Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 4, 2025
They insulted their brethren, they deserted Paul, they belied their convictions, they imperilled the cause of Christian liberty, they flew in the face of what Peter had said that God Himself had showed him, they did their utmost to degrade Christianity into a form of Judaism all for the sake of keeping on good terms with the narrow bigotry of these Judaising teachers.
The only objection that the so-called Judaising party in the early Church had against Paul and his preaching, was not the Gospel that he declared, but his assertion that the Gentile nations might enter into the Church through faith in Jesus Christ, without passing through the gate of circumcision.
Does not indeed Jesus tell the Pharisees: "Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte"? Do not Juvenal and Horace complain of this Judaising? Were not the Idumeans proselytised almost by force? "The Sabbath and the Jewish fasts," says Lecky, doubtless following Josephus, "became familiar facts in all the great cities."
The sharp reference to the Judaising teachers would be difficult for their sympathisers to swallow, but charity is not broken by plain repudiation of error and its teachers. 'Subverting your souls' is a heavy charge. The word is only here found in the New Testament, and means to unsettle, the image in it being that of packing up baggage for removal.
The blame was laid on forsaking the old religion, and what the Romans called "Judaising," which meant Christianity, was persecuted again. Flavius Clemens, a cousin of the Emperor, was thus accused and put to death; and probably it was this which led to St.
In the course of a century, Pauline influences had a large share in driving primitive Nazarenism from being the very heart of the new faith into the position of scouted error; and the spirit of Paul's doctrine continued its work of driving Christianity farther and farther away from Judaism, until "meats offered to idols" might be eaten without scruple, while the Nazarene methods of observing even the Sabbath, or the Passover, were branded with the mark of Judaising heresy.
Failure to see this is due to the ultimately complete triumph of the Hellenistic party, who naturally looked on what was really the conservative position as Judaising, whereas the truth was that they themselves were Hellenising. According to Acts the most successful centre of Hellenistic Christianity was Antioch.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking