The Damascus Road Experience

Twenty-Third Tuesday after Pentecost

Our Bible study returns today with one of the best known stories of the NT. Please read now Acts 9:1-22.

 

The story is often called "The Conversion of Saul," or "The Conversion of Paul." I have one of those subtitles in the Bible I am using today. I marked out the word Conversion. The commonplace understanding is that in this experience Paul was converted from Judaism to Christianity. About four decades ago Krister Stendahl, former dean of Harvard Divinity School, and after that, Lutheran Bishop of Sweden, wrote a game changing essay, entitled "Paul and the Introspective Consciousness of the West." One of Stendahl's points was that Paul's experience on the Road to Damascus should not be thought of as a conversion. Here are the reasons. Luke never uses the word conversion in the story. Paul never writes or thinks of himself as a convert. Paul never uses the word Christian. He never thinks of himself as anything other than a Jews. In his last letter he refers to himself as a "Hebrew born of Hebrews." The difference is that after his Damascus Road experience, he is a Jew who believes in Jesus Christ. Other things about Paul's Judaism will change, like his understanding that you don't have to be a Jew to be saved, that gentiles can be saved, that neither Jews nor gentiles must follow the Jewish laws (the Torah). Paul thinks that if you are born a Jew, you are always a Jew. The Damascus Road experience is not a conversion but a call.

In previous blogs I've mentioned a couple of other misconceptions about Paul. Paul did not undergo a name change after the Damascus Road experience. Saul was his name in Hebrew. Paul was his name in Greek. Paul did not fall of a horse in the Damascus Road experience. No horse is mention. Paul was not a misogynist. He thought of men and women as equals (Galatians 3:27-29, 1 Corinthians 7). 

Luke tells the Damascus Road story three different times in Acts: here, in Acts 22, and in Acts 26. Paul in his letters never tells the story, although he has several allusions to it. There are some odd contradictions in the thrice telling of the story in Acts. In Acts 9:7 the men traveling with Paul hear the voice of Jesus speaking to Paul but see no one. In Acts 22:9 the men saw the light but don't hear the voice. In Acts 26:2 the voice from heaven says something quite different from what it/he says in Acts 9 and 22. I don't have a good explanation for these odd differences. I would note that in Acts 9 Luke is telling the story. In Acts 22 and Acts 26 Paul is telling the story to Roman officials. 

The story begins with Paul making a reputation for himself as a persecutor of Christians. Thinking that he has gotten all of the Christians out of Jerusalem, he acquires letters of introduction from the High Priest to give to the Jewish officials in Damascus, so that he can persecute Christians there. Although this new Christian sect was very small at the time, Paul recognized that it could become a major threat to Pharasaic Jewish orthodoxy in the future. Paul was the kind of person that whatever he did, he went all out. Damascus Road changed what Paul believed but did not change his personality. Damascus Road changed Paul from being an all out persecutor to gbeing an all out advocate.

Stendahl saw the Damascus Road experienced as being, not Paul's conversion but Paul's calling. He compared Damascus Road to the stories of the callings of the prophets in the OT, the calls of Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Jonah, and others. In all the call stories, God calls the prophet to a specific task. The prophets respond to the calls in different ways, some eagerly (e.g. Isaiah), some reluctantly (e.g. Jonah). Paul's response is three days of blind confusion, then he goes all out.

We''ll continue the story of Paul's call on Saturday.

Faithfully,

Christian