Paulinism (Volume 2); The History of Paulinism in the Primitive Church (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CONCLUSION. THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. Having followed in these doctrinal writings the development of Faulinism, its transition and transformation into the faith of the universal (Catholic) Church, let us in conclusion once more turn our attention to the way in which this later Pauliuism reveals its character in the view it took of the original Faulinisni, and its position with regard to the primitive Christian community. The "Acts of the Apostles" bears testimony to the consciousness of the later Paulinism regarding its own historical past. That this is no purely historical and original account of the primitive apostolic times, and of the doings of the Apostles, is provedapart from all other evidenceby the purely external circumstance, that it is far too incomplete and fragmentary for such a purpose. It leaves almost wholly out of sight all the other Apostles, and only sets before us the doings of Peter and Paul, the former being the central figure of the first part of the work, and the latter forming the entire subject-matter of the second. But besides this, the history of these two chief Apostles is not represented iu the way in which it must necessarily have been, if it were a real historical book. The histoiy of Peter is allowed to drop from the moment when Paul appears upon the stage, although it had up to this point been overloaded with details, part of which can only be regarded as variations and repetitions of the same story. From the account of Paul, on theother hand, a quantity of very important matter is omitted, the founding of many communities, dangers and sufferings of every kind, and especially the violent contests of parties within the Church. A cursory glance at these external circumstances is enough to show us, that the Acts of the Apostles is not an ori...