F. W. Farrar On Peter And The Early Church

F. W. Farrar, The Early Days of Christianity

(New York: Funk & Wagnalls; 1883), pp. 52, 53.

It is necessary, and even desirable, that there should in all ages be some whose mission it is to develop one special aspect of truth, and to stamp the whole of their religious system with the impress of their own powerful individuality.

Such, respectively, were St. Paul and St. James. Even in their lifetime there were some who exaggerated and perverted the special truths which it was their work to teach.

After their death there were Marcionites and Antinomians who perverted the doctrines of St. Paul, and there were Ebionites and Nazarenes who falsely claimed the authority of St. James.

But happily there are Christians in all ages who, while they only acknowledge a heavenly master, are anxious to accept truth by whomsoever it is presented to them, yet at the same time to strip it of all mere party peculiarities.

Such was St. Peter. He can see the side of truth which either of his great contemporaries represents.

He is pre-eminently the Apostle of Catholicity [universality, ed].

He had shown in his conduct at Caesarea that his convictions leaned to the side of the Apostle of the Gentiles; and at Antioch that he could not wholly emancipate himself from the habits induced by lifelong training in the principles of St. James. He was neither able nor willing wholly to shake off the spell of personal ascendency exercised over him alike by the great world-missionary and by the unbending Bishop of Jerusalem.

In The Epistles of St. Peter we are able to trace the thoughts and expressions of both these great leaders. He dwells with all the energy of St. James on the glory of practical virtue, and with much of the fervour of St. Paul on the distinctively Christian motives and sanctions. But it is no part of his object to follow St. Paul in the logical development and formulation of Christian theology, nor yet to dwell with the exclusiveness of St. James on Christian practice. Even when using language which had been seized upon as the shibboleth of partisans, he strips it of all partisan significance. He was out of sympathy with the spirit which leads to disunion and factiousness by the exclusive maintenance of antagonistic formulae.

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