2. The Missionary

The governor of Damascus, urged by the offended Jews, issued an order for Paul’s arrest; Paul’s new friends lowered him in a basket over the city walls. For three years, he tells us, he preached Christ in the hamlets of Arabia. Returning to Jerusalem, he won the forgiveness and friendship of Peter, and lived with him for a while. Most of the apostles distrusted him, but Barnabas, himself a recent convert, gave him a cordial hand, and persuaded the Jerusalem church to commission its persecutor as a bearer of the Good News that the Messiah had come and would soon establish the Kingdom. The Greek-speaking Jews to whom he brought the Gospel tried to kill him, and the apostles, perhaps fearing that his ardor would endanger them all, sent him to Tarsus.

For eight years he was lost to history in his native city; and perhaps again he felt the influence of the mystic salvation theology popular among the Greeks. Then Barnabas came and asked his aid in ministering to the church at Antioch. Working together (43-44?), they made so many converts that Antioch soon led all other cities in the number of its Christians. There for the first time the “Believers,” “Disciples,” “Brethren,” or “Saints,” as they had called themselves, received from the pagans, perhaps in scorn, the nameChristianoi—followers of the Messiah or Anointed One. There too, for the first time, gentiles (i.e., people of the gentes or nations) were won to the new faith. Most of these were “God-fearers,” predominantly women, who had already accepted the monotheism, and in some part the ritual, of the Jews.

The Antioch converts were not as poor as those in Jerusalem; a considerable minority belonged to the merchant class. With the enthusiasm of a youthful and growing movement, they raised a fund to spread the Gospel. The elders of the church “laid their hands upon” Barnabas and Paul, and sent them out on what history, unduly belittling Barnabas, calls the “first missionary journey of Saint Paul” (45-47?). They sailed to Cyprus, and met with encouraging success among the many Jews of that island. From Paphos they took ship to Perga in Pamphylia, and traveled over dangerous mountain roads to Antioch in Pisidia. The synagogue gave them a courteous hearing; but when they began to preach to gentiles as well, the orthodox Jews persuaded the municipal officers to banish the missionaries. Similar difficulties developed at Iconium; and at Lystra Paul was stoned, dragged out of the town, and left for dead. Still “full of the joy of the Holy Spirit,” Paul and Barnabas carried the Gospel to Derbe. Then they returned by the same route to Perga, and sailed to Syrian Antioch. There they found themselves faced by the most crucial problem in the history of Christianity.

For some leading disciples of Jerusalem, hearing that the two preachers were accepting gentile converts without requiring circumcision, had come to Antioch “to teach the brethren that unless they were circumcized as Moses prescribed, they could not be saved.”³³ To the Jew circumcision was not so much a ritual of health as a holy symbol of his people’s ancient covenant with God; and the Christian Jew was appalled at the thought of breaking that covenant. For their part Paul and Barnabas realized that if these emissaries had their way, Christianity would never be accepted by any significant number of gentiles; it would remain “a Jewish heresy” (as Heine was to call it), and would fade out in a century. They went down to Jerusalem (50?) and fought the matter out with the apostles, nearly all of whom were still faithful worshipers in the Temple. James was reluctant to consent; Peter defended the two missionaries; finally it was agreed that pagan proselytes should be required only to abstain from immorality and from the eating of sacrificial or strangled animals.³⁴ Apparently Paul eased the way by promising financial support for the impoverished community at Jerusalem from the swelling funds of the Antioch church.³⁵

The issue, however, was too vital to be so easily laid. A second group of orthodox Jewish Christians came from Jerusalem to Antioch, found Peter eating with gentiles, and persuaded him to separate himself, with the converted Jews, from the uncircumcized proselytes. We do not know Peter’s side of this episode; Paul tells us that “he withstood Peter to his face” at Antioch,³⁶ and accused him of hypocrisy; perhaps Peter had merely wished, like Paul, to be “all things to all men.”

Probably in the year 50 Paul left on his second missionary journey. He had quarreled with Barnabas, who now disappeared from history in his native Cyprus. Revisiting his churches in Asia Minor, Paul attached to himself at Lystra a young disciple named Timothy, whom he came to love with a profound affection that had long been starved for an object. Together they went through Phrygia and Galatia as far north as Alexandria Troas. Here Paul made the acquaintance of Luke, an uncircumcized proselyte to Judaism, a man of good mind and heart, probably the author of the Third Gospel and the Book of Acts—both designed to soften the conflicts that from the beginning marked the history of Christianity. From Troas Paul, Timothy, and another aide, Silas, sailed to Macedonia, for the first time touching European soil. At Philippi, where Antony had conquered Brutus, Paul and Silas were arrested as disturbers of the peace, were scourged and jailed, but were freed on the discovery that they were Roman citizens. Passing on to Thessalonica, Paul went to the synagogue, and for three Sabbaths preached to the Jews. A few were convinced, and organized a church; others roused the town against Paul on the ground that he was proclaiming a new king; and his friends had to spirit him away to Beraea during the night. There “the Jews received the message with great eagerness”; but the Thessalonians came to denounce Paul as an enemy of Judaism, and he took ship for Athens (51?), discouraged and alone.

Here, in the heart of pagan religion, science, and philosophy, he found himself quite friendless. There were few Jews to give him a hearing; he had to take his stand in the market place, like any modern haranguer of city crowds, and compete with a dozen rivals for passing ears. Some listeners argued with him; some laughed at him, and asked, “What is this ragpicker trying to make out?”³⁷ Several were interested, and led him up to the Areopagus, or Hill of Mars, for a quieter hearing. He told them how he had noted, in Athens, an altar inscribed “To an Unknown God”; this dedication, which probably expressed the desire of the donors to thank, appease, or enlist the aid of a god of whose name they were not certain, Paul interpreted as a confession of ignorance concerning the nature of God. He proceeded with high eloquence:

Whom therefore ye worship though ye know him not, him I declare unto you. God, who made the world and all things therein . . . dwells not in temples made with hands. ... It is he that giveth life and breath unto all. . . . And he made of one blood all the nations of mankind . . . that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him, though he be not far from us; for in him we live and move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said.^III . . . Forasmuch, then, as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by the art and device of man. Howbeit, those past times of ignorance God hath overlooked; but now he commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day wherein he will judge the world ... by that Man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all, in that he hath raised him from the dead.³⁸

It was a brave effort to reconcile Christianity with Greek philosophy.^IV Nevertheless, it impressed only a few; the Athenians had heard too many ideas to have much enthusiasm for any. Paul left the city in disappointment and went to Corinth, where commerce had gathered a substantial community of Jews. He stayed there eighteen months (51-52?), earning his living as a tentmaker, and preaching every Sabbath in the synagogue. The leader of the synagogue was converted, and so many others that the alarmed Jews indicted Paul before the Roman governor, Gallio, on the charge of “trying to induce people to worship God in ways that are against the law.” Gallio replied: “As it is only a question of words and titles and your own law, you must look after it yourselves; I will not decide such matters”; and he dismissed them from the court. The two parties fell to blows, “but Gallio paid no attention.”³⁹ Paul offered his gospel to the gentiles of Corinth, and made many converts among them. Christianity may have seemed to them an acceptable variation of the mystery faiths that had so often told them of resurrected saviors; possibly in accepting it they assimilated it to these beliefs, and influenced Paul to interpret Christianity in terms familiar to the Hellenistic mind.

From Corinth Paul went to Jerusalem (53?) to “salute the church.” Soon, however, he was off on his third missionary journey, visiting the Christian communities in Antioch and Asia Minor, and reinvigorating them with his fervor and confidence. At Ephesus he spent two years, and “did such extraordinary wonders” that many looked upon him as a miracle-worker, and sought to cure ailments by applying to the sick the linens Paul had used. The manufacturers of the images that pagan worshipers dedicated in the Temple of Artemis found their trade slackening; perhaps Paul had repeated here his Athenian indictment of image worship, or idolatry. One Demetrius, who made silver models of the great shrine for pious pilgrims, organized a protest against Paul and the new faith, and led to the city theater a crowd of Greeks whose catchword, repeated for two hours, was “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” A local official dissolved the gathering, but Paul thought it the better part of valor to leave for Macedonia.

He spent some happy months with the little congregations he had founded in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Beraea. Hearing that dissension and immorality were disordering the church at Corinth, he not only reprimanded it in several epistles, but went down to it in person (56?) to face his detractors. They had accused him of profiting materially from his preaching, laughed at his visions, and renewed the demand that all Christians should obey the Jewish Law. Paul reminded the turbulent community that he had everywhere earned his living with the work of his hands; and as to material profit, what had he not suffered from his missions?—eight floggings, one stoning, three shipwrecks, and a thousand dangers from robbers, patriots, and streams.⁴⁰ Amid this turmoil word was brought him that the “party of the circumcision,” apparently violating the Jerusalem agreement, had gone into Galatia and demanded of all converts the full acceptance of the Jewish Law. He wrote to the Galatians a wrathful epistle in which he broke completely with the Judaizing Christians, and declared that men were to be saved not by adherence to the Mosaic Law, but by an active faith in Christ as the redeeming Son of God. Then, not knowing what sharper tribulations awaited him there, he left for Jerusalem, eager to defend himself before the Apostles, and wishing to celebrate in the Holy City the ancient feast of Pentecost. From Jerusalem, he hoped, he might go to Rome, even to Spain, and never rest till every province of the Empire had heard the news and promise of the risen Christ.