In the first place, he took it upon himself to be an apostle, and they
had their college of Twelve, to which none could be added, especially
not Paul, who had never seen Jesus of Nazareth. He maintained that God
had appointed him, God had revealed his Son and his Gospel to him; but
the apostles did not believe it, and never acknowledged him as an
apostle. At the end of his journeys, Peter, James, and John, three out
of Twelve, acknowledged him as an apostle to the Gentiles, but not to
the Jews. The rest never did, which, of course, was a great trouble and
drawback to Paul among his own converts.
In the second place, they could never forgive him for the idea of going
to the Gentiles. Peter, who had become a pious Essene and considered it
unlawful to go to the house or into the company of a Gentile; James, who
dreaded the idea of eating of the bread of the Gentile, and made a
hypocrite in this point of Peter at Antioch--and they were the heads of
the Church--could not forgive Paul's innovation in going to the
Gentiles. Paul was sensible enough to silence them by begging money for
them, and to appoint the Sunday for collections to be made for the
saints of Jerusalem. But it was too much for them that Paul went to the
Gentiles.
In the third place, he changed their whole religion into a new sort of
mythology. He made of Jesus a Son of God, of which they had no
knowledge. He preached vicarious atonement, bodily resurrection, the end
of the old covenant and the beginning of a new, the end of all flesh,
the last judgment--all of which was foreign to them; not one word of all
that had their Master told them, and they knew only what he did tell
them. They naturally looked upon him as an unscrupulous innovator. They
had not experience and forethought enough to understand that Paul's
success among the heathens depended on that means. They were pious men
who prayed much, believed seriously, and had no knowledge of the world
as it was.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account