Practices were crucial for Paul, and particularly practices that formed, or fractured, community. But his rationale was always theological as well as social. Peter, he says, was “not walking straight in line with the truth of the good news” (2:14). Paul’s mission efforts were directed toward the formation of new communities, and it is impossible to form a community committed to the mutual responsibility of “bearing one another’s burdens” (6:2) if its members cannot eat together.
