HKB
of Law and Grace. He had other opponents than the Judaizers, and had to defend his doctrine against perversion by Grecizing mystics as well as against opposition by Pharisaic legalists.
Two generations of research and controversy have greatly advanced the cause of constructive criticism. Hand in hand with a more accurate dating of the literature, secured through more impartial judgment of both the external and internal evidence, there has gone a reconstruction of our conception of the course of events. The tendencies in the early church were not two only, but four; corresponding, perhaps, to those rebuked by Paul at Corinth, which called themselves by the names respectively of Peter, of Paul, of Apollos and of Christ. It seems probable from the bitterness with which in 2nd Cor. x. 7 Paul denounces the man who says, "I am of Christ," that this party-cry was employed in the sense of following the example of Jesus as respects obedience to the Law (for even Paul acknowledged that Christ had been "made a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God"). If so, the Corinthian "Christ-party" may be identified with those "ministers of the circumcision" who denied both the apostleship and the gospel of Paul. At all events those "of Cephas" were relatively harmless. They may be identified with the so-called 'weak' of Romans, for whose scruples on the score of 'pollutions of idols' Paul demands such consideration both at Corinth and at Rome. His own adherents both at Corinth (those 'of Paul') and at Rome (the 'strong') are to follow his example not merely in recognizing that: "No idol is anything in the world," that "there is nothing unclean of itself," and that "all things are lawful." It is to be followed also in recognizing the limitations of this liberty. Limits are imposed among other things by the scruples of others, so that Paul himself becomes "as under the Law" when among Jews, though "as without the Law" among the Gentiles. The "weak" are to be resisted only when the admission of themselves or their claims would lead to "doubtful disputations," or to a rebuilding of walls of separation that had been torn down through faith in Christ. Galatians sounds the battle-cry of endangered liberty. Corinthians (and Romans in still higher degree) shows the magnanimity of the victor.
Whether it be possible to identify those "of Apollos" at Corinth with the beginnings of that Hellenistic perversion of the Pauline gospel into a mystical theosophy which afterwards passed into Gnosticism may be left an open question. At least we have come to see that the conditions of the church's growth were far more complex than Baur imagined. In particular it is necessary to distinguish four different attitudes on the single question of the obligation of the Law. There were (1) Judaizers who insisted on complete submission to the Law as the condition of salvation, for both Jews and Gentiles; (2) imitators of Cephas, who considered believers of Jewish birth to be "under the Law," but asked of Gentiles only such consideration for it as the special conditions seemed to require; (3) Paulinists, who held that neither Jews nor Gentiles are under the law, yet felt that consideration should be shown for the scrupulous when asked not as of right, but as of charity; (4) radicals, who recognized no limits to their freedom save the one new commandment.