The fearless remonstrance of Paul had probably a moderating effect upon James and his
elders, but did not alter their practice in Jerusalem.^479 Still less did it silence the extreme Judaizing
faction; on the contrary, it enraged them. They were defeated, but not convinced, and fought again
with greater bitterness than ever. They organized a countermission, and followed Paul into almost
every field of his labor, especially to Corinth and Galatia. They were a thorn, if not the thorn, in
his flesh. He has them in view in all his Epistles except those to the Thessalonians and to Philemon.
We cannot understand his Epistles in their proper historical sense without this fact. The false apostles
were perhaps those very Pharisees who caused the original trouble, at all events men of like spirit.
They boasted of their personal acquaintance with the Lord in the days of his flesh, and with the
primitive apostles; hence Paul calls these "false apostles" sarcastically "super-eminent" or
"over-extra-apostles."^480 They attacked his apostolate as irregular and spurious, and his gospel as
radical and revolutionary. They boldly told his Gentile converts that the, must submit to circumcision
and keep the ceremonial law; in other words, that they must be Jews as well as Christians in order
to insure salvation, or at all events to occupy a position of pre-eminence over and above mere
proselytes of the gate in the outer court. They appealed, without foundation, to James and Peter
and to Christ himself, and abused their name and authority for their narrow sectarian purposes, just
as the Bible itself is made responsible for all sorts of heresies and vagaries. They seduced many of
the impulsive and changeable Galatians, who had all the characteristics of the Keltic race. They
split the congregation in Corinth into several parties and caused the apostle the deepest anxiety. In
Colossae, and the churches of Phrygia and Asia, legalism assumed the milder form of Essenic
mysticism and asceticism. In the Roman church the legalists were weak brethren rather than false
brethren, and no personal enemies of Paul, who treats them much more mildly than the Galatian
errorists.
This bigoted and most persistent Judaizing reaction was overruled for good. It drew out
from the master mind of Paul the most complete and most profound vindication and exposition of
the doctrines of sin and grace. Without the intrigues and machinations of these legalists and ritualists
we should not have the invaluable Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans. Where error
abounded, truth has still more abounded.
At last the victory was won. The terrible persecution under Nero, and the still more terrible
destruction of Jerusalem, buried the circumcision controversy in the Christian church. The ceremonial
law, which before Christ was "alive but not life-giving," and which from Christ to the destruction
of Jerusalem was "dying but not deadly," became after that destruction "dead and deadly."^481 The
Judaizing heresy was indeed continued outside of the Catholic church by the sect of the Ebionites
during the second century; and in the church itself the spirit of formalism and bigotry assumed new
shapes by substituting Christian rites and ceremonies for the typical shadows of the Mosaic
dispensation. But whenever and wherever this tendency manifests itself we have the best antidote
in the Epistles of Paul.(^479) Comp. Acts 21:17-20.
(^480) The E. V. translates ὑπερλίαν ἀπόστολοι, 2 Cor. 11:5, "the very chiefest apostles," Plumptre better, "those
apostles-extraordinary." They are identical with the ψευδαπόστολοι, 11:13, and not with the pillar-apostles of the circumcision,
Gal. 2:9; see above, p. 334, note 1.
(^481) Augustin thus distinguishes three periods in the Mosaic law: 1, lex viva, sed non vivifica; 2, l. moribunda, sed non mortifera;
3, l. mortua et mortifera.
A.D. 1-100.