It was at this point, perhaps, that Paul's courage in defence of vital principle was called into action, owing to a visit of Peter to Antioch. Peter had fallen in with the custom at Antioch whereby Jewish and Gentile Christians ate together. But this was more than was understood even by James to be involved in the alliance of the two missions. It was one thing not to force Judaism on Gentile Christians; it was another to sanction table-fellowship between Gentile and Jewish Christians as full brethren. Let Peter, said James through his friends, remember Judaean feelings as well. Was it not wrong to break with the sentiment of the Mother Church in Judaea for the comfort of Gentile brethren on the spot, whom they had but recently regarded as "unclean"? The plea swept not only Peter and the local Jewish Christians off their feet, but even Barnabas also.
But Paul saw that by their very reliance on Christ rather than the Law for justification, Jewish Christians had in principle set aside the Law as the means of righteousness : that they had vir tually come down from their prerogative standing on the Law and classed themselves with "sinners of the Gentiles"; and finally that they had been led into this by Jesus the Messiah Himself. If that attitude were sinful, "then was Christ the minister of sin." If righteousness depend after all on the Law, then why did Christ die? This penetrating analysis (Gal. ii. 14-21) of the implications of Christian faith was unanswerable, as regards any legal ob servance as condition of justification. Thus Evangelic principle told against the expediency alleged on the Jewish side; while as for expediency in relation to the Gentiles, it was a matter not only of Antioch, and the Jews and Gentiles there involved, but also of the whole Roman world, and the relative numbers of poten tial converts from either class in it.
up the gage ; and as the Judaizers no doubt claimed that they had the Judaean Church at their back, the local church felt that the issue would have to be decided in Jerusalem itself. So they sent up Paul and Barnabas, "and certain others of their number" (Acts xv. 2 ; contrast Gal. ii. I seq.), to confer with "the apostles and elders" there. The fact that Paul consented to go at all, to the seeming prejudice of his own divine commission, is best explained by his prior understanding with "the pillars" of the Judaean Church itself (Gal. ii. i–io). His object was twofold: to secure in the centre of Judaeo-Christianity that public vindication of Gentile freedom from "the yoke of the Law" on which he felt he could count, and to save the Church from outward schism.
On the main issue there could be no compromise. It was con ceded, largely through the influence of Peter and James, that the good pleasure of the Holy Spirit (xv. 28a), in possessing Gentile hearts, settled the question. But as to the need of considering age long Jewish sentiment on points where divergent practice would tend to prevent Jewish Christians from recognizing Gentile be lievers as brethren, as well as place a needless stumbling-block between Jews and a Messianic society in which unlimited "un cleanness" was tolerated—on this compromise was possible. The compromise was proposed by James (xv. 20 seq.) and accepted by Paul. Indeed he had less to sacrifice than the other side in the concordat. For in the case of Gentile proselytes to Messianic Judaism the ritual Law was to be waived, and a minimum of proselyte rules, indispensable (xv. 28) to a type of piety essen tially common to all "in Christ," taken as sufficient. Of the "abstinences" in question only that touching blood (in its two forms) was really a ritual matter. The other two were deduc tions from fundamental Christian ideas.
The above is the simplest reading of the case, especially if the question of table-fellowship (in Gal. ii. II seq.) had preceded. Some scholars dispute that Paul could have been a party to such a concordat at all. Others maintain that the reference to "things strangled" is an interpolation, not shared by the early Western text, and that "blood" meant originally homicide. Hence the rules had no reference to food apart from constructive idolatry. This theory does not remove the contradiction with Gal. ii. io, and seems textually improbable.