Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Against those who say that Paul alone, of the apostles, knew the truth. As for those who say that Paul alone knew the truth, to whom the mystery was made known by revelation, Paul himself refutes them, saying that one and the same God worked in Peter for the apostleship of the circumcision, and in himself for that of the Gentiles. Peter, then, was an apostle of that same God whose apostle Paul also was; and the God whom Peter proclaimed among the circumcision, and the Son of God, this same one Paul also proclaimed among the Gentiles. For our Lord did not come merely to save Paul, nor is God so lacking that he possessed but a single apostle to know his Son's plan. And Paul himself, saying, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good things, who preach peace," makes it clear that it was not one man only, but many, who preached the truth. And again in the letter to the Corinthians, after he had first named all who saw God after the resurrection, he adds: "Whether then it were I or they, thus we proclaim, and thus you came to believe" — thereby confessing one identical proclamation shared by all who beheld God once he had risen from among the dead.
And the Lord, when Philip wished to see the Father, answered him: "Have I been so long with you, and you have not known me, Philip? He who sees me sees the Father also. How do you say, Show us the Father? I dwell in the Father, and the Father dwells in me, and from this time you have known him, and have seen him." Those, then, to whom the Lord bore this witness — that they had come to know him and had seen the Father in him, the Father being truth itself — to claim that such men were ignorant of the truth is the speech of false witnesses, and of those estranged from the doctrine of Christ. For why would the Lord have sent the twelve apostles to the sheep that had perished from the house of Israel, if they did not know the truth? And how could the seventy have preached, unless they themselves had first known the truth of the preaching? Or how could Peter have been ignorant, he of whom the Lord testified that it was not flesh and blood that disclosed this to him, but rather the Father dwelling in heaven? So then, just as the apostle Paul received his gospel not from men, nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father — the Son bringing them to the Father, and the Father revealing to them the Son.
And that Paul agreed with those who had called him to the apostles concerning the question, and traveled up with Barnabas to meet them at Jerusalem, was not without purpose, but so that through them the freedom granted the Gentiles might be established — as he himself says: "Then, fourteen years later, I went up once more to Jerusalem together with Barnabas, bringing Titus along as well. And I went up according to a revelation, and laid before them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles." And again he says: "To this we did not yield in subjection for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you." If, then, anyone should carefully examine, from the Acts of the Apostles, the moment recorded when he traveled up to Jerusalem concerning this question, he will find that the years correspond to what Paul has set down. Thus Paul's own account and Luke's testimony concerning the apostles are consonant, and are, as it were, one and the same.