Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Herman N. Ridderbos vs. Weber et al. who claim Galatians Predates Acts 15 and the Council of Jerusalem

  

Weber is convinced that the journey of Paul reported in Gal. 2 precedes the apostolic conference, and that therefore the date of the letter must also be fixed at a time before that conference. He appeals to the supposed incongruency between Gal. 2 and Acts 15 [and] does so for the following reasons, among others:

 

(a) If the apostolic conference is assumed to precede the writing o the letter to the Galatians, one must ask himself how it can be that a teaching so solemnly and definitively repudiated at Jerusalem can almost immediately be preached again in Galatia. Answer: Heresy has never been abruptly and suddenly subjugated by the pronouncements of the church. In his later letters, too, e.g., in the one to the Philippians, Paul has to take up the cudgels against Judaism.

 

(b) Why does not Paul appeal simply to the pronouncements of the apostolic conference instead of entering newly upon profound argumentation about the freedom of the Gentiles from the ceremonial law? Answer: He had already communicated these pronouncements to the churches on his second journey (Acts 16:4). Hence, too, his marvelling at the fact that they have no quickly allowed themselves to be brought around to the heresy (Ga. 1:6). That in this letter he does not simply appeal to the utterances of the apostolic conference, but instead resorts to the resource of a new principal apology, that—in view of what he had communicated to them during the visit of Acts 16:4—is to be explained by the nature of the situation. Besides Gal. 2 illuminates the decisions reached at Jerusalem, and can thus serve as a confirmation of what he has already communicated by word of mouth . . .

 

(c) Why does not Paul appeal to the utterances of James and Peter at the apostolic conference (Acts 15), so as to make impossible for all efforts of the heretical teachers to set up a contrast between him and them? Answer: In the presence of the Galatians Paul was not concerned solely to maintain his essential unanimity with Peter and James: he was concerned also to maintain his independence over against those apostles. Hence he is at pains to show that at Jerusalem he did not for a moment betray the position which he had independently taken right from the start, and that he had receive the approval of Peter and James for his stand.

 

(d) How—if this letter that follows the apostolic conference—is the attitude of Peter to be explained, as it is described in Gan. 2:11 ff.? Answer: Peter’s weakness was not that he demanded the observation of the Jewish ceremonies on the part of the Gentiles, but rather that, later, when some had come from James to Antioch, Peter, being a Jew, separated himself from the Gentiles with whom he had at first mingled fraternally, in order himself, personally, to observe the Jewish ceremonies again. This had not been forbidden by the apostolic conference at Jerusalem. It is true that in so doing he was again making a distinction between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians; and thus he was also indirectly forcing the Gentiles, in the event they wanted to sit at the table with their Jewish brethren, to conduct themselves as Jews (Gal. 2:14). For that he was reprimanded by Paul. But that was something quite different from what he had been dealt with at the apostolic conference . . .

 

The main objection to the hypothesis championed by Weber, and others, is however this: the supposition that Acts 15 and Gal. 2 refer to two different journeys runs into serious difficulties. And when one tries to identify the journey of Gal. 2 with that of Acts 11:30, one is confronted with a series of historical difficulties. Weber felt this to be true himself. In a later study he is of the opinion that the journey of Gal. 2 should be identified with a still earlier one, not even named in the Acts. That, of course, takes us even further into the area of hypothesis. For the time being, therefore, we hold to the interpretation which has been powerfully defended against the Tübingen criticism by S. Greijdanus, among others, namely, that there is no insurmountable obstacle to an identification of the journeys of Gal. 2 and Acts 15. There is no need of Weber’s hypothesis, even though various elements of uncertainty remain. (Herman N. Ridderbos, The Epistle of Paul to the Churches of Galatia: The English Text with Introduction, Exposition and Notes [trans. Henry Zylstra; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1953], 32-35)