The Vatican as a World Power/Chapter 1
THOU ART PETER
The great dome of St. Peter's is filled with light, making plain the words inscribed in gold within the circle: Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram ædificabo ecclesiam meam, et tibi dabo claves regni cœlorum—Thou are Peter the rock, and upon this rock I build My Church, and to thee I give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Far beneath the dome and bathed in its light, the high altar rises; and under it the Fisherman of Galilee lies buried in the earth—the Fisherman to whom, Saint Matthew's Gospel says, those words were spoken.
The nineteenth century cast the shadow of doubt upon the faith of centuries which had prayed and chanted on this spot a good thousand years before Bramante, Michaelangelo and Bernini began to build. Some said that Peter was not buried here, and also that Paul did not rest under the stones of the Basilica on the Ostian Way. Indeed, had either of them ever come to Rome? Nor (it was thought) could any such saying have ever crossed the lips of Jesus.
Science it entitled to every doubt, but it has also the duty of rendering the most scrupulously accurate verdict to which it can possibly arrive. Faith may well be, in its deepest depths, impervious to attack; but knowledge nevertheless buttresses it with testimony. And today the inscription there in the light of the dome and the tomb in the darkness of the earth are given a new significance by the affirmation of science that a genuine Gospel saying is here placed above the the grave of Peter. Here on Vatican Hill, in the soil of a pagan burial ground on which the ancient Petrine Basilica was erected about 350, rests the disciple who, like Paul, died a martyr's death during the reign of Nero (between 64 and 67). Both were legislators of the Christian community, which had taken form long before its establishment in the metropolis.
These facts constitute the firm points of vantage from which we shall glance at the early history of the Papacy, The roots of this most long-lived of trees rise from out of God's earth far into the spaces of the antique world and dig deep into the soil of centuries.
The Roman Empire of Augustus; time stretched in a northerly direction from Spain to the border of Scotland, and from France across THOU ART PETER
Southern Germany and the Balkans to the Black Sea. To the south it extended from Morocco across "Algiers and Tunis to Egypt; and it went eastward across Central Asia, Syria and Palestine to the Tigris and the Euphrates. The political calm which rested on the World Empire was like the quiet of a summer's day, in which all that lives can grow and thrive. Caesar Augustus, it was declared, had brought the answer to every prayer: he was the father of the fatherland, the saviour of the whole human race. Men sang the praises of the Pax Romana, the peace which all earth owed to Rome. This peace had been created through might and wisdom, with the merciless sword and the ploughshare of ordering law. And now all peoples appeared to be free for the task of fashioning their own inward happiness.
Deep yearning was abroad and the hour ripe for satisfaction of that yearning. But there was a melancholy sky over the still waters, and under them stirred the serpents of human passion. The world was noisy with dissatisfaction, and Orient and Occident joined in the search for a redeemer from distress. Just what was this distress? The money then in circulation bore the image of the Greek goddess of plenty, symbolized by the cornucopia, . or that of Victory with lance poised over the victim of the victor. Nevertheless that money passed through hands that knew no peace. For, no matter how many gods of East and West peopled the heavens, money itself remained the real divinity of those times. During the pauses in the chase after the good things of life, one realized that life itself had escaped. Earnest men looked sadly at the world. They saw that culture had been degraded, because it, like all else, was served only for money's sake; that luxury made more victims than even war did; and that the Pax Romana took more from a people than it gave. By Her- cules! life itself was declining lust was now in its place! The Empire was safe from without, but its citizens were oppressed and threatened from within.
Neither scholars, poets, philosophers, critical fatalists or satirists bear such eloquent testimony to the sodden despair which rested on the late first century of the Empire as does the general resurgence o religions. Thanks to the cosmopolitan spirit, the freedom of inter- course, and the dominance of the common Greek language, the East could carry its gods, its teachings and its initiating rites to the West.
THE FIRST CENTURY 3
Rome was flooded with the professors of alien faiths. Morning and evening the servants of Isis, with shaven heads and white linen tunics, follow the gong of the sistrum to the temple of the goddess for choral song. As soon as spring has melted the ice of the Tiber, they dive three times daily into the stream in order to cleanse their sinful bodies; or they crawl on their knees across the Field of Mars to appease the angry divinity.
So also did the Phrygian processions move toward their Holy of Holies on the Palatine, bearing the silver image of the great mother Cybele, or the pine enshrouded like a corpse which signifies Attis, her dead lover. Thus also did the Syrians, busy merchants in their Roman shops and passionate worshippers in their chapels, participate in the strange cults honouring their god Baal. And so did Romans and alien folk gather at the table of the astrologers outside the Circus Maximus, where fortunes were read from a globe or a planetarium for patrons who did not need to feel ashamed since Caesar, Augustus and Tiberius had come here, too.
What was it that attracted Rome to these cults, mysteries and abstruse teachings of the East? Many abandoned their gods in the same spirit in which the marriage tie may be broken for a mistress' sake. These religious services offered something to the imagination. Out of the wealth of myths and teachings every one could take that which satisfied his own need; and the light of a new life, of a higher reality and of a dawning eternal existence of man mystically renewed, reborn, shone irresistibly through the grey mist of the everyday. Religious forms offered might be manifold, but the mood of the people who sought them out was prevailingly one yearning for the soul's salvation now and after death.
In the dirtiest quarter of the city, beyond the Tiber, the Jews had their Ghetto. Doubtless it had been there a good two hundred years. Pompey, the conqueror of Jerusalem, had brought back hosts of cap- tives, and had freed them after his triumphal return. Roman policy was more favourable to them than was public opinion. While there were no pogroms like that which broke out in Alexandria in 38 A.D., the Jew was a stock figure for ridicule on the comic stage, and the poets from Horace to Juvenal made him the butt of their satire. Nevertheless some looked with different feelings on these bankers,
4 pedlars and palm readers. Their religion was unique. It had nothing in common with an overpopulated Olympus where so mockers said the gods quarrelled about places at the table, and where the price of ambrosian nectar went up by reason of the increasing demand. They served the One Invisible God without the help of temple or images. In their houses of prayer, He was proclaimed the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Author of the true moral law according to which He would judge all men. This was the heart of the Jewish religion: all else, customs and cult, retreated into the background. For the Jews in the diaspora, though they still sent their moneys to Jerusalem for the temple, had loosened many an ancient tie as the result of living in the midst of a world fashioned by Greek influences. They were far more receptive to the cosmopolitan spirit of the great Empire than were their brethren in the Holy City. But what philosophers and wandering rhetoricians taught them could not shake their faith in Jahwe and their hope that His Anointed would come. With the oldest Book of the world in their hands, they confronted the ride of new and old religions with their own mission. By reason of this they felt strong enough, and success justified their confidence* Though the Romans might point out the alien, dark and sinister aspects of this despised people, they could not prevent the crowds from going from the metropolis to the synagogues.
Moreover since the days o Augustus an unobtrusive conquest had been in progress. It was not curiosity merely, it was the seething human heart, which drew more and more Romans and their women to the Jewish houses of prayer. They heard o Moses and the prophets. They grew interested in the Bible, which had long before been translated into Greek and was also read by pagans, Roman families, too, practised fasting, burning oil lamps on the eve of the Sabbath day; and the strict rest which Jewish businesses and banks observed on the Sabbath reminded the whole city each week of this people and its faith. The attraction of Judaism was felt by all classes Unqualified conversion, which would have necessitated circumcision, was probably rare; but the number of "God-fearing* 1 who professed the One God Jahwe and who observed both Sabbath and dietary law* was very large. In these circles there were many forms and gradations of adherence to the teachings and customs of the synagogue; IN ROME 5
the Jewish mission was not narrowminded, and it knew how to wait. Whenever a wandering teacher came, it was for the head of the syna- gogue a duty to invite him to lecture.
Perhaps (we do not know for certain) , such teachers brought, be- tween the years 40 and 50 A.D., tidings of Jesus, in whom they said the Messiah had verily appeared. At all events Jews from Pales- tine did so. It was Jesus Who set the spirits of Judaism at sword's points in the West as in the East. The Roman synagogue became the scene of an inner conflict evoking such unrest that the Emperor Claudius decided to dissolve the whole Jewish colony. When this returned after a short while, the teachings of this "certain Chrestus" had spread still farther, no doubt particularly among the "God-fear- ing.** The Jews were now divided; there were Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. Both elements were united in the flourish- ing community to which Christ's great missionary in the Hellenic East sent his Epistles about the year 58. He wrote that he, Paul, the servant of Jesus Christ, was a chosen apostle elected to preach the joyous message of God . . . that the Gospel is a divine power, a means of salvation for all who receive it, believe in it, whether they be Jews or Gentiles. With these thoughts the Epistle, which has been so fateful a message to all peoples in all centuries, concerned it- self. It was a forerunner of the visit which the author was to make to the Roman community as soon as his projected trip to Spain could be undertaken.
In the spring of the year 62, after a perilous journey he came up to the capital from Sicily. He arrived a prisoner and for a time re- mained one. The Roman authorities had arrested this apostate Jew on the charge of having fomented a revolt. Paul, who appealed to the Emperor as a Roman citizen, had now to defend his position be- fore the Roman courts and the ciders of the Jewish congregation. During all of two years he lived under light arrest, guarded only by one soldier in a rented room, which he knew how to turn into a pulpit for his teaching* While he was winning his case at court, the op- position between Jews and Nazarcncs became clearer. Paul, the persistent, passionate advocate of the New Testament, separated him- self sharply from the Old. Let the Jews persist in their legalism the Gospels shall then be preached to heathen. Here the teaching
6 THOU ART PETER
of the Apostle was identical with that he had preached for two decades past in the cities of Central Asia. For the Kyrios Christos, Who had appeared to him on the way to Damascus so that Saul might be trans- formed into Paul, he pleaded with each breath and on every foot of earth which his restless feet traversed. For Him he had founded congregation after congregation, each one of which was to remain united by a firm, living bond to the mysterious centre, Christ the Master of souls, the Strength of hearts, the Judge of all things human, the Sacred Meaning and Moving Force of history. Paul, who spoke to Roman Jews, Christians and heathens, already drew from the treasury of a highly developed world of thought. This one may call the pattern for a Church filled with the spirit of Jesus, but also with the spirit of Paul, who in following His Master also cast his own tremendous shadow upon the earth.
Besides Paul another spoke to the early Christians of Rome. He had never been a Saul, was a man of totally different stuff. There was in his eye no dark glow of desire for conquest, but the light of that spirit which is of the Kingdom of Heaven because it resembles the heart of a child. To flesh and blood he permitted the first word, but to the higher power which supersedes these he gave trustingly and rev- erently the second and the final word. He is truly soil on which the eight beatitudes can thrive, though stones and weeds may hinder their growth. So at least he seems to us as we read the Gospel nar- ratives. And so, with convincing honesty, he doubtless also set forth the story of his past life for the benefit of the Roman congregations; for what his companion Mark, who had known him since ';arly youth, wrote there is Peter's own story. In Mark's Gospel as well as in the other Gospels Peter grows beyond his stature more than docs any other figure in history. Small natural endowment becomes the lever of a great destiny. Like Paul he too was seized upon by An- other, not by a sudden grasp from out the world of mystery, but through patient guidance amidst events which very gradually ht learned to understand.
His name was Simon, son of Jonas, Him, the fisherman of Ca- pharnum on the Sea of Gennesaret, Jesus enrolled among His very own. The Galilean race to which he belonged had characteristics quite its own it was simple and confiding, fond of liberty and
A FISHER OF MEN 7
fearless of death, sanguine both in the sense of being open and sensi- tive to the strange or the new, and in the sense of being subject to quick changes of mood. This Simon was a genuine Galilean. The Scriptures reveal him as a man of contradictions, but fully in accord with the temperament of his race. The blaze of great decisions burst from the power to love that is hidden in his heart, and in weak moments his timidity changes like the shadow of a swift-moving cloud over the brightness of his courageous will to be loyal unto death. These Galilean farmers and fishermen from beside the lake are like children in good and evil. Loathsome to them is the "yoke/* under which term they understand the law the 613 rules which the Pharisees deemed the will of God. A new Teacher who removed it from them and said that His yoke was sweet, won their hearts for His joyful tidings.
Simon was also among those who followed the Call of Jesus. For this he may have been prepared as a result of a popular movement which John the Baptist had created in the Land of the Jordan. From the beginning he was a member of the inner circle. When Jesus sent him out, together with the rest, He gav^him the name Kepha, which in English means "Rock" and in Greek "Peter." For these men and their times a name was more than a name. It was the sum- mary of a character and a destiny. Peter is, to be sure, not by nature a man of stone unless one thinks that his great, loyal willingness to self-sacrifice justifies the title. This willingness the fisherman, who is henceforth to be a fisher of men, does not lack. He is married, but gives up his trade; his house becomes a haven of the new Gospel. He gets out of his ship and places his feet on the water when the Master bids him come. When he suddenly recognizes Jesus calling from the shore, he casts himself from the skiff in which the others are straining to reach land and swims toward Him. But the "Rock" is also hard stone for the seed of the Sower. Jesus speaks of His Pas- sion that is to be, and Peter is frightened. God forbid! He places the voice of flesh and blood the hope that a mighty Messiah King is to be across the way of the Master whom he has even yet not understood. Jesus speaks sharply to him: "Get thee behind Me, Satan!" On the Mount of Transfiguration he desires three tents for his comfort; and beneath the olive trees of Gethsemane he sleeps
8 THOU ART PETER
through the hours of His Master's agony. In defense he strikes with his sword at a soldier; and in the courtyard of the high priest he de- nies Him thrice before the cock can crow.
These are the definitive pictures of Peter retained in the memory of centuries. He is of great heart but despairs easily; he has energy to strike but no clear knowledge of the target to be struck at; and he is a man of contradictions entrusted with a lofty mission which over- whelms him. Nevertheless, the traits of human nature in its greater and meaner forms are placed against a majestic background by die Bible. This is revealed dark and difficult to fathom in the scene of Gesarea Philippi.
Jesus had awakened the enthusiasm of the people. Herod Anti- pas, ruler of the land, who had caused the Baptist to be beheaded, thought that a second John had come. The High Council in Jeru- salem heard of the happenings in the north and suspected a breach with the Jewish religion. Earthly and spiritual power already began to tie the tragic knot in the life of the Nazarene. Scribes came to the Sea of Gennesaret in order to see for themselves. They realized that there was danger and sundered the people from Him. For this was only a wavering folk willing to obey the keepers of the law. Jesus lost followers, sentiment turned against Him, and He was deserted even by disciples. He went northward toward Phoenicia taking with him a little band that included Peter. They did not know where to lay their heads. Soon they were turned back into the heathen country east of the lake. Jesus taught and Jews also came again. These were no important personages, but just a mass of men; and to them was directed the Sermon on the Mount that tells of God's King- dom, in which everything is totally different from what prevails in the world of humankind. But the Pharisees were again in pursuit* And so He went up the Jordan to the green hill country of the wells which lies at the foot of snow-capped Mount Hermon, Near Caesarea Paneas, the city of Prince Philip, there stood above a high terrace a temple in honour of Augustus. There He began to talk about His Person to His companions. Now His influence had already grown deep enough to permit wrestling with the questions which the Jewish people perhaps even more than the other peoples of the Orient asked whenever in their history men and events
A FISHER OF MEN 9
seemed definite messengers or signs from God. Whence did the inner power of this Jesus come? How was one to understand the mystery of His personal Being? What did His activity mean in the plan of Divine Providence?
Israel, like Babylon, Persia and India, believed that its greatest spirits could return to earth in the guise of epochal men who gave body to, perfected, the "spirit and power" of their precursors. Moses, Elias and Jeremiah were like suns behind the clouds of contemporary time. The universal expectation of One who would come to fulfill the deepest hopes of the people was coupled with such names. This superhuman Bearer of a new era was also termed the "Son of Man" in the apocalyptic writings which prophesied the "future state." His name and person were set down in the Book of Daniel, which was given its final form about 300 B.C. The author of this book beholds in a vision the coming Perfecter of the history of God's chosen people One in whom the Divine Spirit shall dwell. To Him the visions of die seer point, incorporating a daringly new attempt to comprehend the meaning of world history, indeed of history itself. For centuries the Jewish people had derived an incomparable strength and depth of insight into die flood of historic events from these Prophecies of Daniel. Nor was die fountain dry in Jesus' rime.
The great culture of the Greeks took man for its starting point and fashioned him, after the manner of a sculptor's hand, into a harmoni- ous whole which rested in itself or rather only seemed to rest, for when die work was done it was apparent that man as man was not yet the whole, complete Man. Israel never parted company with the idea that everything human rests within a super-human reality and is significant for that reason. It lives out of the hand of its God, Who is holy, just and wise, even though He permits His people to fall into misery and allows the enemy even Jahwe's own enemy to triumph. For all things are but tools in His hand and serve His end. But this end: the day will come when it shall be attained and one of His holy people shall be His instrument, the founder of a Divine do- minion over all nations for all rime. Heavy, stifled eras seek to breathe by taking refuge in a bygone age of gold, or in the liberating visions of hope. From the human point of view, the Apocalyptic Books up until the time of the Baptist also possessed this character.
10 THOU ART PETER
Jesus was familiar with their language. Visibly in connection with the Book of Daniel, but surely also with other writings which fas- cinated those to whom He spoke, He urged the disciples gathered in Gesarea to reach a decision concerning His Person.
"What do men say concerning the Son of Man, Who He is?*' They said: "Some, John the Baptist, others, Elias, and still others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets (Moses) ." Then He asked them: "And ye? Whom do ye hold Me?" Then Simon Peter answered and said: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Then Jesus answered him and said: "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh W blood have not revealed it to thee, but My father Who is in. Heaven. So I say to thee also, Thou art Peter, and upon this ' '*&<$ (Petra) will I build My Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and what thou bindest on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and what thou loosest on earth shall be loosed also in Heaven."
In these words of Jesus the Catholic Church reads the document with which the Papacy was founded. They have played a fateful part in history for those who said yes, or said no, to them. Some have, not without a modicum of reason, questioned their authenticity* Some have looked upon them as a later interpolation with which the spiritual Roma domina wished to insure beyond the grave of Peter its leadership inside Christendom, the primacy of its bishop as the suc- cessor of Peter, and the power and authority of his position. In shore the primacy of the viceroy of Christ on earth is involved. But the reasons advanced are not compelling ones and have been undermined more and more by objective science which, quite unconcerned about whether its findings did ill or good to Rome, sought to learn the truth of the matter. To mention just one point: if Rome had really invented this statement during the second century, the declaration would have had a different form. It would surely have provided for words assuring to the successors of Peter equality with him and a tide to the same powers; for of these things the words of Jesus do not expressly speak. Only with difficulty could it have hit upon a pas- sage as natively Jewish as this passage in Matthew, nearly every word of which leads us back into the deeps of Jewish ideas and their Biblical expression.
CHRIST THE SON 11
The Aramaic spirit of its origin shines through the Greek of the Evangelists in this passage. When Jesus gives the first confessor of His Messianic mission the name "Kepha" and terms him the foundation of His new kingdom, He uses the language of a venerable ancient symbol. The myth of the sacred rock which has the heaven of God above it and the kingdom of death and destruction below it was the common property o the Old World. Gesarea itself must in all probability be looked upon as the illustration of a kindred sym- bolism. Above the grotto of Pan, from which one source of the Jordan arose, stood the holy rock on which the temple of Augustus had been built. The Old Testament and its Jewish interpreters spoke of men upon whom rests the Divine bidding under the symbol of a holy cosmic rock which, as a connection between the heavenly and the earthly worlds, affords approach to God above and shuts off the as- sault of the primitive flood which brings destruction from below. Thus Abraham, the Father of the Faith, was the fundament of the old law. In actuality, however, the, Jews still possessed the holy stone in Jesus' time. It was the slab of rock in the holy of holies in the Temple, on which the Ark of the Covenant had formerly rested. This signified the central point of the world, the nurturing heart of the earth, the place where God's presence was manifest, the gate of Heaven, the seal against the kingdom of death and of evil which struggled up from beneath.
In the symbolistic language of the later Judaistic view of life, Jesus was manifesting His resolve to make a new foundation and was at the same time laying down the position and function of Peter in that foundation. Opposition to the Temple is not expressed but is never- theless obvious. In simple language this is the meaning of what oc- curred: Jesus wishes to build a communion sundered from the old Jewish world. The fundament is to be this Peter, to whom the Father has given faith and the power to confess it not the Peter who when counselled by flesh and blood becomes "Satan" and seeks to put obstacles in the way of Christ and therewith of God's plan. To Peter, believing and illumined from on High, there is promised permanence and victorious resistance to the powers of darkness. To him there are given the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven: that is, the power to open and to close the heavenly gates. He has authority
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to bind and to loose, which means (in the Rabbinical language of the time) the power to reach decisions in the sphere of teaching, permit- ting one view or forbidding another, and the right in the sphere of morals to impose or remove the ban. He proclaims this two-fold authority in God's name, and may therefore be assured of divine co- operation. But that Kingdom of Heaven of which he is the steward possessing the keys is Jesus' community the ecclesia, the Kingdom of Heaven, the newly created order of the Christ. Peter is the cosmic rock which stands athwart the tension of Heaven and Hell. Placed in the drama of a two-fold cosmic contradiction, open to in- fluences from above and below, he is called upon to preserve the order that reigns above against the powers of darkness.
Jesus died. In the eyes of the Jews and the Romans His death was the most ignominious of ends. He hanged Himself from the Cross as a kind of ghastly jest at His own expense. To the faithful, however, this was not the last view they were given of the Lord. They beheld Him again as the Risen One and Peter was the first of the disciples to whom He appeared transfigured. This occurrence cannot be expounded rationalistically. Therefore nothing is easier than to doubt it and to toss aside the narrative of the Gospels. But immediately there arises the question: what can have brought it about ' that in the same city of Jerusalem where this grave which was giving scandal existed a grave everyone could see for himself the fol- lowers of Jesus, an inconsequential minority sandwiched in between the scornful folk and the bitter ruling caste, should have managed to become a first community possessing inflexible faith, and able to main- tain itself so well as to spread its inner strength like fire over the world of Jews, Greeks and Romans? Some have listed a hundred causes in order to dispel the one incredible cause. There are so many of them that the insufficiency of all is proved. When there is question of the Resurrection, the faith of the non-believer and the faith of - the believer will always stand opposed. All we know is the message of the New Testament that the primitive community believed in the Resur- rection of Christ because of the testimony of those who had seen Him after His death. And the chief among them was Peter.
This first witness is entrusted with the leadership of the Messianic congregation which arises in Jerusalem. Its beginnings constitute a
THE CHURCH AND THE SYNAGOGUE 13
complex interplay of energies bearing the germs of the new law. It dwells in the midst of the multiform and pliable religious life of the city without revealing any deep marks of isolation from Judaism. Like other schools and orders of Judaism, these believers in Christ remain faithful to the Temple and the law, merely celebrating their remembrance of the Master at their meetings. There they broke bread and passed the cup of wine as He had taught them to do. But a new mood now took possession of them. Their joyful sense of being God's children and their strong urge to fashion present and future according to the will of Jesus necessarily revealed the new tendencies of their communion. The orthodox Jews looked upon even their Greek-minded fellow Hebrews as opponents. Necessarily, therefore, the breach between them and a community which, like its Founder, held that the Temple would cease to exist could not be healed. Stephen, the nurse of the poor, fell a victim to this antipathy about the year 37 under the stones of the first persecution. His death did not lame, but rather fired the determination of those who believed in Jesus and had hope that He would soon return again. Now the preaching of the gospel was also directed to the heathen. Teaching and baptism in the name of Christ were to be offered all mankind. Paul was not the first to think so and act accordingly, though he was incomparably more successful than any before or after him. On the way to Damascus, Saul, who just a litde while before had watched with satisfaction the slaying of Stephen, had felt with certainty that the Voice which spoke out of the Vision he beheld testified that the Lord lived and influenced the ways of the world. The accounts give us no clarity, but in this experience there was securely founded his in- escapable destiny to preach the glad tidings to the whole world.
This meant putting the heathen on the same level with the children of Israel. The thought was unbearable to Jewish Christians. Even Peter sundered himself only gradually and hesitatingly from the law and the customs of his people's religion. It was only the free, daring example of Paul and his companions which pointed out to him the way to the mission among the uncircumcised. That he was deeply saturated with Jesus, His message and His Resurrection, the Acts of the Apostles show in their accounts of his actions and addresses. After the day of the Holy Spirit's coming he spoke before the High
i 4 THOU ART PETER
Council which had summoned him to give an account of what was held to be a new false teaching. His sermon in the Solomon Hall of the Temple, his activity in the house of the mother of Mark on Mount Zion (the place in which die primitive community met) all this is a picture of one who is the unshakeably loyal confessor of His Master. But he would never have brought about the separa- tion of the young Church from the old Synagogue. Neither would the venerable James, the other pillar of the faith in Jerusalem ever have done so. Must not the heathen become a Jew and submit to circumcision and to the old law before being admitted into the Church? This question had become acute in Antioch, metropolis of Gentile Christianity, and the centre of the Pauline mission. The manner in which Paul freed the new faith from the Jewish way of living had wounded the very souls of the law-abiding who had gone there to see for themselves. Their reports caused a flurry in Jerusalem. To this city Paul had to come in the year 49 or 50 to give an account of his ac- tions before an assembly of the first Apostles. His appearance there denoted recognition of the authority of Peter and James but he knew also how to value his own position. He who gave Peter the power to be an apostle among the Jews, he says, also gave me the power to work among the heathens. The fruit he had already garnered, the gifts and proofs of the Spirit in his person and work, had to be recognized by Peter, James and John as the judgment of God. They gave Paul and Barnabas their right hands in sign of union. In return Paul promised to keep the bond of love toward the primitive community alive by gather- ing moneys for the poor of Jerusalem. Thus union was found in a for- mula of separation Paul was to go to the Gentiles and Peter to the Jews.
But the sources of tension were not therewith removed. The strong Jewish colony in Antioch was the scene of a far-reaching con- troversy among the followers of Jesus. The Syrian metropolis, so rich in luxury and movement, boasting of a night life illuminated bright as day and affording endless scope to Hephaistos and Aphro- dite, exemplified the decadent energies that arc born of a chaotic in- termingling of ideas and peoples. Into this city of tender music and dance, of exciting novels, of spiritual poverty in the midst of Syrian prodigality, where the cypresses whispered more wisely than men
JEW AND GENTILE 15
spoke, Paul had cast the seed of the gospel. Barnabas and others had helped him. But his free attitude toward the heathen followers o the new religion roused the strict Judaists to battle. Circumcision, the Sabbath, regulations concerning cleansing and eating matters which meant nothing to the heathen Christian constituted a bar- rier in the shadow of which the love Jesus had established as the first principle of His kingdom could not well thrive. The fact that Paul had come back from Jerusalem with a decision favouring his point of view did not greatly improve the situation. For when Peter himself, in order to emphasize the brotherly union, appeared in Antioch and sat at table with the uncircumcised heathen Christians, the excited rigor- ists threw themselves upon him and compelled him to discontinue his commerce with the heathen Christians. Kepha, the chief of the disciples, who was nearest of all the twelve to the Master, no longer ate with those in the community of Paul, Could they be real, whole- hearted Christians if Peter frowned upon their kind? Even Barnabas, long since the friend and companion of Paul, went over to Peter's side. Now Paul saw his work threatened, and the idea of a universal Church betrayed to the narrow spirit of the old Synagogue. It would seem that Peter, pliable man of sanguine temperament that he was, had not been able to carry out the policy of unity and peace he so desired in the cross-fire of his sympathies for the brethren of this camp and for the brethren in that. So long as they were all devoted to the Master he was willing to allow to these their heathen associations and to those their Jewish heritage. Plainly he had the will to see the whole, but could not live up to his conviction. His way of hold- ing out a hand to both sides did not create unity but rather confirmed the separation. Paul realized that in this case only a hard appeal to a decision here and now could create union in the future. Either the law or Christ! He alone stood firm in this hour. Before a public assembly he resisted the Kepha face to face. If you, who are a Jew, live in the manner of the heathen and not according to the manner of the Jews, why do you wish to compel the heathens to live like Jews? We do not know what answer, if any, Peter made. Certainly in his heart he knew that the frowning Paul was right. Soon after this meeting he received Cornelius, a captain of the Roman garrison of Cacsarca (Palaestinensis) , into the Church.
X 6 THOU ART PETER
On long journeys through Palestine, Central Asia and Greece, Peter preached the gospel. History shrouds his activities in darkness, only to throw those of Paul into brighter light. In his Epistles this Apostle immortalized himself, and with his person also the history of the young religion. He tells the story of the struggle of a new world to take form in the space of an old world and out of the materials of the old world. The simple image of the tree which must dig into the depths of earth, nurse of all nature, in order that, leaving this earth again as living life, it may win the heights on which in all truth it is just as dependent as on the dust, doubtless applies in essentials to the growing Church. We know how much driftwood it took from the stream of time in order to complete its world of ideas, its mysteries, its customs and its learning; but on the other hand everything that was assimilated was transformed according to the norm and character of the formative energies of the Church, The living tree is something else than the elements from which it lives, and the Church also was a giver in the act of receiving, was not merely the statue but the sculp- tor of the stone it took from the wayside.
Paul's conception of the ccclesia was conveyed by the image o body and soul. It is a simple picture but unfathomable. His time did not exhaust its meaning, nor have subsequent centuries done so* The Church is one living organic whole, needing the earthly and destined to form this according to the form of its own inner Fashioner, Christ Jesus. Those who surrender themselves to Him are the "holy people," the "communion of God." They are to be found here and yonder. The boundaries of states are not the borders of God's king- dom. The "union" of the "third generation'* of Christians cut across all distinctions between Greeks and Jews. It had a different attitude toward yesterday, today and tomorrow than did other religions, for it already lived close to the reality of God. It hovered over what had been and what was to be, even as does His spirit which gathers to- gether the running and tumbling waters of time into an everlasting now. Before God nothing is in motion: all things arc cradled in rest, To lie in Him, to cast the anchor of faith into the eternal waters, means to rise above the perpetual motion of history. But how is this truth to be grasped? How is it to be comprehended? Rejoice!
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It has taken historical shape in Him who brought the kingdom of God to man. To man, mindful of himself, there has now appeared the Man God had in mind. As the Risen One, He has annulled the death verdict resting upon all that happens in time. He has tri- umphed over the world in every sense, for crumbled are now the nar- row confines of nature, of the transitory. Herewith fulfilment has come to all the quests of an unjustified, fearfully expectant world for salvation and illumination.
Henceforth Christ Jesus is the real meaning of history: He is the purpose of the past, the core of present experience, the container in Himself of the future as the norm and judge of all time. But whosoever belongs to Him in faith like unto His faith and in deed that rises out of His charity, which loves for love's sake and not because of the object though to be sure that object is necessary in order to make of a man a lover is in communion with Christ, is embodied in His Body. Of those who are so united and who live and act ac- cordingly, the Communion of Saints, the Divine Congregation of the Church, is formed. From the beginning of time she has been God's image of the true humanity. She has beheld eternally the Giver of her form (for that form He Himself is) with understanding eyes. This vision she will retain through all vicissitudes. She is His Body and she is as everlasting as the Body of the Eternal One who dwells in her.
Such trends of thought dominated early Christianity. By their very nature they drew men's gaze from the passing scene to the Church Herself. For how little is the slime of earth when likened to the Spirit which fashions it, and how precious is that slime through which alone the Spirit can manifest its existence and its essence! There- fore is renunciation of the world a tremendous thing, even as is the act of plunging into the very heart of the world.
The gods of Rome were old; and the new divinities which the city welcomed were merely such as rise when men already confront the deities with an incredulous smile. The added fact that the emperor was paid divine honours was not much more than a political gesture in which respect for the might of Rome, for its unity as the empire which transcended all peoples and gods, found expression. To the attempt to set up a colossal statue of Caligula in the Temple at Jeru-
i8 THOU ART PETER
salcm, the imprint of the spiritual image of Christ upon the hearts of the growing community of Rome seemed a fitting answer. The faithful of the Eternal City baptized others in His Name and cele- brated His Presence in the Last Supper. It was not the largest com- munity of the young Church; perhaps it was not even the fifth in size. But it was of the same spirit as the rest. That its faith, its administration of the charisma, its service to those in need, the forms of its cult, and the sacramental signs of its covenant with the Kyrios Jesus, were in conformity with the practice of the East was guar- anteed by the authority of its leadership. Nothing indicates that it went its own way in any important respect. The disturbance at Antioch had no sequel. Paul, always careful to teach others what he himself had been taught, patiently adhered to the conviction which had brought him to Jerusalem and to Peter before starting the work that would require the whole of his energies. He respected the prior rank of the Apostle who had been nearest to the Master and who after the Crucifixion had gathered the scattered flock of the Shepherd who had been stricken. When now the wave of enthusiasm had been carried westward by him and his companions, they could set the yeast of the gospel into the ferment and chaos of the Eternal City. Those were the days of Nero, After James, the pillar of Jerusalem, had fallen a victim to the Synagogue in the year 62, Jewry and hea- thendom alike proved fatal to the princes of the Apostles. On the igth of July, 64, a fire that lasted six days reduced ten of Rome's fourteen quarters to ashes. Rumour has it that the Emperor himself kindled the blaze. The people, however, insisted that the guilty ones be named and punished. Apparently the Jewish enemies of die Christians possibly also Poppea, Nero's wife and a friend of the JCTTS pointed to the weird new society of die Christian*. The emperor sacrificed them to the mob in droves at the public games in the Vatican gardens. Their living bodies were dragged across the field, maimed, burned and crucified. It may be that the reasons advanced for the persecution lay deeper. These people who "hated the human race" and practiced "a new and abominable religion" had already come into conflict with the law.
It was during these Christian persecutions that the two Aposdes also kid down their lives. The year is uncertain. According to
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tradition, Paul, who had taken the Primacy from Jerusalem and given it to Rome, died by the Roman sword, while Peter was crucified with his head to the ground. Above their graves the deep twilight of the gods set in, and the second Roman Empire dawned.
EMPEROR