“Paulinism” (see below), were both experimental in origin
and capable of statement in terms of his Christ. To him the
Death and Resurrection of Christ were not isolated facts, nor
yet abstractions. To this man of faith the crucial fact of
Christ’s Resurrection, in full spiritual humanity, had been
brought within his own experience; so that here, and not in
any second-hand facts touching Christ’s earthly career, lay
the real and verified basis of the whole Christian life. This
makes his gospel so individual, and at the same time so universal—for
those at least who at all share his religious experience.
It is unlikely that Saul began straightway to preach all his ideas or even those most prominent in his epistles, which belong only to some ten years at the end of a ministry of some thirty. In particular his special mission to the Gentiles dawned on him only gradually. No doubt as he looked back in writing Gal. i. 15 seq., he felt His Early Apostolate. that the final purpose of God in “revealing His Son in him” had been that he “might preach Him among the Gentiles.” But this does not prove that he saw it all at once as involved in “the heavenly vision.” For one thing the contracted horizon afforded by the hope of a speedy second Advent (Parousia) would limit his outlook materially. Then too he was intensely Jewish in feeling; and the probability is that he would begin to declare salvation through Christ alone, apart from “works of the Law,” to his compatriots. Only bitter experience convinced him (Rom. ix. 1 sqq., x. 1 sqq.) that the Jews as a people did not share his experience as to the Law, and spurned their proffered birthright in Messiah.
Saul began his preaching in the synagogues of Damascus, and made a deep impression, especially, we may suppose, after his return from Arabia (Acts ix. 22; Gal. i. 17). But finally his Jewish opponents planned to do away with him, by the connivance of the ethnarch of King Aretas (cf. 2 Cor. xi. 32 seq.). Then came his first visit to Jerusalem since his conversion, in the third year from that event, for the purpose of making the personal acquaintance of Peter (Gal. i. 18), presumably to hear first-hand about Jesus’ earthly ministry and teaching, as well as to make the leading apostle directly acquainted with his own remarkable conversion and mission.[1] It was natural that Barnabas should help to break through the suspicion with which the arch-persecutor was at first regarded; also that such preaching as Saul did in Jerusalem should be directed to the Hellenists, e.g. his Cilician compatriots (ix. 29; cf. vi. 9). This led to his having to leave suddenly, apparently after a vision in the Temple which brought him fresh light as to the scope of his future ministry. During the ten or eleven years at least “in the regions of Syria and Cilicia” which ensued, it was still primarily to the Jews that he preached; for the news of him which reached “the churches of Judaea” from time to time (ἀκούοντες ἦσαν) was such that they “kept glorifying God” in him (Gal. i. 21–23), as they certainly would not have done had he all along addressed himself largely to Gentiles. His preaching, that is, was for the most part confined to the synagogue and its adherents of non-Jewish origin, whether circumcised or not. Of Saul’s actual history, however, during these obscure years we gain only rare glimpses,[2] the first and most important being in connexion with the foundation at Antioch of a mixed Church of Jews and Gentiles. Whatever may have been the first beginnings of this new departure (a question which depends on the alternative readings[3] “Hellenists” and “Greeks” in Acts xi. 20), a situation soon arose which Barnabas, who had been sent from Jerusalem to supervise the work begun by certain Hellenist preachers, felt to call for Saul’s co-operation. He sought him out in Tarsus; and “for a whole year” the two enjoyed the hospitality of the Antiochene Church and instructed numerous converts—including not a few uncircumcised Gentiles. It is not clear how far Saul continued to reside in Antioch after his first “whole year” of continuous work as colleague of His Apostolate Expands. Barnabas. It no doubt remained his headquarters. But we may imagine him evangelizing also in the region between Antioch and Tarsus (Gal. i. 21; cf. Acts xv. 23, 41). Whilst so engaged, whether at Antioch or elsewhere, he seems to have attained quite a fresh sense of the degree to which Gentiles were destined to form an integral part of that “Israel of God” which was being gathered through faith in Jesus as the Christ (cf. the name “Christians,” Acts xi. 26). Writing about summer A.D. 56, he speaks of having had an overpowering revelation some thirteen years previously (2 Cor. xii. 2–4), that is, about 42–43, the very period now in question. He says nothing, it is true, as to its theme; but it can hardly have been unconnected with his central preoccupation, the scope of the Church, as set forth later in Eph. ii. 11, iii. 13.
Saul’s relations with the Jerusalem community between his coming to Antioch and his final relinquishing of it as his headquarters about A.D. 50 (a period of some ten years), form a crucial point in his missionary life. The extreme Tübingen theory that Saul was now, and even later, in sharp conflict with the leaders in Judaea, is a thing of the past. But many problems remain, and what follows is offered only on its own merits, as seeming best to unify the relevant data in the light of all we know of Paul as a man and a missionary. Points of divergence from current views will be indicated as far as possible.
Such a new revelation would naturally lead to more definite
efforts to win Gentiles as such, and this again to his second
visit to Jerusalem, some eleven years after his
former visit (or rather more than thirteen, if the
interval in Gal. ii. 1 be reckoned from that visit
and not from his conversion). He would come to
Second Visit
to Jerusalem.
feel the need of a clear understanding with Jerusalem touching
his gospel, “lest perchance he should run in vain or have
already so run” (ii. 2). Saul was not the man to wait for a
foreseen evil to develop. “In accordance with a revelation”
he induced Barnabas to accompany him to a private conference
with the leaders in Jerusalem, to lay before them his gospel
(ii. 2). The date of this was c. 43–45. His aim was to confer
solely with leaders (contrast Acts xv. 4, 12) like James and
Cephas and John, the “pillars” of the Jerusalem community.
But certain persons who showed such a spirit as to make him
describe them as “pseudo-brethren,” managed to be present
and demanded the circumcision of Titus, a Greek whom Saul
had taken with him. In this demand he saw a blow at the
heart of his gospel for Gentiles, and would not give way. The
“pillars” themselves, too, felt that his distinctive mission
was bound up with Gentile freedom from obligation to the
Mosaic Law as such. They recognized Saul and Barnabas,
as entrusted with a specific Gentile mission, parallel with their
own to Jews. Only, as pledge that the two should not diverge
but remain sister branches of Messiah’s Ecclesia, until He
should return and remove all anomalies, they asked that the
Gentile mission should prove the genuineness[4] of its piety by
making it a habit to “remember the poor.” Here was a proviso
which Saul was as eager as they could be to get carried out;
and this he was able to prove ere long in the special form of
- ↑ Here Galatians (i. 18 sqq.) emphasizes its own special points of interest, in that Saul stayed only a fortnight and saw of the apostolic leaders none save Peter and James the Lord’s brother; whereas Acts, in its popular account of the more public side of his visit, conveys a rather different effect, yet one not incompatible with what he himself relates.
- ↑ It is likely that some at least of the five scourgings in synagogues referred to in 2 Cor. xi. 24, befell him during this period. Many Jews would resent not only the preaching of a crucified Messiah, but also the filching from them of their proselytes.
- ↑ The present writer now believes that “Hellenists,” the better supported reading (see Acts), is yet secondary, being due to assimilation to preceding usage in vi. 1, ix. 29, and possibly also to misinterpretation of the turning to the Gentiles in xiii. 46.
- ↑ How essential a mark of true piety such conduct was in the eyes of Jews at this time is well known. A synonym for almsgiving was “righteousness” (cf. Matt. vi. 1 seq.); it is specially praised, in the Pirke Aboth, along with Thorah and divine worship, as the “three things on which the world rests”; while in Baba Bathra 10 b. we read, “As sin-offering makes atonement for Israel, so alms for the Gentiles.” In the light of this, confirmed by Acts x. 2, 4, in the case of Cornelius, it seems that the reference in Gal. ii. 10 is to deeds of charity generally, as a token of genuine piety in Messianic proselytes, just as in ordinary Jewish ones; for the primitive Judaeo-Christian community was most earnest on the point: cf. Acts ii. 44 seq., iv. 32–37.
