Deceptive Pastors
Because mutual trust pertains to the living core of society, deceit—the disposition to deceive—is among the most serious of social sins. In larger societies, such as an entire country, we anticipate some measure of deceit, but we are less tolerant of it in smaller social units, especially communities formed by close friendships and shared convictions.
I wonder if this was ever more the case than among the early Christian congregations. Rejected by the Jews (John 16:2; cf. 9:22,34; 12:42) and held in deep suspicion by the Romans (Acts 16:21), each local church seriously depended on the shared trust of its internal relations. These churches came to represent a sort of tertium quid in society, a distinct genus; indeed, the Roman historian Suetonius refers to them as a “genus of men (genus hominum) of a new and evil superstition”(“Nero” 16.2). In such a setting, internal trust was necessary to the very existence of a Christian congregation.
This necessity was particularly emphatic in a congregation’s relationship to its evangelists and pastors. The Apostle Paul perceived this from the very beginning; already, in the earliest extant book of the New Testament, he reminded the believers at Thessalonica of this element of trust during their conversion the previous year.
Throughout the short time he was among them (just three weeks, according to Acts 17:2), Paul had been completely sincere with the Thessalonians; he had not spoken to them with flattery (kolakeia). He had sought neither human approval (anthropois areskontes) nor human praise (ex anthropon doxa); his preaching was never “a cloak for covetousness” (pleonexsia). He had used no deceit (dolos). On the contrary, Paul insisted, he had preached the “gospel of God” in its integrity, not contaminated by insincerity (akatharsia) (1 Thes. 2:1–6).
Dissembling at Antioch
The apostle had reason to be sensitive on this matter. Not long before his arrival at Thessalonica, he had witnessed the spiritual harm that befell the church at Antioch when some preachers and pastors behaved with duplicity and dissimulation.
The church at Antioch, we recall, was the first in which both Jews and Gentiles were “integrated” into a single congregation, an integration made possible by their abandoning the Mosaic ritual and dietary rules; this permitted all the congregation to eat at a common table.
Such a discipline, based on the gospel itself, allowed the church at Antioch to serve as a model for the rest of the churches throughout the Mediterranean Basin and beyond. Indeed, Antioch became the major missionary hub for the evangelization of the Greek-speaking world (Acts 13:1–3; 14:26–28).
Moreover, the Antiochian standard had received the official approval of the church leadership in Jerusalem, including Peter (Gal. 2:9; cf. Acts 15:1–21).
However, at some point before Paul’s next missionary trip (including to Thessalonica), this entire project was put in peril and nearly sabotaged when certain Christians from Jerusalem arrived at Antioch, insisting on the full observance of the Mosaic precepts. Except for Paul, it appears, much of the local leadership gave way to this new pressure, thereby endangering the integrity of the congregation and betraying the gospel itself. Among the leaders thus compromised were Barnabas and Peter.
Paul’s reaction was swift and decisive: “But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. . . . And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their hypocrisy (hypocrisis)” (Gal. 2:11,13). This incident was still a fresh memory when, a few months later, Paul founded the church at Thessalonica.
Paul’s Distress & Determination
It is instructive to reflect that Paul speaks of “hypocrisy” in this setting, the same word used in the Gospels to describe Jesus’ denunciation of the Pharisees. In both cases, the word identifies a bad conscience, a failure in “good faith,” the attempt to deceive by rhetorical obfuscation, and the introduction of logical legerdemain for the purpose of confusion.
When deception and bad faith form the motive, recourse to distinctions, which genuine philosophers employ to clarify a subject, serve instead to disguise sophistry and introduce fallacies. Those who practice this art of deception declare such things as, “Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is liable!”
Distressed to discover such deceit among the spiritual leaders at Antioch, Paul was determined that it should never be a quality of his own ministry.