Annotation CCLXXIV

”But when Cephas came to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was reprehensible.” — Galatians 2:11

Whether Peter and Paul used simulation, and whether by simulating they sinned.

Origen, in the commentaries on the epistle to the Galatians, and in the tenth volume of the Stromata, sifting this passage, left two opinions, agitated by [his] successors with a long disputation. The former of these is, that Peter and Paul contended against one another with the greatest concord of mind — not by a true, but by a simulated [feigned] dissension — for the utility of the disciples: that, while Peter, rebuked by Paul’s simulated reproof concerning the simulation of the legal [observances], does not contradict, but keeps silent as [if] acknowledging his fault, those who thought the legal [observances] were to be kept might come to their senses, and might cease from the observance

—of the legal [observances]. The other opinion is, that neither of them sinned by simulating; because it is lawful — nay, even fitting — to use simulation in many matters, out of a pious zeal of helping. Both opinions of Origen all the below-written fathers follow:

Theodore, bishop of Heraclea, in the commentary on the epistle to the Galatians. Eusebius, bishop of Emesa, in the commentary on the epistle to the Galatians. Didymus of Alexandria, in the commentary on the epistle to the Galatians. Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea, in the commentary on the epistle to the Galatians. Chrysostom, in the commentary on the epistle to the Galatians, and [in] book 1 On the Priesthood. Jerome, [in] the book on the epistle to the Galatians, [chapter] 1, and in the epistle to Augustine. Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus, in the commentary on the epistle to the Galatians. Theophylact, in the commentary on the epistle to the Galatians. John Cassian, [in] book 17 of the Conferences. Oecumenius, in the Collectanea of explanations on the Galatians.

These, then, are they who, in both opinions, agree with Origen.

Augustine, dissenting from these, affirms that Peter was reprehended by Paul not feignedly, but truly and justly — because the simulation, which he [Peter] had assumed as a remedy for his own nation [the Jews], was pressing toward the scandal and ruin of the Gentiles. Concerning this matter, although Augustine wrote learnedly and piously in three epistles to Jerome, and in other places also: yet he seems sometimes to treat Peter more harshly than is fair, hinting that Peter, by a certain superstitious and depraved simulation, willed to impose the legal burdens on the gentiles. For thus he declares in the commentaries on the epistle to the Galatians: “PETER, moreover, when he had come to Antioch, was rebuked by Paul — not because he kept the custom of the Jews, in which he had been born and brought up (although among the gentiles he did not keep it) — but he was rebuked because he willed to impose it on the gentiles.” And in the book On the Christian Combat, chapter 30, mixing this simulation of Peter among his grave crimes, he says: “THE Catholic Church ought gladly to pardon her corrected children, because we see that pardon was granted to Peter himself — [Peter] bearing his [own] person — when he wavered in the sea; and when he carnally called the Lord back from the passion; and when he cut off the servant’s ear with the sword; and when he thrice denied the Lord himself; and when he afterward lapsed into a superstitious simulation.” And below, he says: “THESE the Catholic Church receives in [her] maternal bosom — as Peter, after the weeping of the denial, admonished by the crowing of the cock, or as the same [Peter], after the depraved simulation, corrected by the voice of Paul.” I pass over, for the sake of brevity, the reasons and arguments brought forward on both sides by the defenders of either opinion. But whether it is lawful for a good man, for the sake of helping, either to lie or to simulate, thou hast above, [in] Annotation 107 of the fifth book.