The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-05-25
The Tendency-Theory of
Baur
AND ITS MODIFICATION BY HIS
SUCCESSORS.
BY JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.

II.
That the Book of Acts was written
after the bitterness of the conflict was
over, "as draft of proposition of
peace, presented to the Judaizers of
the Pauline party" is one of the
strangest of all suggestions. Let us
try to imagine such a transaction.
The Pauline party is supposed to say
to the other: "We will agree to falsify
history and to represent the hostile
Apostles as in full agreement. We
know, and the churches know, that
Peter and James refused to ac-
knowledge uncircumcised Gentiles as
Christians. But we will invent a
story about Peters having had a
vision, and in consequence of this, of
his baptizing a Roman centurion and
his family. We will also imagine
council at Jerusalem which shall be
assumed to decide that the Gentiles
need not be circumcised. Allow this,
and we will in turn concede to you
as history the statement that Paul
conformed to Jewish customs, and
deferred to the opinions of the jew
ish Apostles. We will then both
agree to accept this compromise as
the history of the early church, and
wholly to ignore henceforth the true
story" So said, so done. Not
whisper transpired of this ingenious
transaction. Every church from
Egypt to Gaul accepted this inven-
ton as the true historic account.
The great scholars in the church at
the end of the second century, -Iren-
aus, Origen and Tertullian, never
suspected the fabrication; and it was
reserved for the ingenuity of Ger
man scholars in the nineteenth CEN
fury, to discover the real history of
this astonishing compromise.
Such a theory as this could only
have occurred to men who have been
SO devoted to the critical study of
theology as to have lost the historic
Imagination which puts itself into
the spirit of period. Still there is
basis of truth in all this. We can
easily see a difference between the
historic value of the first and last
parts of the Book of Acts.
Critics of all schools agree that the
author of the third Gospel and that
of the Book of Acts is the same per-
son. The most ancient tradition in
the church ascribes both works to
Luke, and the recent objections to
this tradition are not of much weight.
If the object of the Book of Acts had
been to modify the belief of the
church, it would not have been as
cribed to such an obscure author,
but to Silas, Timothy, Titus, or to
Paul himself. If the Eve" passages
Chose in which the writer associates
himself with Paul. were not writ
ten by an actual companion, and
were contrived by classifying and
later author, to give contempora-
neous aspect to the narrative, why
was not the name of the travelling
companion insertedi If it was sub
sequsnt forgery of Pauline Christi
anity, in the second century, intended
to reconcile itself with the Jewish
Christianity, why did it not insert
an account of meeting of Peter and
Paul in Rome and of their common
martyrdom therei Why did it leave
off so abruptly in an unfinished statei
And why close this effort to reconcile
the Jews to Paul with an account of
his denouncing the Jews as incor-
rigible9
All such difficulties which beset
the tendency hypothesis are removed,
if we suppose antiquity right in at
tributing the Acts to Luke, referred
to as "the beloved physician" He
was probably a Greek, and as his
language shows, not we'll acquainted
with Jewish customs. He was fol-
lower and friend of Paul, probably
in Asia Minor, and crossing with
Paul from Troas to Europe. For
the "we" begins at this point-and
continues with Interruptions to the
end. 1t shows the writer to have
been Paul's companion in Greece,
Asia Minor, at Jerusalem, and on his
voyage to Rome.
This view accounts for the more
unhistorical character of the first part
of the book, which refers to that peri