Chapter Thirty-One
Objection based on S. Paul's inconsistency in claiming at different times to be a Jew (Acts xxii. 3) and a Roman (Acts xxii. 27).
This same Paul, who often when he speaks seems to forget his own words, tells the chief captain that he is not a Jew but a Roman, although he had previously said, "I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, and brought up1 at the feet of Gamaliel, instructed according to the exact teaching of the law of my fathers." But he who said, "I am a Jew," and "I am a Roman," is neither thing, although he attaches himself to both. For he who plays the hypocrite and speaks of what he is not, lays the foundation of his deeds in guile, and by putting round him a mask of deceit, he cheats the clear issue and steals the truth, laying siege in different ways to the soul's understanding, and enslaving by the juggler's art those who are easily influenced. The man who welcomes in his life such a principle as this, differs not at all from an implacable and bitter foe, who enslaving by his hypocrisy the minds of those beyond his own borders, takes them all captive in inhuman fashion. So if Paul is in pretence at one time a Jew, at another a Roman, at one time without law, and at another a Greek,2 and whenever he wishes is a stranger and an enemy to each thing, by stealing into each, he has made each useless, robbing each of its scope by his flattery.
We conclude then that he is a liar and manifestly brought up in an atmosphere of lying. And it is beside the point for him to say: "I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not" (Rom. ix. 1). For the man who has just now conformed to the law, and to-day to the Gospel, is rightly regarded as knavish and hollow3 both in private and in public life.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Answer to the objection based on S. Paul's claim to be both a Jew and a Roman.
[Here again Paul showed the strategic powers of a general. If a general is driven out by his own countrymen, he no longer considers himself one of them, and overcomes them by joining some one else. Just so Paul was driven by the Jews into the hands of the Romans, and so he could say he was not a Jew but a Roman.
He was not wrong in calling himself a Roman, for by the Romé (ῥώαμπ;μη) of the Spirit he was to teach among the Roman nation.
Just as one of the Galatian race is called an Asian by living in Asia, so might Paul become a Roman, and yet remain a Jew. When he calls himself a Jew, he honours his countrymen; when he calls himself a Roman, he proclaims his nobility.4]
Footnotes:
1Surely this is a slip for "a Jew."
2Or, more literally, " a foster-brother of that which is false."
3lit. " Festering beneath the surface."
4Such is the strangely inadequate three-fold answer given to the objection. The play upon the word Πώμη is quite characteristic of patristic interpretation. Macarius does not seem to have grasped that a Jew could be a Roman citizen.