The Apostles' Quarrel

Some of Paul’s early letters to the Galatians and Corinthians tell us of a bitter dissension between Paul and the Palestinian apostles, especially James and Peter. How severe was this conflict and what were its consequences?

Only if we accept the narrative of Acts as historically accurate, does there appear to have been some compromise between the Palestinian Christian community on the one hand, and Paul (Acts 15:1-31; 21:17-26). Paul appeared to confirm this compromise in Galatians 2:1-10.

The conflict was long in developing. Scholars often quote a statement by the Roman historian Suetonius that such a serious controversy about one “Chrestus” among Jewish citizens that Emperor Claudius banished them from Rome in 49 CE. According to Acts Paul arrived in Rome about 58 CE and continued teaching under house arrest, presumably until his death.

As he reported in Galatians Paul had met James, Peter (Cephas) and John in Jerusalem and agreed with them that he would minister to the Gentiles while they continued to minister to Jews. (Gal. 1:18-19; 2:8-10) Subsequently he confronted Peter and others in Antioch about their withdrawing from eating with Gentiles when delegates came from James in Jerusalem. (Gal. 2:11-14).

Paul did admit in 1 Corinthians 9:20-21 that while with Jews he lived as a Jew and with Gentiles as a Gentile. Yet in Galatians 5:2-6 he charged that anyone accepting circumcision as a condition of belonging to Christ was actually cutting him or herself off from Christ. Any inconsistency of his views disappeared in writing 2 Corinthians 10 to 13 where his language implied that he would brook no interference from other apostles with his work among Gentiles. (2 Cor. 11:1-5, 12-15; Phil. 3:1-7)

Today leading Roman Catholic scholars no longer believe that either Peter or Paul were the founders of the Christian community in Rome. In the 2^nd century the tradition arose that both apostles died during Nero’s persecution in the mid-60s CE. In later centuries, the Church ignored this controversy between them. Tradition associated Peter and Paul so closely that their names were remembered together in ancient and modern church art and architecture all over the world.

James D. Tabor is certain that in the end Paul won the struggle for dominance among the Greek-speaking congregations of the Roman Empire. Toward the end of the 1^st century it was either the community in Antioch or Ephesus that began to circulate Paul’s authentic and attributed letters. Tabor further claims that Paul’s teaching also greatly influenced the writing of the gospels, especially the three earliest, Mark (ca. 70 CE), Matthew (ca. 80 CE) and Luke (ca. 90 CE).

Thus, by the end of the 1^st century Paul’s views were dominant in Christian communities all over the Roman Empire. The first true Christian historian, Eusebius (ca. 260-340 CE), stated that at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Christians there fled to Pella, east of the Jordan River. At the end of the 2^nd century, a Christian sect there, the Ebionites, were condemned as heretics by Irenaeus (ca. 120-200 CE). Paul’s triumph coloured Christian history thereafter.

The Torah of Christ

A continuing debate among scholars rings changes on Paul’s real view of the Torah. James Tabor is no different, but seems to go further than most. He declares unequivocally that Jesus is the “second” founder of Christianity in that he so radically severed his relationship with the Torah of Judaism that he can be truly said to have founded a new religion.

Paul broke with James, Peter and the other apostles in Jerusalem to the extent that while they continued as practicing Jews, as a Jew himself Paul made possible the spread of the gospel of the resurrection throughout the Gentile world by refusing to force his Gentile converts to follow the Torah. Within fifty years of Paul’s death, the Christian Church was almost exclusively Gentile.

As a descendant of Abraham, a Jew is a Jew by birth. Or one can become a Jew by conversion but must follow the Torah, especially its outward symbols like male circumcision and prescribed dietary laws. From the Jewish perspective, Jews always remained Jews and Gentiles remained non-Jews unless they had adopted these requirements. Paul had a new vision of what anyone’s religious affiliation could be. To quote James Tabor:

In Paul’s new vision of things, a non-Jew, in order to be ‘saved’ from God’s judgment, must turn from idols to the one God and also bow the knee in worship to Jesus as Lord – something Jews would be forbidden to do…. This single move, in which a human being is considered equal to God and thus worthy of worship, separates Paul’s version of Christianity from Judaism and effectively creates a new ‘religion’ separate from most mainstream Judaism.   (Tabor, James D. (Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012.)

To every Jew’s astonishment, this Jewish follower of Jesus denounced those who shared his own Jewish tradition as “Jews according to the flesh.” By their refusal of Jesus as Lord, he claimed, they had separated themselves from God’s purpose for Israel and had been replaced as the true Israel. Paul believed God had never intended that the Torah of Israel should be permanent. The death and resurrection of Jesus had led both Jews and Gentiles to Christ. The ancient Torah had been superseded. (See 1 Corinthians 8:4-6; Philippians 3:3; Galatians 3:23-25, 6:15; Romans 10:4).

Paul did not regard being free of the Torah of Israel as freedom to live an immoral life. Quite the contrary, he advocated strict sexual behaviour and how to deal with food offered to idols, especially where blood was involved. He displaced the Torah of Israel with the “Torah of Christ.” But he did so for a special reason: the expected transformation at the imminent return of Christ.

Try as he might Paul could never solve the very human problem of living in two worlds, the physical and the spiritual. To quote Tabor again: According to Paul there is no solution, no victory to be won over the flesh until the body is shed at the resurrection and one becomes wholly transform. Not that he was indifferent to moral living. It all has to do whether one is in Christ or outside. The Law of Christ, which operates by the Spirit of Christ dwelling within a person, is a strategy of resistance activated by ‘yielding’ to the Spirit and not to the flesh.

That is the way to live until the kingdom of God comes. But the kingdom for Paul was not on earth but in heaven, where God’s holy will is fully done. (Philippians 3:20)