heathen in the Greco-Roman cities were prepaved in large numbers to receive the gospel—‘ had opened to the Gentiles a door of faith’ (ν. 7),
Secondly (and though Luke does not say this, he indicates it strongly), Paul was marked out as chief of the Gentile mission. With the hour had arrived the man. At Paphos, Antioch, Lystra— in speech, action, suffering—Paul had come to the front by the force of events. God has now puta broad public seal, known and read of all men, upon the vocation of which His servant had been conscious long before. ‘The signs of the apostle’ su uently wrought among the Corin- thians (2 Co 124-14), were plainly visible in St. Paul through this journey. As they returned to Antioch, Barnabas surely thought concerning his companion, ‘ He must increase: I must decrease.’ Accordingly, when after the lapse of ‘no small time’ (a year or so) the Antiochene Church was disturbed by circumcisionists from Jerus, it is “Paul and Barnabas’ (not ‘ Barnabas and Paul’) who debate with them ; and ‘ Paul and Barnabas’ are sent to lay the matter before the mother Church at Jerusalem (15'**). This latter Church, however, gives Barnabas courteous precedence (Ac 15'*) ; he was the senior man, and its own delegate.
The most striking evidence of St. Paul’s ascena- ency is afforded by his own account of the Con- ference at Jerus. in Gal 2), (We assume, with most scholars, that Gal 2’ corresponds to Ac 15:55; see art. ACTS OF APOSTLES ; also Lightfoot, Galatians, pp. 122-127; Lipsius in ‘ Handcomm. z. NT,’ Galat., ad loc.; Harnack, Die Chronol. d. altchristl. Litteratur, Bd. i. p. 237).° To Paul comes the ‘revelation’ directing the deputation from Antioch, He adopts the bold step of taking with the party Titus, representing the Gentile Christians whose status was disputed. He ‘com- municated to those of repute the gospel’ that, he says, ‘I preach amongst the Gentiles,’ putting it to them as the substantial question for decision, whether he had ‘run in vain.’ If the Gentiles
*Add to these authorities MoGiffert’s Christianity im the Apostolic Age, p. 208 δ΄. ; and art. Curoxovoor or NT.
706 vAUL THE APOSTLE
must be circumcised in order to be Christians, St. Paul’s mission is stultified. The ‘Pillars’ now ‘gee’ that to Paul is ‘entrusted the gospel of the uncireumcision, as that of the circumcision to Peter’; they we gt his work as being of God. Barnabas is duly honoured, and was heartily with Paul in his contention; but Paul unmistakably plays the leading part in the negotiations, and the controversy gathers round his person. He acted throughout as the responsible head of the Gentile mission, and was so acknowledged by the elder chiefs of the Church. All this we can understand, as taking place after the first missionary tour and the events of Ac 13. 14, which brought Paul to the forefront and displayed in him powers fully com-
arable to those manifested in Peter’s ministry. Tn A.D. 44-46, when Antioch sent relief to the famine of Jerus., there was no such evidence of Paul’s supereminent gifts before the Church; nor is it likely that either iat! or Peter and James, then regarded him in the light in which he appears in Gal 2, The historical situation, the occasion of dispute (viz. the attempt to impose circumcision on Gentile Christians), and the chief persons con- cerned in the discussions of Ac 15'-® and Gal 2-1, are the same. The contrast between the narra- tives is fairly explained by the fact that St. Luke rives the public and exterior view of the proceed- ings as they concerned the Church at large; St. Paul, their personal aspect and bearing.
The Council of Ac 15 naturally had its inner history ; private conferences paved the way for the public settlement. In complicated and deli- cate affairs of this sort very different representa- tions may be equally true. ‘The two accounts ad- mirably complete each other. . . . The discrep- ancies can, for the most part, be explained aie from the difference of the acannon of the relaters’ (Pfleiderer, Hibb. Lect. 1885, on «The In- fluence of the Apostle Paul,’ p. 103): see, however, chs, iii. and vii. of Ramsay’s St. Paul the Trav., where the coincidence of the second visit of Paul in Gal with the second in Ac (11. 12) is vigorously but not convincingly maintained. Luke gives no hint at the earlier juncture of the momentous con- troversy of Gal 2, for which, indeed, the occasion arose only after the joint mission of Barnabas and Paul to S. Galatia, when mere Gentiles were received in large bodies into the Church (see Hort’s Jud. Christianity, pp. 64-67) : the Jerus. Church was occupied in A.D. 44-46 with the famine and the Herodian persecution ; for Paul to have raised the question of his apostolic status then would have been premature and officious. Paul ignores in Galatians the second visit to Jerus., because it was devoted to the specific business stated by Luke, and nothing arose ont of it affecting his relations with the first apostles or his own apostleship (see Lightf. Gal., note appended to ch. ii.). Returning from Jerus. at that time, Saul resumed his place among the ‘ prophets and teachers’ of the Church of Antioch (Ac 13').
The second stage of Paul’s ministry culminates with the Council at Jerus., which gave validity to Gentile Christianity and St. Paul’s plenary apostleship, now attested by God in the suc- cesses of the first missionary journey.