POINTS RITUAL].
BEFORE THEM ALL, "HOW COM- PELLEST THOU THE NATIONS TO CON FORM TO JEWISH CERE- MONIAL?"
It is noteworthy that Luke used the vague expression that " persons came down from Judaea," which is made more definite in v. 24 : the champions of circumcision Hrho caused the dissension in Antioch had come on a /nission from the Apostles in Jerusalem. Luke pointedly avoids any expression that would connect the leading Apostles with the action of these emissaries. They had been sent from Jerusalem : but in v, 24 the Apostles
Sec. a. The Dispute in Antioch. 159
disclaim all responsibility for their action. While Luke gives all the materials for judging, the substitution of Judcea for Jerusalem in his narrative is very significant of his carefulness in the minutice of expression. It is in nc sense incorrect (it puts the general name of the whole land in place of the city name), and it guards against a probable misconception in the briefest way.
The incidents described in Gal. II 11-14 are not usually referred to this period ; and it is therefore advisable to elicit from the words of Paul the precise situation as he conceives it. Certain persons had come to Antioch from James : James, the head of the Church in Jerusalem, here stands alone as " the local representative " of that Church (to borrow a phrase from Lightfoot, Ed. Gal p. 365). These persons had found in Antioch a situation that shocked them, and they expressed their disapproval so strongly and effectively, that Peter shrank from continuing the free intercourse with Gentile Christiana which he had been practising. What do we learn from the context as to their attitude ? They are styled " they of the circumcision " ; and this phrase (as distinguished from the mere general expression of disagreement and dislike used about persons of the same class in Gal. II 4) implies that they actively championed that cause against Peter. The exact form of the argument which moved Peter is not stated explicitly by Paul in his hurried and impassioned narrative ; but we gather what it was from the terms of his expostulation with Peter. He said to him in public : " how compellest thou the Nations to Judaise ? " The words have no force unless Peter, convinced by the Judaistic envoys, had begun to declare that compliance with the Law was compulsory,
1 60 The Apostolic Council. Chap. VII.
before Gentiles could become members of the Church fully entitled to communion with it.
Accordingly, the situation described in Gal. II n-14 is that which existed in Antioch after Paul's return from the Galatian Churches. In the first part of his letter to the Galatians, Paul recapitulates the chief stages in the development of the controversy between the Judaising party in the Church, the premonitory signs on his second visit to Jerusalem, and the subsequent open dispute with Peter in Antioch. The dispute occurred after Paul's second, but before his third, visit to Jerusalem, i.e., either between Acts XII 25 and XIII 1, or between XIV 26 and XV 4. Now in XV 1 (cp. v. 24) envoys from James caused strife in Antioch ; and we can hardly think that envoys also came from James after XII 25, and caused exactly similar strife, which was omitted by Luke but recorded in Gal. II 12.
When the question was put distinctly in all its bearings and consequences before Peter, he was un- able to resist the argument that Christians ought to observe the Law, as Christ had done, and as the Twelve did. On one or two occasions, indeed, Christ had been taunted with permitting breaches of the Law ; but His actions could be so construed only by captious hypercriticism. It is quite clear that Peter and the older Apostles did not for a time grasp the full import of Christ's teaching on this subject: the actual fact that He and they were Jews, and lived as such, made more impression on them than mere theo- retical teaching. Barnabas, even, was carried away by the example of Peter, and admitted the argument that the Gentile Christians ought "to live as do the Jews".