The life and work of St. Paul

ST. JOHN AND ST. PAUL, 723
EXCURSUS XVII. (p. 249).
ST. JOHN AND ST. PAUL.
Or the three "seeming pillars," John appears to have taken no part In the synod at
Jerusalem, or if he did it was not sufficiently decisive to be recorded. He belonged, it
is clear, at this time to the Church of the Circumcision, and, so far as we know, this was
the only occasion on which he was thrown into the society of St. Paul. But we have St.
Paul's express testimony in the only passage in which he is mentioned in the Epistles
that he recognised his apostolate ; and the Apocalypse, his earliest writing, so far from
showing that irreconcilable hatred to the doctrines of St. Paul which has been assumed
on grounds inconceivably frivolous, and repeated subsequently with extraordinary recklessness,
offers a close parallelism to St. Paul's Epistles in thoughts and principles, which
is all the more striking from the marked differences of tone and expression. We are
calmly assured, without even the condescension of an attempted proof, that the " false
Jew," the "false Apostle," the "false prophet," the "Balaam," the "Jezebel," the
"Nicolas," the " chief of the synagogue of Satan," alluded to in the Apocalypse, 1 are as
indubitably intended for St. Paul as are the savage allusions covertly made to him under
the name of Simon the Magician in the Pseudo- Clementines. Now, on what basis is this
conclusion founded ? Simply on the resemblance in tone of a spurious Ebionite romance
(the Clementines) to the phrases, "those which say they are Apostles and are not,"
" those which say they are Jews and are not," and the allusions to some who held the
doctrine of Balaam, and of "that woman Jezebel," who taught people "to commit fornication,
and to eat things sacrificed unto idols." It is true that there were Judaisers who
attacked St. Paul's claim to be an Apostle ; but to assert that St. John was one of them
is to give the direct lie to St. Paul, while to class St. Paul with them " that say they are
Jews and are not " is to falsify the most notorious facts concerning one who was a
Pharisee of Pharisees, and a Hebrew of the Hebrews. Again, to assert boldly that St.
Paul ever taught people to eat things offered to idols, or anything which could be so
described without the grossest calumny, is a distinct contradiction of his own words, since
he expressly warned his converts not to do this, and assigns for his warning the very
reason that to do so would be "to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel." 2
In fact, though St. Paul would have denied that to eat them was wrong in itself, his
concessions on this point went very little beyond those which are sanctioned in the
Talmud itself. 3 Once more, what conceivable excuse could there be for saying that St.
Paul ever taught men " to commit fornication " ? a sin against which, whether literally
or metaphorically understood, he has urged considerations more deeply seated, mora
likely to touch the heart, more likely to bind the conscience, than all the other writers in
the New Testament put together. That even in earliest days there did spring up antinomian
sects which were guilty of such accursed teaching, we know from Church history,
and find traces even in the sacred writers ; and it is therefore probable that the allusions
of the Apocalypse are as literal as the Old Testament analogies to which St. John no less
than St. Paul refers.* That "the fornication" of the Apocalypse means "mixed
marriages " there is not even a shadow of reason to believe, nor if it did would there be
'"'
1 Rev. 11. 2, 6, 9, 14, 15, 20, 34 ; ill. 9. (See Benan, St. P., 302305, who quietly asserts this as
tf it were indisputable.) Yet St. Paul himself was the first to use this very comparison with Balaam
(1 Cor. x. 7, 8), and to denounce the extreme wickedness of putting a stumbling-block before others
(Bom. xiv. 21 ; 2 Cor. xi. 29). 1 Cor. viii. 13 (cf. x. 32).
KetubMOi, f. 15, 1, which, almost in the very language of St. Paul, kys down the rule that if
I man has bought meat, and is doubtful whether it is legally clean, he must not eat it ; but if he
lights upon it accidentally, he may eat it without further inquiry. Meat declared to be legally
clean (tabor) is stamped with a leaden seal, on which is the word kashar (" lawful," icaflapov). (I.
D'lsraeli, Genius of Judaism, p. 154.)
1 1 Cor. x. 7, 8. (See some excellent remarks In Llghtfoot's Gal., pp. 290, 335.)