Randy,
Your response was:
Now you say:
Instead of making a case for the Church you go and make it for Peter.
Peter is mentioned enough times, so there is no need to have to make it about him.
Paul presented to THEM. IOW: The Church, the pillar and foundation of truth.
Nope.
Paul did not meet with “the Church” which would have been a public gathering of many people. He met privately with the leaders of the Church. As I pointed out in my first post, Paul wrote:
Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. 2 I went in response to a revelation and,
meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles.
Initially, Paul does not name them, but then he writes:
6 As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism—they added nothing to my message. 7 On the contrary, they recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised,[a] just as Peter had been to the circumcised.** 8 For God, who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the circumcised, was also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles. 9
James, Cephas[c] and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. 10 All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.
Those who were held in “high esteem” in Jerusalem - the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem - gave Paul the right hand of fellowship. And who were these leaders, Isaiah? James, Cephas and John.
Paul is establishing his credentials as a true apostle because some people were bewitching the Galatians with a different Gospel and trying to downplay Paul’s importance. This is why he pens the dismissive phrase “those held in high esteem - whatever they were makes no difference to me”, and he goes to great lengths to point out to the Galatians that he had even “opposed Peter to his face”.
Who would care what Paul said to Peter unless it was plain to all that Cephas was the head of the universal Church? Paul’s “correction” of Peter is intended to prove to the Galatians that Paul was somebody important in the overall hierarchy of the Church.
He has to deal with the same problem in Corinth when he talks of the “super-apostles” like Apollos who, apparently, was a gifted orator. (cf. 2 Co 11:5, 12:11) It is thought by some that Paul may have had a speech impediment or been less accomplished as a public speaker than Apollos.
So, all of this bluster is about Paul’s efforts to overcome the charges that he was not as important as the other apostles and that the Galatians should listen to his gospel rather than accepting the false message being preached by others who had slipped into Galatia in his absence.**