service of charity he had cheerfully done before, and as cheerfully and faithfully did afterward by
raising collections among his Greek congregations and carrying the money in person to Jerusalem.^441
Such is the unequivocal testimony of the fraternal understanding among the apostles from the mouth
of Paul himself. And the letter of the council officially recognizes this by mentioning "beloved"
Barnabas^442 and Paul, as "men who have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
This double testimony of the unity of the apostolic church is quite conclusive against the modern
invention of an irreconcilable antagonism between Paul and Peter.^443- As regards the question of circumcision and the status of the Gentile Christians, there
was a sharp conflict of opinions in open debate, under the very shadow of the inspired apostles.^444
There was strong conviction and feeling on both sides, plausible arguments were urged, charges
and countercharges made, invidious inferences drawn, fatal consequences threatened. But the Holy
Spirit was also present, as he is with every meeting of disciples who come together in the name of
Christ, and overruled the infirmities of human nature which will crop out in every ecclesiastical
assembly.
The circumcision of Titus, as a test case, was of course strongly demanded by the Pharisaical
legalists, but as strongly resisted by Paul, and not enforced.^445 To yield here even for a moment
would have been fatal to the cause of Christian liberty, and would have implied a wholesale
circumcision of the Gentile converts, which was impossible.
But how could Paul consistently afterwards circumcise Timothy?^446 The answer is that he
circumcised Timothy as a Jew, not as a Gentile, and that he did it as a voluntary act of expediency,
for the purpose of making Timothy more useful among the Jews, who had a claim on him as the
son of a Jewish mother, and would not have allowed him to teach in a synagogue without this token
of membership; while in the case of Titus, a pure Greek, circumcision was demanded as a principle
and as a condition of justification and salvation. Paul was inflexible in resisting the demands of
false brethren, but always willing to accommodate himself to weak brethren, and to become as a
Jew to the Jews and as a Gentile to the Gentiles in order to save them both.^447 In genuine Christian
(^441) Gal. 2:7-10; comp. Acts 11:30; 24:17; 1 Cor. 16:1-3; 2 Cor. 8 and 9; Rom. 15:25-27.
(^442) Barnabas, as the older disciple, still retained precedence in the Jewish church, and hence is named first. A later forger would
have reversed the order.
(^443) Dr. Plumptre remarks against the Tübingen critics (on Acts 15:7): "Of all doctrines as to the development of the Christian
church, that which sees in Peter, James, and John the leaders of a Judaizing anti-Pauline party is, perhaps, the most baseless and
fantastic. The fact that their names were unscrupulously used by that party, both in their lifetime and, as the pseudo-Clementine
Homilies and Recognitions show, after their death, cannot outweigh their own deliberate words and acts."
(^444) This is very evident from the indignant tone of Paul against the Judaizers, and from the remark in Acts 15:6: πολλῆς
συζητήσεως γενομένης, comp. Acts 15:2: γενομένης στάσεως(factious party spirit, insurrection, Luke 23:19; Mark 15:7) καί
ζητήσεως οὐκ ὀλίγης. Such strong terms show that Luke by no means casts the veil of charity over the differences in the apostolic
church.
(^445) Gal. 2:3-5. See the note below.
(^446) Acts 16:3. The silence of Luke concerning the non-circumcision of Titus has been distorted by the Tübingen critics into a
wilful suppression of fact, and the mention of the circumcision of Timothy into a fiction to subserve the catholic unification of
Petrinism and Paulinism. What a designing and calculating man this anonymous author of the Acts must have been, and yet not
shrewd enough to conceal his literary fraud or to make it more plausible by adapting it to the account in the Galatians, and by
mentioning the full understanding between the apostles themselves! The book of Acts is no more a full history of the church or
of the apostles than the Gospels are full biographies of Christ.
(^447) Comp. Rom. 14 and 15; 1 Cor. 9:19-23; Acts 21:23-26.
A.D. 1-100.