The Origin of Paul's Religion. John Gresham Machen

tormented by a sense of sin. That sense of sin no doubt led him into a more and more feverish effort to keep the letter of the Law and particularly to show his zeal by persecuting the disciples of Jesus. But all his efforts were vain; his obedience remained insufficient; the curse of the Law still rested upon him. What if the vain effort could be abandoned? What if the disciples of Jesus were right? Of course, he believed, they were not right, but what if they were? What if the Messiah had really died for the sins of believers, in accordance with Isaiah liii? What if salvation were attainable not by merit but by divine grace? These questions, it is supposed, were in the mind of Paul. He answered them still in the negative, but his misery kept them ever before his mind. The Law was thus a schoolmaster to bring him to Christ. He was ready for the vision.

      In both of these lines of explanation importance is often attributed to the impression produced upon Paul's mind by the character of the disciples. Whence did they derive their bravery and their joy in the midst of persecution? Whence came the fervor of their love, whence the firmness of their faith? The persecutor, it is said, was impressed against his will.

      The fundamental objection to all these theories of psychological development is that they describe only what might have been or what ought to have been, and not what actually was. No doubt Paul ought to have been coming nearer to Christianity; but as a matter of fact he was rather getting further away, and he records the fact in no uncertain terms in his Epistles. There are objections, moreover, to the various theories of development in detail; and the advocates of one theory are often the severest critics of another.

      With regard to Holsten's exposition of the "gnosis of the Cross," for example, there is not the slightest evidence that the pre-Christian Jews interpreted Isaiah liii of the vicarious sufferings of the Messiah, or had any notion of the Messiah's vicarious death.[35] It is not true, moreover, as Beyschlag pointed out against Holsten, that Paul was helpless in the face of the evidence for the resurrection.[36] According to Paul's Pharisaic training, the resurrection would come only at the end of the age; a resurrection like the resurrection of Jesus, therefore, was by no means a matter of course, and could be established only by positive evidence of the most direct and unequivocal kind.

      With regard to the sense of sin as the goad which forced Paul to accept the Saviour, there is no evidence that before his conversion Paul was under real conviction of sin. It is very doubtful whether Rom. vii. 7–25, with its account of the struggle between the flesh and the higher nature of man, refers to the unregenerate rather than to the regenerate life; and even if the former view is correct, it is doubtful whether the description is taken from the apostle's own experience. At any rate, the struggle, even if it be a struggle in the unregenerate man, is described from the point of view of the regenerate; it is not implied, therefore, that before the entrance of the Spirit of God a man is fully conscious of his own helplessness and of the desperateness of the struggle. The passage therefore, does not afford any certain information about the pre-Christian life of Paul. Undoubtedly before the conversion the conscience of Paul was aroused; he was conscientious in his devotion to the Law. Probably he was conscious of his failings. But that such consciousness of failure amounted to anything like that genuine conviction of sin which leads a man to accept the Saviour remains very doubtful. Recognized failure to keep the Law perfectly led in the case of Paul merely to greater zeal for the Law, a zeal which was manifested especially in the persecution of a blasphemous sect whose teaching was subversive of the authority of Moses.

      Finally, it is highly improbable that Paul was favorably impressed by the bravery of those whom he was persecuting. It may seem strange at first sight that the same man who wrote the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians should have haled helpless men and women to prison without a qualm, or listened without pity to the dying words of Stephen, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." But it is very dangerous to argue back from the Christian life of Paul to the life of Paul the Pharisee. Paul himself was conscious of a complete moral transformation as having taken place in him when he saw the Lord near Damascus. What was impossible for him after that transformation may well have been possible before. Moreover, if, despite such considerations, we could argue back from Paul the disciple of Jesus to Paul the Pharisee, there is one characteristic of the apostle which would never have permitted him to persecute those by whom he was favorably impressed—namely, his complete sincerity. The picture of Saul the doubter, torn by conflicting emotions, impressed by the calmness and bravery and magnanimity of those whom he was persecuting, yet stifling such impressions by persecuting zeal, is very romantic, but very un-Pauline.

      But in attributing the conversion of Paul altogether to the experience on the road to Damascus, are we not heaping up into one moment what must of very necessity in conscious life be the work of years? Is it conceivable that ideas should have been implanted in the mind of a person not by processes of acquisition but mechanically as though by a hypodermic syringe? Would not such an experience, even if it were possible, be altogether destructive of personality?

      The objection serves to correct possible misunderstandings. The view of the conversion which has just been set forth does not mean that when Paul drew near to Damascus on that memorable day he was ignorant of the facts about Jesus. If he had never heard of Jesus, or if having heard of Him he knew absolutely nothing about Him, then perhaps the conversion would have been not only supernatural but inconceivable. But it is not the traditional view of the conversion which is guilty of such exaggerations. They are the product rather of that separation of Paul from the historical Jesus which appears for example in Wrede and in Bousset. According to any reasonable view of Paul's pre-Christian experience, Paul was well acquainted, before the conversion, with many of the facts about Jesus' life and death; what he received on the road to Damascus was a new interpretation of the facts and a new attitude toward them. He had known the facts before, but they had filled him with hatred; now his hatred was changed into love.

      Even after exaggerations have been removed, however, the change wrought by the Damascus experience remains revolutionary enough. Is that change conceivable? Could hatred have been changed into love merely by an experience which convinced Paul of the fact of the resurrection? The answer to this question depends altogether upon the nature of the Damascus experience. If that experience was merely an hallucination, the question must be answered in the negative; an hallucination could never have produced the profound changes in the personal life of Paul which have just been contemplated; and the historian would be obliged to fall back, despite the unequivocal testimony of the Epistles, upon some theory of psychological development of which the hallucination would only be the climax. But even those who maintain the supernaturalistic view of the conversion have too often failed to do justice to the content of the experience. One fundamental feature of the experience has too often been forgotten—the appearance on the road to Damascus was the appearance of a person. Sometimes the event has been regarded merely as a supernatural interposition of God intended to produce belief in the fact of the resurrection, as merely a sign. Undoubtedly it was a sign. But it was far more; it was contact between persons. But contact between persons, even under ordinary conditions, is exceedingly mysterious; merely a look or the tone of the voice sometimes produces astonishing results. Who has not experienced the transition from mere hearsay knowledge of a person to actual contact? One meeting is often sufficient to revolutionize the entire impression; indifference or hostility gives place at once to enthusiastic devotion. Those who speak of the transformation wrought in Paul by the appearance of Jesus as magical or mechanical or inconceivable have never reflected upon the mysteries of personal intercourse.

      Only, it must have been a real person whom Paul met on the road to Damascus—not a vision, not a mere sign. If it was merely a vision or a sign, all the objections remain in force. But if it was really Jesus, the sight of His face and the words of love which He uttered may have been amply sufficient, provided the heart of Paul was renewed by the power of God's Spirit, to transform hatred into love. To call such an experience magic is to blaspheme all that is highest in human life. God was using no unworthy instrument when, by the personal presence of the Saviour, He transformed the life of Paul.

      There is, therefore, no moral or psychological objection in the way of a simple acceptance of Paul's testimony about the conversion. And that testimony is unequivocal. Paul was not converted by any teaching which he received