Q U I C K S C A N

Zealous Pharisee
Confronting the Apostle Peter

I was baptized Daniel Paul. As a grade-school kid, I liked learning about my two namesakes. I admired their courage in standing for what was right. For example, I loved the way Daniel interpreted the king’s dreams and how he argued at the trial of Susanna (Chapters Two and 13).

Yet Paul’s ability to endure every imaginable adversity impressed me even more. Paul was stoned, whipped, shipwrecked and martyred. He had guts!

When I was a kid, the stories in Acts of the Apostles impressed me. Paul (see 15:36—28:31) always seemed larger than life. I could imagine myself in the stories involving him.

Zealous Pharisee

Then called Saul, Paul first appears in Acts 7:58 as a guilty bystander when Stephen was stoned for his faith in Jesus. In Chapter Eight we learn how persecution led many Christians to flee Jerusalem and preach the gospel in Judea and Samaria. The next chapter portrays Paul as a passionate Pharisee going to Damascus to bring Jesus’ followers back to Jerusalem to stand trial for blasphemy.

Outside Damascus, God’s bright light causes Paul to fall to the ground. Then he alone hears a voice call out, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” After the voice says, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” a blinded Paul is led into the city. Three days later, Ananias instructs Paul and baptizes him. Paul then spends a few days with the Christians and preaches in the city’s synagogues, proclaiming that Jesus is the Son of God. I was impressed.

Although Acts 9:23-30 says that Paul had early contact with the Jerusalem Church, when I was doing research as a college seminarian I noticed that this part of the narrative does not agree with Paul’s own account (see Galatians 1:11-24).

His claim, of course, is that he received his apostleship directly from God. In other words, he asserts equality with disciples who had been with Jesus from the beginning of his mission.

Paul writes, “I did not immediately consult flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me.” Paul states (Galatians 1:18-19) that he only went up to Jerusalem three years later, spending 15 days with Peter, not seeing any of the other apostles except “James, the brother of the Lord.”

Confronting the Apostle Peter

Chapter Two of Galatians includes Paul’s brief account of his next meeting with Peter 14 years later in Jerusalem. Paul explains how he presented the gospel to the gentiles, rejecting the demands of some Jewish Christians that every gentile man who converted had to be circumcised and all Christians must observe the Jewish dietary law.

“When Kephas [Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he clearly was wrong,” says Paul. What was Peter doing that so disturbed Paul? Basically, Paul felt Peter was inconsistent about whether or not gentile Christians had to observe the Law of Moses. He would eat with gentiles when no Jews were around, but when they were, he would not eat with gentiles. Peter gave mixed signals about the importance of the law.

Paul’s main concern in his Letter to the Galatians was to insist that salvation comes through Christ, not through observance of the Law of Moses (Galatians 2:21). Paul, in taking such a stand, shaped the growth of Christianity.

I began to see Paul as something of a rebel with a special mission. As a college student in the late 1960s, I learned to question everything, so once again I was impressed with my namesake, Paul. I imagined that Paul, were he on earth then, would have sided with people trying to transform a country steeped in racism, militarism, sexism and injustice.

Because of faith, Paul spoke the truth with courage. I am still learning how to do that. So, too, is the Church.

Father Dan Kroger, O.F.M., is chief executive officer of St. Anthony Messenger Press. He holds a Ph.D. in ethics from the University of Notre Dame.