II. PAUL
1. The Persecutor
The founder of Christian theology was born at Tarsus, in Cilicia, about the tenth year of our era. His father was a Pharisee, and brought up the youth in the fervent principles of that sect; the Apostle of the Gentiles never ceased to consider himself a Pharisee, even after he had rejected the Judaic Law. The father was also a Roman citizen, and transmitted the precious franchise to his son. Probably the name Paul was the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Saul, so that both names belonged to the apostle from infancy.22He did not receive a classical education, for no Pharisee would have permitted such outright Hellenism in his son, and no man with Greek training would have written the bad Greek of the Epistles. Nevertheless, he learned to speak the language with sufficient fluency to address an Athenian audience, and he occasionally referred to famous passages in Greek literature. We may believe that some Stoic theology and ethics passed from the university environment of Tarsus into the Christianity of Paul. So he uses the Stoic term pneuma (breath) for what his English translators call spirit. Like most Greek cities, Tarsus had followers of the Orphic or other mystery religions, who believed that the god they worshiped had died for them, had risen from the grave, and would, if appealed to by lively faith and proper ritual, save them from Hades, and share with them his gift of eternal and blessed life.23 The mystery religions prepared the Greeks for Paul, and Paul for the Greeks.
After the youth had learned the trade of tentmaking, and had received instruction in the local synagogue, his father sent him to Jerusalem, where, Paul tells us, he was “educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the Law.”24 Gamaliel was reputedly the grandson of Hillel; he succeeded Hillel as president of the Sanhedrin, and carried on the tradition of interpreting the Law with a lenient regard for the frailty of mankind. Stricter Pharisees were shocked to find him gazing appreciatively even upon pagan women.25 He was so learned that the Jews, who keenly honor scholarship, called him “the beauty of the Law,” and gave to him first, as to only six men after him, the title of rabban, “our master.” From him and others Paul learned that shrewd and subtle, sometimes casuistic and sophistical, manner of Biblical interpretation which was to disport itself in the Talmud. Despite Paul’s initiation into Hellenism he remained to the end a Jew in mind and character, uttered no doubt of the Torah’s inspiration, and proudly maintained the divine election of the Jews as the medium of man’s salvation.
He describes himself as “insignificant in appearance,”26 and adds: “to keep me from being too much elated, a bitter physical affliction was sent me”;27 he does not further specify. Tradition pictured him at fifty as a bent and bald and bearded ascetic, with vast forehead, pale face, stern countenance, and piercing eyes; Dürer imagined him so in one of the greatest drawings of all time; but in truth these representations are literature and art, not history.
His mind was of a type frequent among Jews: penetrating and passionate rather than genial and urbane; emotional and imaginative rather than objective and impartial; he was powerful in action because he was narrow in thought. Even more than Spinoza he was a “God-intoxicated man,” consumed with religious enthusiasm in the literal sense of this word—holding “a god within.” He believed himself divinely inspired, and endowed with the ability to work miracles. He was also a practical soul, capable of laborious organization, impatiently patient in founding and preserving Christian communities. As in so many men, his faults and virtues were near allied and mutually indispensable. He was impetuous and courageous, dogmatic and decisive, domineering and energetic, fanatical and creative, proud before man and humble before God, violently wrathful and capable of the tenderest love. He advised his followers to “bless them that persecute you,” but he could hope that his enemies—“the party of circumcision”—“would get themselves emasculated.”28 He knew his failings, struggled against them, and begged his converts to “put up with a little folly from me.”29 The postscript to his first epistle to the Corinthians sums him up: “This farewell I, Paul, add in my own hand. A curse upon anyone who has no love for the Lord! Lord, come quickly! The blessing of the Lord Jesus be with you! My love be with you all.” He was what he had to be to do what he did.
He began by attacking Christianity in the name of Judaism, and ended by rejecting Judaism in the name of Christ; at every moment he was an apostle. Shocked by Stephen’s disrespect for the Law, he joined in killing him, and led the first persecution of Christians in Jerusalem. Hearing that the new faith had made converts in Damascus, he obtained authorization from the high priest to go there, arrest all “who belonged to the Way,” and bring them in chains to Jerusalem (A.D. 31?).30 It may be that the fervor of his persecution was due to secret doubts; he could be cruel, but not without remorse; possibly the vision of Stephen stoned to death, perhaps even some youthful glimpse of Golgotha, troubled his memory and his journey, and fevered his imagination. As his party neared Damascus, says the Acts,
a sudden light flashed upon him from heaven, and he fell to the ground. Then he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, sir?” he asked. “I am Jesus,”. . . said the voice. . . . Saul’s fellow-travelers stood speechless, for they heard the voice but could not see anyone. When he got up from the ground and opened his eyes he could see nothing. They had to take him by the hand and lead him into Damascus. For three days he could not see.31
No one can say what natural processes underlay this pivotal experience The fatigue of a long journey, the strength of the desert sun, perhaps a stroke of heat lightning in the sky, acting by accumulation upon a frail and possibly epileptic body, and a mind tortured by doubt and guilt, may have brought to culmination the half-conscious process by which the passionate denier became the ablest preacher of Stephen’s Christ. His Greek environment in Tarsus had spoken of a Soter or Saviour who redeemed mankind; his Jewish lore had told of a Messiah to come; how could he be sure that this mysterious and fascinating Jesus, for whom men were ready to die, was not the promised one? When, weak and still blind at the end of his journey, he felt upon his face the kindly, soothing hands of a converted Jew, “something like scales dropped from his eyes, and his sight was restored; he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, regained his strength.”32 A few days later he entered the synagogues of Damascus, and told their congregations that Jesus was the Son of God.