LESSON XII
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.