Paul after the Damascus Road Essay - 2027 Words

The Apostle Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, is a central figure within both Christian tradition and New Testament thought and writing. With such a crucial place, it is vital that we come to understand more of his life and thinking, as well as the world in which he and, more specifically, his theology were shaped. With this in mind, this essay will seek to explore Paul’s conversion and call experience as understood from Acts, and his personal references to it, drawing from them the ways in which this time was significant for Paul’s theological thinking, as expressed in his letters and work. To achieve this we will begin by addressing the call and/or conversion debate, arguing that the term ‘conversion and call’ best encapsulates†¦show more content†¦This argument does not, however, decisively remove the possible use of ‘conversion’ for Paul, as Stendahl’s view that conversion must mean abandonment of a previous religious sy stem is certainly not a necessary condition. In addition to this, to remove the language of ‘conversion’ from Paul’s experience is to remove its decisiveness; its absolute alteration of Paul’s thinking and being that can be seen in Gal 1:12-14. In these passages we see Paul speak of the risen Christ, who gave him his teaching and drew him away from his life in the Law, and as a Pharisee, in which he excelled (Gal 1:14) and which had led him to persecute the Church (Gal 1:13). When this Christocentric language is placed against his former understanding, which had caused him to persecute the Church, one cannot simply speak of a ‘call’, but rather must move to language of radical turning, of ‘conversion’. As this shows, while Stendahl’s argument that Paul should not be considered a ‘convert’ is not strong enough to warrant abandonment of the term, his exposition of Paul as ‘called’ should not b e ignored, as, from a missional point of view, he certainly was. This leads us to the conception of Paul’s experience as encapsulating both ‘call’ and a ‘conversion’ dynamic, more fully expressing the reports he and others gave of this time. The Christocentrism we touched on in the previous paragraph is one of the most fundamentalShow MoreRelatedThe Conversion Of The Apostle Paul1282 Words   |  6 PagesApostle Paul is one of the more well-known occurrences in biblical history. Paul’s conversion, on the Road to Damascus, shows that God’s power is great and that anyone can become a servant of the Lord. Paul became the foremost authority of the teachings of Christ in biblical history. Paul worked fervently, after his conversion, to spread the words of Christ throughout the known world. 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