THE CONVERSION OF PAUL
Christianity a supernatural thing and a gift of God's grace—that is the real theme of the lesson. The theme is brought home by means of an example, the example of the apostle Paul.
The religious experience of Paul is the most striking phenomenon in the history of the human spirit. It really requires no defense. Give it sympathetic attention, and it is irresistible. How was it produced? The answer of Paul himself, at least, is plain. According to Paul, his whole religious life was due, not to any natural development, but to an act of the risen Christ. That is the argument of the first chapter of Galatians. He was advancing in Judaism, he says, beyond his contemporaries. He was laying waste the Church. And then suddenly, when it was least to be expected, without the influence of men, simply by God's good pleasure, Christ was revealed to him, and all was changed. The suddenness, the miraculousness of the change is the very point of the passage. Upon that marvelous act of God Paul bases the whole of his life work.
Shall Paul's explanation of his life be accepted? It can be accepted only by the recognition of Jesus Christ, who was crucified, as a living person. In an age of doubt, that recognition is not always easy. But if it be refused, then the whole of Pauline Christianity is based upon an illusion. That alternative may well seem to be monstrous. The eighth chapter of Romans has a self-evidencing power. It has transformed the world. It has entered into the very fiber of the human spirit. But it crumbles to pieces if the appearance on the road to Damascus was nothing but a delusive vision. Let us not deceive ourselves. The religious experience of Paul and the whole of our evangelical piety are based upon the historical fact of the resurrection. But if so, then the resurrection stands firm. For the full glory of Pauline Christianity becomes a witness to it. The writer of the epistle to the Romans must be believed. But it is that writer who says, "Last of all ... he appeared to me also."
The wonder of the conversion can be felt only through an exercise of the historical imagination. Imagine the surroundings of Paul's early life in Tarsus, live over again with him the years in Jerusalem, enter with him into his prospects of a conventional Jewish career and into his schemes for the destruction of the Church—and then only can you appreciate with him the catastrophic wonder of Christ's grace. There was no reason for the conversion of Paul. Everything pointed the other way. But Christ chose to make of the persecutor an apostle, and the life of Paul was the result. It was a divine, inexplicable act of grace—grace to Paul and grace to us who are Paul's debtors. God's mercies are often thus. They are not of human devising. They enter into human life when they are least expected, with a sudden blaze of heavenly glory.
In the review of Paul's early life various questions emerge. They must at least be faced, if not answered, if the lesson is to be vividly presented.
1. PAUL AT TARSUS
In the first place, what was the extent of the Greek influence which was exerted upon Paul at Tarsus? The question cannot be answered with certainty, and widely differing views are held. It is altogether unlikely, however, that the boy attended anything like an ordinary Gentile school. The Jewish strictness of the family precludes that supposition, and it is not required by the character of Paul's preaching and writing. It is true that he occasionally quotes a Greek poet. I Cor. 15:33; Titus 1:12; Acts 17:28. It is true again that some passages in Paul's letters are rhetorical—for example, I Cor. 1:18-25; ch. 13—and that rhetoric formed an important part of Greek training in the first century. But Paul's rhetoric is the rhetoric of nature rather than of art. Exalted by his theme he falls unconsciously into a splendid rhythm of utterance. Such rhetoric could not be learned in school. Finally, it is true that Paul's vocabulary is thought to exhibit some striking similarities to that of Stoic writers. But even if that similarity indicates acquaintance on the part of Paul with the Stoic teaching, such acquaintance need not have been attained through a study of books.
However, the importance of Paul's Greek environment, if it must not be exaggerated, must on the other hand not be ignored. In the first place, Paul is a consummate master of the Greek language. He must have acquired it in childhood, and indeed in Tarsus could hardly have failed to do so. In the second place, he was acquainted with the religious beliefs and practices of the Greco-Roman world. The speech at Athens, Acts 17:22-31, shows how he made use of such knowledge for his preaching. In all probability the first impressions were made upon him at Tarsus. Finally, from his home in Tarsus Paul derived that intimate knowledge of the political and social relationships of the men of his day which, coupled with a native delicacy of perception and fineness of feeling, resulted in the exquisite tact which he exhibited in his missionary and pastoral labors. The Tarsian Jew of the dispersion was a gentleman of the Roman Empire.
That Aramaic, as well as Greek, was spoken by the family of Paul is made probable by Phil. 3:5 and II Cor. 11:22. The word "Hebrew" in these passages probably refers especially to the use of the Aramaic ("Hebrew") language, as in Acts 6:1, where the "Hebrews" in the Jerusalem church are contrasted with the "Grecian Jews." "A Hebrew of Hebrews," therefore, probably means "an Aramaic-speaking Jew and descended from Aramaic-speaking Jews." In Acts 21:40; 22:2 it is expressly recorded that Paul made a speech in Aramaic ("Hebrew"), and in Acts 26:14 it is said that Christ spoke to him in the same language. Conceivably, of course, he might have learned that language during his student days in Jerusalem. But the passages just referred to make it probable that it was rather the language of his earliest home. From childhood Paul knew both Aramaic and Greek.
2. THE INNER LIFE OF PAUL THE RABBI
The most interesting question about Paul's life at Jerusalem concerns the condition of his inner life before the conversion. Paul the Pharisee is an interesting study. What were this man's thoughts and feelings and desires before the grace of Christ made him the greatest of Christian missionaries?
The best way to answer this question would be to ask Paul himself. One passage in the Pauline epistles has been regarded as an answer to the question. That passage is Rom. 7:14-25. There Paul describes the struggle of the man who knows the law of God and desires to accomplish it, but finds the flesh too strong for him. If Paul is there referring to his pre-Christian life, then the passage gives a vivid picture of his fruitless struggle as a Pharisee to fulfill the law. Many interpreters, however, refer the passage not to the pre-Christian life but to the Christian life. Even in the Christian life the struggle goes on against sin. And even if Paul is referring to the pre-Christian life, he is perhaps depicting it rather as it really was than as he then thought it was. The passage probably does not mean that before he became a Christian Paul was fully conscious of the fruitlessness of his endeavor to attain righteousness by the law. Afterwards he saw that his endeavor was fruitless, but it is doubtful how clearly he saw it at the time.
It would, indeed, be a mistake to suppose that Paul as a Pharisee was perfectly happy. No man is happy who is trying to earn salvation by his works. In his heart of hearts Paul must have known that his fulfillment of the law was woefully defective. But such discontentment would naturally lead him only farther on in the same old path. If his obedience was defective, let it be mended by increasing zeal! The more earnest Paul was about his law righteousness, the more discontented he became with his attainments, so much the more zealous did he become as a persecutor.
Some have supposed that Paul was gradually getting nearer to Christianity before Christ appeared to him—that the Damascus experience only completed a process that had already begun. There were various things, it is said, which might lead the earnest Pharisee to consider Christianity favorably. In the first place, there was the manifest impossibility of law righteousness. Paul had tried to keep the law and had failed. What if the Christians were right about salvation by faith? In the second place, there were the Old Testament prophecies about a suffering servant of Jehovah. Isa., ch. 53. If they referred to the Messiah, then the cross might be explained, as the Christians explained it, as a sacrifice for others. The stumblingblock of a crucified Messiah would thus be removed. In the third place, there was the noble life and death of the Christian martyrs.
These arguments are not so weighty as they seem. Paul's dissatisfaction with his fulfillment of the law, as has already been observed, might lead to a more zealous effort to fulfill the law as well as to a relinquishment of the law. There seems to be no clear evidence that the pre-Christian Jews ever contemplated a death of the Messiah like the death of Jesus. On the contrary the current expectation of the Messiah was diametrically opposed to any such thing. And admiration of the Christian martyrs is perhaps too modern and too Christian to be attributed to the Pharisee. The fundamental trouble with this whole argument is that it proves merely that the Pharisee Paul ought to have been favorably impressed with Christianity. So he ought, but as a matter of fact he was not so impressed, and we have the strongest kind of evidence to prove that he was not. The book of The Acts says so, and Paul says so just as clearly in his letters. The very fact that when he was converted he was on a persecuting expedition, more ambitious than any that had been attempted before, shows that he was certainly not thinking favorably of Christianity. Was he considering the possibility that Christianity might be true? Was he trying to stifle his own inward uncertainty by the very madness of his zeal? Then, in persecuting the Church, he was going against his conscience. But in I Tim. 1:13 he distinctly says that his persecuting was done ignorantly in unbelief, and his attitude is the same in his other epistles. If in persecuting the Church he was acting contrary to better conviction, then that fact would have constituted the chief element in his guilt; yet in the passages where he speaks with the deepest contrition of his persecution, that particularly heinous sin is never mentioned. Evidently, whatever was his guilt, at least he did not have to reproach himself with the black sin of persecuting Christ's followers in the face of even a half conviction.
Accordingly, the words of Christ to Paul at the time of the conversion, "It is hard for thee to kick against the goad," Acts 26:14, do not mean that Paul had been resisting an inward voice of conscience in not accepting Christ before, but rather that Christ's will for Paul was really resistless even though Paul had not known it at all. Christ's loving plan would be carried out in the end. Paul was destined to be the apostle to the Gentiles. For him to try to be anything else was as useless and as painful as it is for the ox to kick against the goad. Christ will have his way.
Thus before his conversion Paul was moving away from Christianity rather than toward it. Of course, in emphasizing the suddenness of the conversion, exaggerations must be avoided. It is absurd, for example, to suppose that Paul knew nothing at all about Jesus before the Damascus event. Of course he knew about him. Even if he had been indifferent, he could hardly have failed to hear the story of the Galilean prophet; and as a matter of fact he was not indifferent but intensely interested, though by way of opposition. These things were not done in a corner. Paul was in Jerusalem before and after the crucifixion, if not at the very time itself. The main facts in the life of Jesus were known to friend and foe alike. Thus when in the first chapter of Galatians Paul declares that he received his gospel not through any human agency but directly from Christ, he cannot mean that the risen Christ imparted to him the facts in the earthly life of Jesus. It never occurred to Paul to regard the bare facts as a "gospel." He had the facts by ordinary word of mouth from the eyewitnesses. What he received from the risen Christ was a new interpretation of the facts. He had known the facts before. But they had filled him with hatred. He had known about Jesus. But the more he had known about him, the more he had hated him. And then Christ himself appeared to him! It might naturally have been an appearance in wrath, a thunderstroke of the just vengeance of the Messiah. Probably that was Paul's first thought when he heard the words, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." But such was not the Lord's will. The purpose of the Damascus wonder was not destruction but divine fellowship and world-wide service.
3. PAUL'S EXPERIENCE AND OURS
In one sense, the experience of Paul is the experience of every Christian. Not, of course, in form. It is a great mistake to demand of every man that he shall be able, like Paul, to give day and hour of his conversion. Many men, it is true, still have such a definite experience. It is not pathological. It may result in glorious Christian lives. But it is not universal, and it should not be induced by tactless methods. The children of Christian homes often seem to grow up into the love of Christ. When they decide to unite themselves definitely with the Church, the decision need not necessarily come with anguish of soul. It may be simply the culmination of a God-encircled childhood, a recognition of what God has already done rather than the acquisition of something new. But after all, these differences are merely in the manner of God's working. In essence, true Christian experience is always the same, and in essence it is always like the experience of Paul. It is no mere means of making better citizens, but an end in itself. It is no product of man's effort, but a divine gift. Whatever be the manner of its coming, it is a heavenly vision. Christ still lives in the midst of glory. And still he appears to sinful men—though not now to the bodily eye—drawing them out of sin and misery and bondage to a transitory world into communion with the holy and eternal God.
The result of Paul's vision was service. How far his destination as apostle to the Gentiles was made known to him at once is perhaps uncertain. It depends partly upon the interpretation of Acts 26:14-18. Are those words intended to be part of what was spoken at the very time of the conversion? There is no insuperable objection to that view. At any rate, no matter how much or how little was revealed at once, the real purpose of Christ in calling him was clearly that he should be the leader of the Gentile mission. Gal. 1:16. He was saved in order that he might save others. It is so normally with every Christian. Every one of us is given not only salvation, but also labor. In that labor we can use every bit of preparation that is ours, even if it was acquired before we became Christians. Paul, the apostle, used his Greek training as well as his knowledge of the Old Testament. We can use whatever talents we possess. The Christian life is not a life of idleness. It is like the life of the world in being full of labor. But it differs from that life in that its labor is always worth while. Connection with heaven does not mean idle contemplation, but a vantage ground of power. You cannot move the world without a place to stand.
In the Library.—Purves, "Christianity in the Apostolic Age," pp. 68-85. Davis, "Dictionary of the Bible": article on "Damascus." Ramsay, "Pictures of the Apostolic Church," pp. 113-120; "St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen," pp. 29-39; "The Cities of St. Paul," pp. 85-244 (on Tarsus). Conybeare and Howson, "The Life and Epistles of St. Paul," chs. ii and iii. Lewin, "The Life and Epistles of St. Paul," chs. i and iv. Stalker, "The Life of St. Paul," pp. 1-42. Rackham, pp. 124-135, 421-424, 462-470. Lumby, pp. 108-116, 302-307, 344-349. Plumptre, pp. 55-61, 150-152, 165-167. Cook, pp. 413-417, 498-500, 516-519.