Paul Opposes Peter at Antioch

The account is Paul’s own, written to the churches of Galatia (Galatians 1:1–2). In the text that the New Revised Standard Version translates he calls the other apostle Cephas, the name that John’s Gospel explains as Peter (John 1:42); the World English Bible, which is quoted here, prints “Peter” in verses 11 and 14. When Cephas came to Antioch, Paul says, he ate with the Gentile believers. Then “some people came from James”, and he drew back and kept apart, “fearing those who were of the circumcision”. The other Jewish believers joined him in what Paul calls hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was carried along (Galatians 2:11–13). James is the Lord’s brother, whom Paul has just named among the leaders in Jerusalem (Galatians 1:19) (Galatians 2:9).

Paul says that he opposed Cephas “to his face” and spoke to him in front of them all: “If you, being a Jew, live as the Gentiles do, and not as the Jews do, why do you compel the Gentiles to live as the Jews do?” (Galatians 2:11, 14). His words pass, with no marked break, into the argument of the whole letter: no one is justified by works of the law, and “if righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nothing” (Galatians 2:15–21). He does not say how Cephas answered or how the matter ended.

Acts, in its account of these years at Antioch, mentions no visit of Peter (Acts 14:26–15:2) (Acts 15:30–40). It says that Peter had earlier been criticised in Jerusalem for eating with uncircumcised men (Acts 11:2–3). Of Paul and Barnabas at Antioch it reports a sharp quarrel over whether to take John Mark on their next journey, after which Barnabas sailed for Cyprus and Paul set out with Silas (Acts 15:36–40).

Later readers explained the passage in different ways. Clement of Alexandria, as Eusebius reports him, held that this Cephas was not the apostle but one of the seventy disciples who bore the same name (Eusebius, Church History 1.12.2). Jerome wrote in his commentary on Galatians, as he quotes it in his later reply to Augustine, that Peter did not sin and that Paul did not presume to rebuke one greater than himself: the rebuke was a matter of policy, not a real disagreement. He said that he was following Origen and other Greek commentators, who had used this reading to answer Porphyry, a critic who turned the passage against the apostles (Augustine, Letter 75.4–11 (from Jerome)).

Augustine of Hippo objected in two letters to Jerome, which the translation used here dates to 394 or 395 and to 397. If Paul wrote that Peter was at fault when he was not, he argued, a falsehood stands in Scripture and its authority is shaken throughout; Peter “was truly corrected” and Paul told the truth (Augustine, Letter 28.3–5) (Augustine, Letter 40.3–7). Jerome defended himself in 404, in the letter numbered 112 among his own and 75 among Augustine’s (Augustine, Letter 75.4–11 (from Jerome)). Augustine replied the next year, held to his reading, and named Cyprian and Ambrose as authorities on his side (Augustine, Letter 82.4–8, 24).