CHAPTER VII

V.

JEW AND GENTILE

After the Fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, the membership of the Church became more and more of Gentile origin. This meant a revolutionary change of interest; and therefore the emergence of questions about which there was serious dispute. The Jew sought after righteousness, the Greek after wisdom; and philosophy to the Greek was what the Law was to the Jew. It is not surprising, then, that, while in the first century the question most hotly debated was the permanent obligation of the Law of Moses, in the second century it was the Gnostic theory of Creation, or the philosophic implications of belief in the Divinity of Christ.

But for some time even Gentiles displayed little interest in the philosophical issues raised by Christian teaching, for the simple reason that they confidently expected an immediate return of Christ in glory to judge the world and inaugurate a reign of super­natural blessedness. Indeed, this ‘Advent hope’ was the very core of the ‘good news’ which the missionary proclaimed. Paul, in writing to the Thessalonians and Corinthians, takes it for granted that he would himself live to witness this event. And there are sayings in the Synoptic Gospels which, whether or no they are authentic utterances of Christ, at any rate prove that Christians supposed that this belief rested on his explicit teaching. A community living thus in daily expectation of the End of the World would not make plans for future development; and it would take as little interest in questions of organization as in the philosophical implications of belief. With the Final Doom impending, what mattered was before it was too late to bring to as many as possible the message of salvation: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”.

But from the very practical nature of this task arose a practical question. For centuries Prophets and Apocalyptists had taught the Jew to look forward to the Great Day when the yoke of the heathen would be broken and Israel would enter into its promised destiny on an earth transformed. Then was the call to repent, and so share in the glories of the coming kingdom, addressed to the Jew only—or also to the Greek? Paul tells us that from the moment of his conversion he had felt that his own duty was to preach to the Gentiles, but that James (the brother of the Lord), Peter and John were no less convinced that their mission was confined to the Jews, though (apparently only after careful consideration of the case submitted to them by Paul and Barnabas) they recognized that Paul's work was also appointed to him by God.

A considerable party in the Church were strongly opposed to Paul's views on the importance of the Gentile mission, and still more so to his contention that Gentile converts were not to be bound by the Law of Moses. One of the earlier sources incorporated in the Gospel of Matthew evidently emanates from this Judaistic party. Thus the instruction to the Twelve on the subject of their missionary duties limits these to Israel. “Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ... verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone through the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come”. This limitation to Israel is justified on the ground of the nearness of the End; it is not that Gentiles and Samaritans have no souls to save, but that the Jew has the first claim to hear the call, and there will not be time enough to reach both. The phrase “the cities of Israel” has a large sound; it would naturally mean the Israelitish world, not the limited number of townships that a half-dozen pairs of Apostles could cover in an apparently brief and experimental preaching tour. It is a plausible conjecture that the Matthaean version of the commission to the Twelve is the utterance of some Jewish Christian prophet—reproducing and amplifying words of Christ preserved in oral tradition—at the time of the controversy about the admission of Gentiles to the Church. Since a prophet was regarded as one through whom the Spirit of Jesus made authentic communications to his followers, “a word of the Lord” so received did not differ in authority from an utterance made during his earthly career.

The unexpected success of the Gentile mission forced to the front an issue far more controversial. Were Gentile converts bound by the Law of Moses? In particular, must they submit to the rite of circumcision? Political and religious causes, past and present—memories of the Maccabees, nationalistic detestation of Roman rule, the blood of martyrs and the hope of glory—had combined to make Judaism a “Religion of the Law”. Might Gentile “breeds without the law” inherit the “promises of Israel”, so faithfully deserved, so long deferred; and that without submitting to the yoke which was for Israel at once its discipline, its burden and its pride?

On this point, our evidence suggests, there was a divergence of view even among the three “reputed to be pillars” of the Church. Peter comes to Antioch, doubtless to preach to the Jews who formed one-third of the population of the third largest city in the Roman Empire. He there finds Gentile Christians; for refugees from the persecution in which Stephen fell had been the first to preach to the Gentiles in Antioch. He eats and drinks with them on terms of religious brotherhood. But such conduct involved Peter himself in serious transgression of the Law; for Gentiles would not be scrupulous to serve at table only what the Jew regarded as 'clean' meats. Next to idolatry the eating of unclean meats was the greatest offence which an orthodox Jew could commit. No wonder that, when news of Peter's conduct reached Jerusalem, a deputation was sent down from James to protest. So vehement were their representations that not only did Peter give way, but even Paul's fellow-worker Barnabas. Paul tells us what he said on that occasion; unfortunately, he does not tell us what effect his words produced. Did Peter resume his previous liberal conduct? Or did he decide henceforth to observe the Law, fearing that, unless he made this concession to the conscience of the weaker brethren, he would wreck the mission to the circumcision which, after all, was his special call? Probably the latter; had Peter given way to Paul, surely the mere statement of the fact would have routed Paul's opponents in the Galatian churches.

The position of Paul in regard to the Law is clear. So, at the opposite pole, is the position of James, which is known to us from Acts, as well as from Josephus and Hegesippus. Paul held that by the death of Christ an era had been ended; the Law had indeed been divinely instituted, but only for that era; now it had been simply abrogated. This attitude to the Law was a logical deduction from what to him was the new and essential thing in Christianity, the substitution of a Christocentric mysticism— a dependence on the Christ within, spiritually apprehended—for a religion of obedience to a transcendent Deity whose will was expressed in a code of rules. On the other hand the party of James—or at least its more extreme representatives—were zealous, not merely for the Law of Moses, but also for the observance of the meticulously elaborate rules worked out by the Rabbinic interpreters of the Law. Doubtless it is to some prophet belonging to this party that we owe “a word of the Lord” prescribing deference to their interpretations as lawful successors of Moses: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat: all things therefore whatsoever they bid you, these do and observe”. We may suspect a similar origin for the condemnation of Paul's doctrine that the Crucifixion had abrogated the Law, “Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished” (i.e. its abrogation would not be till the End of the World). “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven”. Here the words “and shall teach men so” must be a reference to Paul, who, we note, is not absolutely excluded from the Church, but degraded to the rank of “least in the kingdom of heaven”.'To this party Christianity was a “new law”.

Peter occupied an intermediate position. Left to himself, he had spontaneously taken the liberal line; for what Paul accuses him of in Galatians is not wrong belief, but “hypocrisy”—that is of outward action which contradicted his real belief. The accusation was made in heat, and is not really fair to Peter; for Peter on this occasion behaved as did Paul on other occasions, “To the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain Jews; . . . to them that are without law, as without law, ... that I might gain them that are without law”. Paul himself must have come to see this: for at a later date he speaks of Peter (Cephas) in quite a different tone. He will not admit any fundamental opposition between himself and Peter, in spite of differences sufficiently conspicuous to make it possible for some at Corinth to hail them as leaders of rival sects. Paul seems to have grown more tolerant with years. To conciliate Jewish opinion he circumcised the half-Jew Timothy; and his discussion of food-scruples in Romans shows him ready to make large concessions to Jewish Christians even of the strictest school.

The degree of authenticity that can be attributed to the speeches and epistles attributed to Peter in the New Testament is not such as to make it possible to call them in as further evidence for his views. But his conduct at Antioch, until called to order by James, makes it likely that it is to his recollection that we owe three passages in Mark: Jesus’ defence of his disciples for failing to observe the Pharisaic fast days; his condemnation of Pharisaic rigor in Sabbath observance; his denunciation of ceremonial washings, of tricks for making void the word of God by scribal tradition, and the saying “making all meats clean”. At any rate, it must be insisted that the practical example of Peter, rather than that of James, is the more likely to reflect the spirit of the teaching of Christ. For Peter was the leader of those who actively followed him; James was the eldest of those brethren of Jesus who, during the period of his public preaching, not only did not believe in him, but were even disposed to accept the suggestion that his mind was unhinged. And if the position of Peter in regard to the Law was intermediate between those of Paul and James, it may well be that it was also intermediate in their conceptions of the religious relation between the believer and the Christ in Heaven.

James is named by Paul as one of those persons to whom, as to Peter himself, was vouchsafed a Resurrection Appearance. This doubtless marks the moment of James' conversion. But, once he had joined a community which believed Jesus to be Messiah, James would naturally, as the eldest male of the Messianic house, become its titular head. That, no doubt, is why the three 'pillars' of the Church are mentioned by Paul in the order James, Peter, John; and why James settles down as the permanent head of the Church in the sacred city of Jerusalem. On the re­constitution of that Church after the desolation of AD 70, Symeon, a nephew of James, became its bishop; indeed, a kind of Caliphate, hereditary in the family of Jesus, would have been a development obvious and natural to the Jewish mind. But the Jewish War had more than decimated the Palestinian church; Jerusalem was again destroyed in 135, and after that no Jew might live there. Meanwhile, Gentile Christianity had become empire-wide; and, largely owing to the genius of Paul, it had taken a form which could neither be understood in, nor directed from, a centre wholly alien to the culture of the great world. Nevertheless, even in the latter part of the second century there were still Christians who wished to ascribe to James a quasi-Papal authority.

VI.

VARIETIES OF EXPERIENCE AND BELIEF