseb. H. E. i. 12) that this Kephas was not St. Peter, but one of the Seventy ; and the
monstrous fancy monstrous, though stated by no less a man than Origen (op. Jer. Ep.
cxii.), and adopted by no less a man than Chrysostom (ad loc.), and for a time by
Jerome that the whole was a scene acted between the two Apostles for a doctrinal purpose
1 As if such dissimulation would not have been infinitely more discreditable to
in which St. Peter bore the
them than a temporary disagreement in conduct 1 The way
rebuke, and forgave and loved him who administered it, Is ten-thousandfold more to his
honour than the momentary inconsistency i to his disgrace.