Brown/Meier: Antioch and Rome

Over our baptismal font is a stained glass window - Ss. Peter and Paul. Peter holds the keys; Paul the sword of the Spirit.

How did these two, who were so bitterly opposed at Antioch, come to be linked so closely? Why did their names become linked forever in liturgical celebration? How were they reconciled?

In 1983's Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Early Catholic Christianity, John Meier and the late great Raymond Brown collaborated to reconstruct the situation in these great centers of early Christianity during the first three generations of the faith. Meier used the following documents to illuminate the situation at Antioch: Galatians and Acts for the first generation; Matthew for the second generation; Ignatius's letter to Rome for the third generation. In like manner, Brown uses the following for Rome: Romans for the first generation; 1 Peter and Hebrews for the second; 1 Clement for the third.

The main thrust of their argument is this: There were at least four main competing versions of Jewish-Christian mission to Gentiles in the first century. The first insisted on circumcision (the "circumcision party" so vehemently opposed by Paul.) The second did not insist on circumcision, but required a basic adherence to the food laws (the position espoused by James in Acts.) The third, Paul's view, required neither circumcision nor keeping kosher. The fourth not only did not insist on circumcision or keeping kosher but "saw no abiding significance in Jewish cult and feasts" (represented by the "Hellenists" in Acts 6, and the Gospel of John).

The upshot of all of this is that Peter occupied the the "middle" between the competing claims of the circumcizers and the Hellenists, and even between James and Paul. Thus Peter became the "rock" which the most Jewish and Gentile Christians could build upon in Antioch. Paul's letter to Rome tolerated the moderate Jewish observances which were in practice there, notwithstanding his fierce rejection of circumcision in Galatia, and even his opposition to the kosher requirement in Antioch. Brown attributes this to either a maturation in Paul's thought or perhaps simply desire to be accepted in Rome. Paul was received in Rome after his letter, as was Peter, and their martyrdoms there linked them in history and cemented Rome's self-identity as the heir to the apostolic witness after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

This book is short (under 250 pages, including indices) and a quick read that packs a whole lot of information between its covers. I really found it to be almost like reading a really good mystery story. One would expect this sort of work from scholars of such eminence as Brown and Meier. This inspired me to pull Early Christian Fathers from my shelf for the first time since Christianson's class. But I think the best thing it does is it seems to make excellent sense of the various strands of the New Testament. How can Matthew exist side-by-side with John? What about Galatians, with its story of conflict between Peter and Paul, and Acts with its story of harmony, not perfect harmony, but harmony nonetheless?

And it answers my question about how Peter and Paul can be in the same stained-glass window. They were closer than perhaps they realized, nearer the center than either those who saw Christianity as Judaism plus Jesus or those who saw Christianity as Jesus without Judaism. Did they reconcile face-to-face? Perhaps, perhaps not, but they were reconciled by the Christian community nonetheless, by their convergent if not always identical preaching of Christ and most radically by their shared martyrdom for Christ in the capital of the Empire.

Tolle, lege.