with an related in How St Peter came to hold these liberal principles, so entirely It accords opposed to the narrow traditions of his age and country, is explained incident by an incident narrated in the Acts. He was at one time as rigid the Acts and as scrupulous as the most bigoted of his countrymen: 'nothing common or unclean had at any time entered into his mouth (x. 14, xi. 8).' Suddenly a light bursts in upon the darkness of his religious convictions. He is taught by a vision 'not to call any man common or unclean (x. 28).' His sudden change scandalizes the Jewish brethren: but he explains and for the moment at least convinces (xi. 18). his cha And if his normal principles are explained by the narrative of and with the Acts, his exceptional departure from them is illustrated by his racter as character as it appears in the Gospels. The occasional timidity the Gosgiven in and weakness of St Peter will be judged most harshly by those who pels. have never themselves felt the agony of a great moral crisis, when not their own ease and comfort only, which is a small thing, but the spiritual welfare of others seems to clamour for a surrender of their principles. His true nobleness-his fiery zeal and overflowing love and abandoned self-devotion-will be appreciated most fully by spirits which can claim some kindred however remote with his spirit. Thus the fragmentary notices in the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles of St Paul, combine to form a harmonious portrait of a character, not consistent indeed, but-to use Aristotle's significant phrase-consistently inconsistent (óμadŵs avwμaλov); and this is a much safer criterion of truth. But there is yet another source of The First Epistle of information to be considered-his own letters. If the deficiency of St Peter external evidence forbids the use of the Second Epistle in controversy, the First labours under no such disabilities; for very few of the apostolical writings are better attested. To this epistle indeed it has been objected that it bears too manifest traces of Pauline influence to be the genuine writing of St shows the influence Peter. The objection however seems to overlook two important of St Paul, principles: but inconsistency is not dissimulation or hypocrisy, and this interpretation, like the former, loses sight of the context which denounces St Peter but bears the indi vidual stamp considerations. First. If we consider the prominent part borne by St Paul as the chief preacher of Christianity in countries Hellenic by race or by adoption; if we remember further that his writings were probably the first which clothed the truths of the Gospel and the aspirations of the Church in the language of Greece; we shall hardly hesitate to allow that he had a great influence in moulding this language for Christian purposes, and that those who afterwards trod in his footsteps could hardly depart much from the idiom thus moulded'. Secondly. It is begging the whole question to assume that St Peter derived nothing from the influence of the Apostle of the Gentiles. The one was essentially a character to impress, the other to be impressed. His superior in intellectual culture, in breadth of sympathy, and in knowledge of men, his equal in love and zeal for Christ, St Paul must have made his influence felt on the frank and enthusiastic temperament of the elder Apostle. The weighty spiritual maxims thrown out during the dispute at Antioch for instance would sink deep into his heart': and taking into account the many occasions when either by his writings or by personal intercourse St Paul's influence would be communicated, we can hardly doubt that the whole effect was great. But after all the epistle bears the stamp of an individual mind quite independent of this foreign element. The substratum of the thoughts is the writer's own. Its individuality indeed appears more in the contemplation of the life and sufferings of Christ, in the view taken of the relations between the believer and the world around, in the realisation of the promises made to the chosen people of old, in the pervading sense of a regenerate life and the reiterated hope of a glorious advent, than in any special development of doctrine: but it would be difficult to give any reason why, prior to experience, we should have expected it to be otherwise. 1 Schleiermacher, Einl. ins N. T. P. 402 sq. I * See 1 Pet. ii. 24 τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν αὐτὸς ἀνήνεγκεν ἐν τῷ σώματι αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ τὸ ξύλον, ἵνα ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ἀπογενόμενοι τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ ζήσωμεν. This is the most striking instance which the epistle exhibits of coincidence with St Paul's doctrinal teaching (though there are occasionally strong resemblances of language). With it compare Gal. ii. 20 Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι· ζῶ δὲ οὐκέτι ἐγώ, ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ Χριστὸς κ.τ.λ. Hebrew Ebionite. Altogether the epistle is anything but Ebionite. Not only is the of a mind 'law' never once named, but there is no allusion to formal ordinances but not of any kind. The writer indeed is essentially an Israelite, but he is an Israelite after a Christian type. When he speaks of the truths of the Gospel, he speaks of them through the forms of the older dispensation: he alludes again and again to the ransom of Christ's death, but the image present to his mind is the paschal lamb without spot or blemish; he addresses himself to Gentile converts, but he transfers to them the cherished titles of the covenant race; they are the true 'dispersion (i. 1)'; they are 'a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people (ii. 9).' The believer in Christ is the Israelite; the unbeliever the Gentile (ii. 12). Corresponding to the position of St Peter as he appears in the Its relaapostolic history, this epistle in its language and tone occupies a Paul and place midway between the writings of St James and St Paul. With St James it dwells earnestly on the old: with St Paul it expands to the comprehension of the new. In its denunciation of luxurious wealth, in its commendation of the simple and homely virtues, in its fond reference to past examples in Jewish history for imitation or warning, it recalls the tone of the head of the Hebrew Church: in its conception of the grace of God, of the ransom of Christ's death, of the wide purpose of the Gospel, it approaches to the language of the Apostle of the Gentiles. tion to St St James. With St Paul' too the writer links himself by the mention of two Mark and Silvanus. names, both Christians of the Circumcision, and both companions of the Gentile Apostle; Mark who, having accompanied him on his first missionary tour, after some years of alienation is found by his side once more (Col. iv. 10), and Silvanus who shared with him the labours and perils of planting the Gospel in Europe. Silvanus is the bearer or the amanuensis of St Peter's letter; Mark joins in the salutations (v. 12, 13). and St Thus the Churches of the next generation, which were likely to St Peter be well informed, delighted to unite the names of the two leading Paul assoApostles as the greatest teachers of the Gospel, the brightest examples early traof Christian life. At Rome probably, at Antioch certainly, both these dition. ciated in Rome. Apostles were personally known. We have the witness of the one church in Clement; of the other in Ignatius. The former classes them together as the two 'noble ensamples of his own generation,' 'the greatest and most righteous pillars' of the Church, who 'for Antioch. hatred and envy were persecuted even unto death (§ 5). The latter will not venture to command the Christians of Rome, 'as Peter and Paul did; they were Apostles, he a convict; they were free, he a slave to that very hour'.' Clement wrote before the close of the first century, Ignatius at the beginning of the second. It seems probable that both these fathers had conversed with one or other of the two Apostles. Besides Antioch and Rome, the names of St Peter and St Paul appear together also in connexion with the Church of Corinth (1 Cor. iii. 22). This church again has not withheld her voice, though here the later date of her testimony detracts somewhat from its value'. Dionysius bishop of Corinth, writing to the Romans during the episcopate of Soter (c. 166-174), claims kindred with them on the ground that both churches alike had profited by the joint instruction of St Peter and St Paul3. Corinth. Misrepresentations parties. But though the essential unity of these two Apostles is thus of extreme recognised by different branches of the Catholic Church, a disposition to sever them seems early to have manifested itself in some quarters. Even during their own lifetime the religious agitators at Corinth would have placed them in spite of themselves at the head of rival parties. And when death had removed all fear of contradiction, extreme partisans boldly claimed the sanction of the one or the other 1 Rom. 4. 2 The language of Clement however 3 In Euseb. H. E. ii. 25 Tv ȧãò Πέτρου καὶ Παύλου φυτείαν γενηθεῖσαν 'Ρωμαίων τε καὶ Κορινθίων συνεκεράσατε. καὶ γὰρ ἄμφω καὶ εἰς τὴν ἡμετέραν Κόρινθον φοιτήσαντες ἡμᾶς ὁμοίως ἐδίδαξαν, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ εἰς τὴν Ἰταλίαν ὁμόσε διδάξαντες ἐμαρτύρησαν κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν καιρόν. All the ass and the Syriac version here have φυτεύσαντες; but φοιτήσαντες is read by Georgius Syncellus, and Rufinus has 'adventantes'; the sense too seems to require it. In any case it is hardly a safe inference that Dionysius erroneously supposed the Churches of Rome and Corinth to have been founded by both Apostles jointly. Acts. for their own views. The precursors of the Ebionites misrepresented the Israelite sympathies of St Peter, as if he had himself striven to put a yoke upon the neck of the Gentiles which neither their fathers nor they were able to bear. The precursors of Marcionism exaggerated the antagonism of St Paul to the Mosaic ritual, as if he had indeed held the law to be sin and the commandment neither holy nor just nor good. It seems to have been a subsidiary aim of Concilia. tory aim St Luke's narrative, which must have been written not many years of the after the martyrdom of both Apostles, to show that this growing tendency was false, and that in their life, as in their death, they were not divided. A rough parallelism between the career of the two reveals itself in the narrative when carefully examined. Recent criticism has laid much stress on this 'conciliatory' purpose of the Acts, as if it were fatal to the credit of the narrative. But denying the inference we may concede the fact, and the very concession draws its sting. Such a purpose is at least as likely to have been entertained by a writer, if the two Apostles were essentially united, as if they were not. The truth or falsehood of the account must be determined on other grounds. not claim Ebionites. 2. While St Peter was claimed as their leader by the Judaizers, ST JOHN no such liberty seems to have been taken with the name of ST ed by JOHN'. Long settled in an important Gentile city, surrounded by a numerous school of disciples, still living at the dawn of the second century, he must have secured for his teaching such notoriety as protected it from gross misrepresentation. His last act recorded in St Luke's narrative is a visit to the His position in the newly founded Churches of Samaria, in company with St Peter (viii. apostolic 1 In the portion of the first book of the Recognitions, which seems to have been taken from the 'Ascents of James,' the sons of Zebedee are introduced with the rest of the Twelve confuting heresies, but the sentiments attributed to them are in no way Ebionite (i. 57). It is this work perhaps to which Epiphanius refers (xxx. 23), for his notice does not imply anything more than a casual introduction of St John's name in their writings. In another passage history. |
