Reason #4 The Authenticity of Paul’s Stunning Conversion
The facts of history would never lead you
to believe that Paul never existed, that his life was not drastically and
suddenly changed, or that he never truly believed in what he claimed about seeing
the resurrected messiah.
Because the apostle
Paul left us such a large body of literature and was so frequently referred to
in antiquity, there is a very strong consensus that he existed in history, and that
he was once a fierce persecutor of the church. But the consensus also concludes
that Paul then converted suddenly to become the undisputed leader of the church
by the early 50s A.D., and was perfectly willing to suffer and die for his Christian
claims.
None of this is
seriously called into question by reputable historians. For example, an article in the Encyclopedia Britannica
says: “Paul spent much of the first half of his life persecuting the
nascent Christian movement, an activity to which he refers several times.”
Another article, in Wikipedia,
says: “Paul is generally considered one of the most important figures of the
Apostolic Age and from the mid-30s to the mid-50s AD he founded several
Christian communities in Asia Minor and Europe.” The historical data is actually
pretty straightforward.
But there are two
salient questions about Paul’s life that must be faced in all honesty by
truth-seekers.
First, why would anyone
change from being the staunchest of Jewish Pharisees, and a rabid hater of
Jesus Christ, as well as a persecutor of the church, to becoming the number one
advocate and spokesperson for Jesus, as well as the special apostle to
non-Jewish people? Diehard Jewish rabbis today do not easily convert to
Christianity and take up with Gentiles. And yet Paul did, and he was once violently opposed to all of this.
Paul’s claim was that
he suddenly and utterly changed because he one day encountered the resurrected
messiah in a powerful sensory way on the road to Damascus.
And this brings us to
the second salient question about Paul’s life. Was he a charlatan, or did he
really believe in his encounter with the resurrected messiah—believe in it even
enough to suffer and die for his belief?
The comments of skeptic
Bart Ehrman—no friend to the Christian faith—are helpful in this regard. Ehrman
refers to Paul’s letter of Philippians as “one of the seven ‘undisputed letters’ of Paul.” While we cannot prove
from history that Paul was beheaded by Nero in the mid-60s A.D., we can see in
his “undisputed letter” (Philippians 1:12-23 and 3:20-21) that he was already suffering
in prison for his Christian claims, and that he still proclaimed the resurrection
of Jesus and his willingness to die for his belief in it. Once again, therefore,
the data concerning his suffering of deprivation and imprisonment is actually a
simple matter of historical record.
History says that something extraordinary happened to drastically change
Paul from a rabid persecutor of the Christian faith to the premiere leader of
that faith, and that he suffered dearly for that change of heart. He said his
conversion was accounted for by his meeting of the resurrected messiah.
History also indicates
that Paul didn’t live like a liar (gladly suffering deprivation and
imprisonment for his resurrection claims), and he didn’t die like one.
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