The Resurrection of Jesus Fact #7: The Conversion of Paul, because He saw Jesus

 I'm putting the apostle Paul in the largest text available to me because he is so important. 

I mentioned him multiple times in the last post. Here I will just remind the reader that three of the seven undisputed texts of Paul, even among critical scholars, are Galatians, Philippians, and 1 Corinthians.

Philippians 3:4-6 If someone else thinks they have reason to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless. 

Galatians 1:13-14 For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. 

So basically Paul was a blood-born, obsessively bred Jew. Specifically, he was a Pharisee. Jewish rabbis in the day of Jesus became famous for having the entire Old Testament memorized(1). He had a thorough knowledge of the scriptures and a unshakable dedication to God. This led him to try to destroy the unholy blaspheme of the Christian church. (See the post on the embarrassment of the crucifixion for the information.)

Or so he thought.

"There is little doubt, historically, about what converted Paul. He had a vision of Jesus raised from the dead. This is what he himself says, and it is recorded as one of the key incidents in the book of Acts." (2)

That comes from Ehrman, not Habermas, although they basically say the same thing. Ehrman also points to these two passages(3):

In Galatians 1:15-16, Paul speaks of his conversion: "But when God, who set me apart from my mother's womb and called me by His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me..."

More specific detail proves His conversion from 1 Corinthians 15:8-10: "...and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect." 

Notice the parallel usage of the "of grace" part. He speaks of it causing His faith in Christ, making Him truly dedicated to the one true God. 

In Acts his conversion via a vision is thoroughly explicit, but I don't even know how skeptical scholars identify it as reliable in that case, so I just ignore the book's information.

Did Paul have an epiphany?

Imagine this scenario:

"While on his way to Damascus, Paul and his traveling companions engage in discussions concerning why Jesus could not have been the Messiah. One of his colleagues raises the point that the Scriptures clearly state that anyone hanged on a tree is cursed by God and that crucifixion met that criterion (Deut. 21:23) [this is also mentioned in the crucifixion post]. God would exalt his Messiah; not curse him. They all nod in agreement. Then Paul experiences an epiphany. He suddenly understands what Christians mean when they say that the Messiah became cursed by God for us and in doing so paid the penalty for our sins. The Messianic prophecies in Isaiah 53 of a suffering Messiah now makes sense to him. As a result of this epiphany, Paul is now convinced that Christianity is true and converts." (4)

To begin with, surely no one of his stature would convert just like that because Christianity makes sense in one place. So let's imagine that he was, say, impressed with the survival and formation of the Christian church, and came to think it was true. 

I think the best response is that there is only absence of evidence for this idea, and that is evidence of absence. He doesn't say this converted him. There's no evidence for that. Au contraire, he just demands that Jesus appeared to him, and this was by the grace of God, and it led him to conversion. I think of Galatians 3, where Paul talks about the law for most of it. He even quotes the Old Testament three times. And he talked about his conversion at the start of that book! 

"He must have been enormously learned from the Scriptures from an early age," pointed out Ehrman(5). Elsewhere he points out that passages like Psalms 22 and Isaiah 53 were not obscure parts of the Jewish scriptures(6). So this information in them was of course in his head. It is very likely that had Paul converted to faith originally from the scriptures, he would have done so before persecuting Christians.  He would, of course, know the main message they preached: that Jesus's death was the atonement for sin. (Appropriately, see 1 Corinthians 15:3, the first part of the early creed for that.) Paul probably could have considered the Christian claim and compared it to the scriptures and "debunk" it in less than a minute!

I mean, Ehrman himself argues that it is obvious that the passages don't really refer to Jesus (none of them ever have the word Messiah). They could be interpreted in other ways -- they were not interpreted to refer to the Messiah. Again, see the post on the crucifixion.

Even when just thinking about people in general, smart people will think they have the truth and argue for it, even if there seems to be strong evidence against them, like in debates. Would Paul really start questioning his beliefs because of some other interpretations of some scriptures? 

Furthermore, it would help with his credentials actually if not only had he seen Jesus, but God's grace first shown through His word. Ehrman points out that Paul had a number of challenges from churches, including during 2 Corinthians, when people thought he had "only a rudimentary understanding of the faith" (7). Ehrman does wish that we had more writings of Paul, because the ones we do have aren't just, like, a "the fundamentals of Christianity and me." Instead, they were focused at what the churches were dealing with at the time. But we do have seven letters (and only that, as critical scholars say), so surely he would say it sometime when it would be important and point it out when appropriate. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Paul's report that he turned around because Jesus appeared to him, when right before he was a zealous, highly educated, supposedly as justified as one person could be (he had proof from God's word!), man.

So obviously this couldn't be overturned by just a surviving church. Paul was witnessing the church, and could just explain it away as what skeptics do nowadays: phenomena. People were just buying into lies, Paul thought.

I remember thinking a long time ago, "Even if Paul hadn't said he never was a Christian before seeing Jesus, what other reasonable explanation could there be?" It is true, nothing else had the power to change his mind. Instead, Jesus appeared to this person who wanted to wipe His children off the map. The only reasonable explanation is that first Paul saw Jesus, and this forced him to start "thinking backward." (8)

Citations:

1. Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI. 2016), 45.

2. Bart Ehrman, Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend (Oxford University Press: Oxford, NY. 2006), 111.

3. Ibid., 112-13.

4. Gary R. Habermas and Micheal R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Kregel Publications: Grand Rapids, MI. 2004), 118. 

5. Ehrman, Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene, 105.

6. https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/debates/is-there-historical-evidence-for-the-resurrection-of-jesus-the-craig-ehrman

He said: "...these are passages from Isaiah and the Psalms. These are not passages hidden away in Malachi someplace. These passages are central passages to Jewish life and worship, and the followers of Jesus demonstrated that they went through the scriptures to understand what it all meant. This also, by the way, is found in good and early sources that the followers of Jesus did exactly that."

7. Ehrman, Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene, 90.

8. Ibid., 113. Ehrman quotes New Testament scholar E.P. Sanders.