Proposal to Research the Relationship between Paul and Peter and James and the Implication of That Relationship for Paul’s Knowledge of the Jesus Traditions—Long Version.
I propose to research the relationship that existed between the apostle Paul and two other leaders of the early church, Peter and James. The purpose of this inquiry is to shed light on the question of how much continuity there was between Paul’s proclamation of Jesus and Peter’s and James’ proclamations of Jesus. I will approach this study from historical-critical, biblical-theological, sociological, and rhetorical points of view.
The modern origins of this question reach back into the early nineteenth century to F.C. Baur. Baur’s utilization of Hegelian dialectic to distinguish between the early Pauline and Petrine “schools” of Christianity set the stage for later opposing views of Jesus and Paul.[1] If Paul truly was the product of an Hellenistic Christianity that was at odds with the Jewish Christian contingent headed by Peter and the other disciples and centered in Jerusalem, then it stands to reason that Paul’s view of Jesus would differ from that of his Jewish-Christian opponents. It is very likely that a Jewish-Christian group based in Jerusalem and headed by Peter would have been near to the early Jesus-tradition. Their conception of Jesus most likely would have been historically accurate. The Hellenistic-Christian faction, however, as many scholars claim, would have held views of Jesus that were less historically accurate than their counterparts in Jerusalem. Eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry, who could give reliable testimony, led the Jewish-Christians but the Hellenistic-Christians did not have such a luxury; nor were they in a position to acquire it, since the two groups were bickering amongst themselves rather than working together. Paul’s Christianity, it is claimed, is Hellenistic, originating in the Hellenistic-Christian community. His conception of Jesus, therefore, begins on the wrong foot, and at best is only loosely connected to the Jesus of history.
Baur’s reconstruction of the earliest church, however, is unstable. It proposes an antithetical relationship between Pauline (Hellenistic) and Petrine (Jewish) Christianity based on information Paul recounts in Gal 2.11ff.. Baur believed that the confrontation recorded in Galatians was only typical of the greater conflict between the Hellenistic and Jewish forms of Christianity. Baur’s advocates point to the Pauline epistles and argue that many of Paul’s opponents were none other than the Jewish-Christian contingent, but that is not explicitly supported by any direct evidence from the letters themselves, and it is reliant upon the validity of the original assumption that Gal 2.11ff. evidences the existence of two antithetical schools in earliest Christianity, Pauline and Petrine. If, however, there are alternative ways of understanding Paul’s meaning in Gal 2.11ff. that prove to be better than Baur’s, his hypothesis collapses, and so does all scholarship that grants it a priori.
As it turns out, there are other ways of understanding Gal 2.11ff. that do not require one to postulate a rift between Pauline and Petrine Christianity. For example, W.R. Farmer argues for an essential theological unity in the early church that is traceable from Peter and Paul back to Jesus.[2] Farmer believes that there was no Pauline school vs. Petrine school conflict in the early church.[3] Rather than illustrating such a conflict, the Antioch episode mentioned in Gal 2.11ff. shows that Paul and Peter were in theological agreement prior to their disagreement. Furthermore, their disagreement was not one of doctrine, but of practice. Paul believed Peter to be acting hypocritically; and his rebuke of Peter can only be understood if Paul and Peter shared a theological base upon which Paul could ground his rebuke.[4] The disagreement was over how to implement their common theology.
Farmer’s reconstruction of the relationship between Paul and Peter places a lot of importance on Paul’s two-week visit with Peter written of in Gal 1:17 ff..[5] He believes that at this visit Peter and Paul discussed Jesus, and that Paul recognized Jesus’ Spirit indwelling Peter too. Thus, Peter and Paul shared a fundamental agreement in the faith—an agreement that was reconfirmed fourteen years later at the Jerusalem conference. It was this agreement that formed the basis of Paul’s rebuke of Peter in Antioch. Further, “At its [i.e., the agreement’s] core was the message of all persons being made acceptable to God on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ and not by keeping the law (Gal 2:16). This gospel, although presented christologically in Pauline (and pre-Pauline) form, has continuity with Jesus’ own preaching of God’s gracious acceptance of sinners.”[6] Jesus’ life and ministry, then, were the sources of both Paul’s and Peter’s faiths. “Farmer’s reconstruction of the Antioch confrontation differs from many others in that he believes that Peter accepted Paul’s rebuke as correct and repented of his ‘hypocrisy’ on the question of open table fellowship…”[7] There is certainly nothing in the immediate context of Gal 2.11ff. that indicates that Peter repented of his hypocrisy. Neither, however, is there any contextual evidence that he did not repent. The fact that Paul speaks favorably of Peter in Gal 1 should give us reason to hesitate before concluding that there was an irreparable divide between a Pauline and a Petrine ‘school.’
But why, in Gal 1.11ff., does Paul assert his independence from the very ones who had first-hand knowledge of the events of Jesus’ ministry? Surely if Paul had truly been interested in what Jesus taught and did he would have sought not independence from those people but dependence upon them. Paul must not have cared the slightest whether his information about Jesus’ life was accurate. Perhaps that is what Gal 1.11ff. means, but “…it is at least as plausible to interpret this of his divine commissioning to preach the gospel to the Gentiles as of the content of the message. In any case, Paul is explicit in Gal 2, 2 about his checking his message by the Jerusalem tradition. Thus, at the very least it must be said that Galatians provides no secure support for the theory that Paul neither knew nor cared about the historical traditions.”[8] In all likelihood, Paul’s assertion of independence in Gal 1.11ff. is a strategy used not to denigrate the authority of those in Jerusalem, but to elevate his own authority in the eyes of his readers. His authority rests on God’s commission and call on Paul’s life, not on the commission or call of any human authority.
Even if one takes the position that Paul’s opponents were members of the Petrine school of Christianity, Gal 1.11ff. still need not indicate a reluctance on Paul’s part to concern himself with the events and teachings of the earthly Jesus. Even in that case, Gal 1.11ff. may be interpreted not as proving disinterest in Jesus, but as providing distance between himself and his ‘enemies’ in the Jerusalem church.[9] That is, Paul would not want to rest his commission on the leaders of the very party he opposed. But again, there is no unequivocal evidence for the hypothesis of Pauline and Petrine schools within early Christianity. Texts such as 2 Corinthians, in which Paul is concerned to demonstrate his own authority over and against that of the ‘super-apostles’, may provide such evidence, but they must be considered in light of texts such as 1 Corinthians 15, in which Paul places Peter at the head of the list of witnesses to the resurrection and himself at the undistinguished end of the list.
Baur’s theory has recently been resuscitated, and nuanced, by Michael Goulder. Goulder concisely summarizes his position in these words:
From as far back as we can trace it (to the 40s) there never was a single, united church. There were (in fact from the 30s) two missions: one run from Jerusalem, with Peter and the sons of Zebedee in charge, and later James, Jesus’ brother, and other members of his family; the other run by Paul, from various centres. The two missions were agreed about the supreme significance of Jesus, but they disagreed about almost everything else—the validity of the Bible, whether the kingdom of God had arrived or not, sex, money, work, tongues, visions, healings, Jesus’ divinity, and the resurrection of the dead, for example.[10]
John Painter has modified Goulder’s vision of the two missions in his book on James.[11] Painter agrees that there were two missions, but his reconstruction of the situation admits a very fractured two missions in which each mission was composed of three distinct factions. These six factions form a continuum from ultra-conservative Jewish-Christians to completely Hellenized Gentile-Christians. In some cases the factions were supportive of each other, and in other cases their relationships were nothing short of inimical. Peter, James and Paul each led factions, with James being the more conservative, Paul the more liberal, and Peter only somewhat more liberal than James.[12] Painter thus attributes a greater role to James than Baur did:
For F. C. Baur, Peter was the leading figure in the circumcision party, the outstanding opponent of Paul. Peter confronted Paul in Antioch, and his party caused trouble at Corinth. He [i.e., Baur] failed to recognize the dominating influence of James behind Peter in his conflict with Paul.[13]
For our purposes, the significance of Painter’s reconstruction lies in the fact that he attributes so a large role to James. The issue is not simply one of Peter versus Paul.
Yet historical reconstructions of the early church that presuppose a fractured Christian community go beyond what is actually mentioned in the earliest documents themselves. Acts mentions only one community, and Paul mentions only one (Gal 1:17-20; 2:1 ff.)—that in Jerusalem.[14] The N.T. speaks to a unity in the early church. Documentary evidence to the contrary appears to be non-existent, unless one reads such a condition into the N.T. writings, but Baur’s understanding of Gal 2.11ff. must be a precondition of such inferences. Farmer is quite right to call attention to the nature of the dispute between Paul and Peter upon which Baur’s hypothesis has been based: it was a matter of practice, not of theology; that Paul’s theology was harmonious with Peter’s seems quite clear from Paul’s opinion of Peter expressed in Gal 1.8 and the opinions of the Jerusalem church’s leaders cited in Gal 1.9.
But the twentieth century saw developments beyond Baur. Rudolf Bultmann claimed the Hellenistic origins of Paul’s gospel on quite different grounds than did Baur. For Bultmann found in Paul’s writings an Hellenistic mindset, a syncretism of original Christian with Hellenistic pagan beliefs. Bultmann claimed that Paul ushered in an Hellenistic brand of Christianity.
Recent research, however, gives grounds for challenging the premise that labels Paul as an Hellenistic Jew, separating him from the Jerusalem church and, hence, from Jesus. E.P. Sanders provides a single example. Though Sanders claimed that Paul differed significantly on several points from Palestinian Judaism, he also said, “...it seems that there is not any one simple source for Paul’s view of the human dilemma,” [15] and, “...it does appear that it may be just as difficult to peg him as a Hellenistic Jew... as it is to characterize him as a Rabbinic Jew...”[16] H.L. Ellison, who admits that Paul was in conflict with certain Palestinian Jewish Christians, believes that this conflict was over Paul’s interpretation of the Torah and the issue of Gentiles in the church, not over Paul’s understanding of the person and work of Jesus;[17] though it must certainly be true that Paul’s theology was the wellspring of his practice. Ellison also says that the differences between Palestinian Judaism and Diaspora Judaism “have been steadily eroded by modern research.”[18] “Also the works of W. D. Davies have familiarized us with the extent to which much in Paul’s writings that was confidently regarded as Hellenistic is actually to be linked with Palestinian rabbinic thought and speculation.”[19] Furthermore, the shift in Johannine studies that has shown John to have affinities with Palestinian Judaism demonstrates that Paul’s Christology cannot be assumed to be Hellenistic, regardless of whether or not one fully imbibes the ‘new perspective’ on John. We must admit that much of what Bultmann considered to be Hellenistic influence on Paul’s thought may actually have been quite Jewish.
Of course, we would not be justified in claiming from this that Paul’s teaching cannot be Hellenistic syncretism. But at the very least, we are entitled to claim that Paul’s teaching is based on traditions that are early and Jewish-Christian in origin. Paul had access to the Jesus-tradition at a time when the ink was not yet dry, so to speak, when people could still clearly remember the timbre of Jesus’ voice. What Paul said was not altogether unlike the Jewish thought of his day.
Thus, because of the claims made by Baur and those who have accepted the results of his research, there is ample reason to explore the relationship that existed between Paul and Peter and James from the historical point of view. And because of the claims made by Bultmann and those who have accepted the results of his research, there is ample reason to explore that relationship from the theological point of view.
The modern discussion of the relationship between Paul and Peter and James, initiated by Baur, piqued in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since that time there have been relatively few detailed studies of the question. Yet scholarship has continued to develop new methods of New Testament interpretation. I propose to revisit the question in light of new rhetorical and sociological approaches to the New Testament, and taking into consideration the recent studies that have been done (for example, by Goulder and Painter). I intend to reexamine the relevant textual evidence in the New Testament documents (especially in Acts, Galatians, and 1 and 2 Corinthians) as well as in other relevant, early Christian literature, and to evaluate the interpretations given by different scholars, for the purpose of reassessing the historical and theological relationship that existed between Paul and Peter and James and reflecting on the implications of that relationship on the question of what Paul knew and cared about the historical Jesus. In this I will be contesting Goulder’s opinion that his is the “only... [explanation of the tensions in the New Testament] for which there is direct support in the New Testament text.”[20]
If it is at all possible, I would very much like to work with Dr. David Wenham (of Wycliffe Hall) on this project. Dr. Wenham and I have had preliminary discussions regarding my proposed research, and he has offered valuable suggestions for improving and refining this proposal.
[1] See A.
Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters: A Critical History (New York:
Schocken Books, 1964; reprint), p. 12ff. ET of A. Schweitzer, Geschichte der
Paulinischen Forschung von der Reformation bis auf die Gegenwart (Tübingen:
Mohr, 1911).
[2] Wendell Willis, “An Irenic View of Christian Origins: Theological Continuity from Jesus to Paul in W.R. Farmer’s Writings,” in Jesus, the Gospels, and the Church: Essays in Honor of William R. Farmer, ed. E.P. Sanders (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1987), 268.
[3] See Willis, “Irenic View,” 268-271.
[4] See Willis, “Irenic View,” 270.
[5] For what follows, see Willis, “Irenic View,” 272-273.
[6] Willis, “Irenic View,” 273.
[7] Willis, “Irenic View,” 271; see also 275-277.
[8] Charles F. D. Moule, “Jesus in New Testament Kerygma,” in Verborum Veritas: Festschrift für Gustav Stählin zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. by Otto Bücher and Klaus Haacker (Wuppertal: Theologischer Verlag Rolf Brockhaus, 1970), 18.
[9] Alexander J. M. Wedderburn makes a similar point in “Paul and Jesus: The Problem of Continuity,” in Scottish Journal of Theology, 38 no 2 (1985): 189, when he suggests that Paul may have felt that to refrain from making direct reference to the Jesus tradition would strengthen his position as an authority independent of the leaders of the Jerusalem church—Gal and 2 Cor 10-13 (see p. 191).
[10] Michael Goulder, St. Paul versus St. Peter: A Tale of Two Missions (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), ix.
[11] John Painter, Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999).
[12] See Painter, Just James, 74-78.
[13] Painter, Just James, 83.
[14] Cf. Eduard Schweizer, “The Testimony to Jesus in the Early Christian Community,” in Horizons in Biblical Theology, 7 no 1 (Je 1985): 88.
[15] E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (London: SCM Press, 1977), 555.
[16] Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 555.
[17] H.L. Ellison, “The Founder of Christianity—Jesus or Paul?” in The Messiahship of Jesus: What Jews and Jewish Christians Say, comp. Arthur W. Kac (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), 126. Cf. Farmer above.
[18] Ellison, “Founder,” 126.
[19] Ellison, “Founder,” 126.
[20] Goulder, 6.