Chapter Thirty
Objection based on the inconsistency of S. Paul, in his circumcising of Timothy (Acts xvi. 3).
He remained a little while in deep and solemn thought, and then said: "You seem to me very much like inexperienced captains, who, while still afloat on the voyage that lies before them, look on themselves as afloat on another sea. Even thus are you seeking for other passages to be laid down by us, although you have not completed the vital points in the questions which you still have on hand."1
If you are really filled with boldness about the questions, and the points of difficulty have become clear to you, tell us how it was that Paul said, "Being free, I made myself the slave of all, in order that I might gain all" (1 Cor. ix. 19), and how, although he called circumcision "concision,"2 he himself circumcised a certain Timothy, as we are taught in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts xvi. 3). Oh, the downright stupidity of it all! It is such a stage as this that the scenes in the theatre portray, as a means of raising laughter. Such indeed is the exhibition which jugglers give.3 For how could the man be free who is a slave of all? And how can the man gain all who apes all?4 For if he is without law to those who are without law,5 as he himself says, and he went with the Jews as a Jew and with others in like manner, truly he was the slave of manifold baseness, and a stranger to freedom and an alien from it; truly he is a servant and minister of other people's wrong doings, and a notable zealot for unseemly things, if he spends his time on each occasion in the baseness of those without law, and appropriates their doings to himself.
These things cannot be the teachings of a sound mind, nor the setting forth of reasoning that is free. But the words imply some one who is somewhat crippled in mind,6 and weak in his reasoning. For if he lives with those who are without law, and also in his writings accepts the Jews' religion gladly, having a share in each, he is confused with each, mingling with the falls of those who are base, and subscribing himself as their companion. For he who draws such a line through circumcision as to remove those who wish to fulfil it, and then performs circumcision himself, stands as the weightiest of all accusers of himself when he says: "If I build again those things which I loosed, I establish myself as a transgressor."
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Answer to the objection based on the inconsistency of S. Paul, in his circumcising of Timothy, etc.
When his chosen band had stirred up such a swarm of subjects against Paul, and the multitude of points7 had at length grown quiet again like bees which have rushed to the attack in dense array, we, being as it were pierced all round by the stings of the difficulties raised, stood and fought against each in dire necessity, saying thus:--- [It is not right that you should abuse a great man for behaving towards those young in faith just as a teacher, or a doctor or a general does. For a teacher educates by imitating the stammering voice of his pupil, a doctor cures by placing himself in the patient's circumstances, and a general wins over a barbarian chief to his king by adopting his customs rather than by force of arms. Paul did similar good by being all things to all men. Sometimes he is the teacher, imitating Gentiles in order to educate them to the Gospel, sometimes the doctor, saying: "Who is weak, and I am not weak?" as if inflamed with the trouble8 (2 Cor. xi. 29); sometimes the general, softening men's prejudices by his strategy. So he went out to meet both those without law and the Jews, though he did not himself really feel as they.
Therefore he only adopted circumcision in order to enrich the law with the Gospel by giving way on one point. A good doctor may forbid a certain drug as being harmful, and yet in a bad case he may combine it with other drugs in order to overcome the disease. Just so, Paul rejected circumcision, and yet at a crisis he combined it with the doctrines of the Gospel.9]
Footnotes:
1Before the next sentence the MS. has Ἕλλην in the margin, as a new heading, in order to mark the place where the actual objection begins. For the support thus claimed for the theory that Macarius is merely borrowing from a book, and himself turning it into a discussion, see Introd., p. xvii.
2Phil. iii. 2, i.e. a mere meaningless cutting.
3Gk. παραπάλλιον.
4The MS. gives καθηκεύων, which must be corrupt. The word, oddly enough, has just occurred in the previous answer of Macarius (ch. xxix. p. 122, 1. 2, καίπερ καθηκεύων τοῖς 'Ιουδαίοις πολλά. Foucart suggested πιθηκεύων in both places, as equivalent to πιθηκίζω (to play the ape), Arist. Vesp. 1290). But this requires the further emendation of πάντας to πᾶσι in the present instance. πάντας has just occurred in the same line, which may have caused the mistake.
5The speaker takes this in the moral sense, as meaning " lawless," as is clear from what follows.
6The MS. ὑποπύρος may be altered to ὑποπήρον.
7After all, he only deals with seven objections instead of eight at the previous bout, but only four of them were against S. Peter, and all the eight are here attacks on S. Paul.
8The words τῷ πόνῳ πυρούμενος are taken as part of the quotation in Blondel's edition, but there is no need to do this.
9It will be noticed that Macarius makes no attempt to argue from the special case of Timothy.