The dramatic miracle experience of Paul of Tarsos on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-19) should not distract from the astonishing human energy exhibited by the “converted” Paul in his career subsequently. Paul’s vision of the risen Jesus prompted him first to make contact with those whom he had been determined to arrest, but just as significantly led him to withdraw for a period from Jewish society to reflect (Galat. 1:16-18). Returning to the world, he made tentative contact with Jesus’s surviving disciples. Like Peter and James, Paul retained a powerful sense of the proximity of Jesus’s teaching to Jewish ideas and institutions, but he came to believe that the message of Jesus should be brought to those beyond the synagogue. Though Paul’s “mission” in the 40s and 50s enjoyed the formal support of the disciples in
Jerusalem, there was an inherent tension between his vision of a vast and diverse community of believers, which included Gentiles, and their understanding of a postmessianic Judaism. Some followers of Jesus in Jerusalem were dismayed to learn that Paul was not requiring his followers of the risen Jesus to be circumcised, prompting a meeting between Paul, his associate Barnabas, and Peter and James, at which the absolute necessity of avoiding sacrificial meat and fornication were agreed (Galat. 2; Acts 15). But Paul’s teachings continued to unsettle those leading the Jerusalem community, and James subsequently sought reassurance with regard to Paul’s devotion to the Temple (Acts 21:20-27).
Away from Jerusalem by contrast, Paul was a traveler and preacher of indefatigable commitment and self-possession. He visited numerous communities in Asia Minor and Greece, including Athens, where he declaimed before the Areopagus council (Acts 17:16-33). He communicated also with a group of Christ-followers whom he found in Rome (Romans 1:13-15). Paul’s challenge above all was to bring his message both to those seeking to uphold Jewish practices (Galat. 2:12; Titus 1:1015; Romans 2:7-3:31) and also to those who were resolutely Gentile (Galat. 5:2-12), leading him to reflect upon himself as “all things to all men” (1 Cor. 9:19-22). To the Christians of Corinth he declared that the Law had been superseded by Jesus (1 Cor. 9:21), an idea that stimulated followers there to abandon conventional sexual morality, provoking an exasperated rebuke from Paul (1 Cor. 5). But in other respects he upheld the core values of the Greek city in terms of obedience to authority and acceptance of the institution of slavery (Titus 2:1-9).
On one of his periodic return visits to colleagues in Jerusalem he was arrested and famously invoked his Roman citizen status, prompting his dispatch to the court of the emperor (Acts 22:22-29). Characteristically, while awaiting trial, he preached openly and enthusiastically in the empire’s capital, where he seemingly met his death (Acts 28:30-31).
Paul’s contribution to the emergence of Christianity is of the profoundest historical significance. He was the ablest of those who took knowledge of Jesus to the world beyond Judaea. Many Jewish communities in the Diaspora already offered an honorable role to “god-fearing” Gentiles, and the latter are likely to have been an important avenue for the message of Paul into the wider world. To the weak, the sick and the disheartened came the powerful idea of a special relationship with a god who understood and had shared in human suffering. More than this, death itself had been overcome, bearers of the “good news” were reported to possess extraordinary powers (Acts 9:36-42; 16:25-40), and believers could look forward to a blissful eternity in the company of their living god. A new beginning was possible, not through expensive and elaborate rituals controlled by a civic elite, but in individual baptism, communal ritual dining and the acceptance of Jesus of Nazareth as redeemer of all mankind.
World History
