Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul

Lectionary: 519

“Go into the whole world
and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.
Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved;
whoever does not believe will be condemned.

 

There is a conviction among some scholars that the Christian religion was actually founded by Saint Paul. This brilliant, enthusiastic former-Pharisee joined the Jewish sect which Jesus of Nazareth had started, and then radically adapted its message and meaning to include gentiles. Under his dynamic influence the movement became majority gentile, and eventually hostile to Jews.

I first encountered this peculiar reading of the New Testament fifty years ago in the seminary, in conversation with a Jewish student. Most recently I found it in Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation, The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. (2008). I have enjoyed and respected much of her writing but was sorely disappointed by this misreading of the documents. There is ample evidence in the New Testament of Jesus’s intention to refound the Jewish religion and address it to every nation. There is every indication in the Bible that the Roman Catholic Church has been faithful to his mission. Despite Paul’s astonishing energy and genius, he did not attempt to realign the faith to his beliefs; rather, he deferred to the leadership of Saint Peter and respected the other major leaders.

Saint Luke credits the outreach to the gentiles first to the Holy Spirit, who appears in the Acts of the Apostles with the same authority as Jesus in the Gospels. That Spirit directed the teams that the apostles sent out: first Peter and John, and then Barnabas and Paul.

Peter, the spokesman and appointed head of the Apostles, had a powerful vision at Joppa which convinced him that he could not restrict the Gospel to Jews. He must accept the gentile Cornelius and his companions in Caesarea into the Communion. His training as a Jew revolted against eating with gentiles but the vision insisted, “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.”

When the Christian leaders met in Jerusalem, as Saint Luke tells us, the Spirit reassured them of this new direction and overwhelmed their reluctance to break bread with gentiles. There could be no distinction among them.

Guided by the same Holy Spirit we continue the work of the Apostles as we invite everyone to know our Lord and breathe his Spirit. If some of us have to be blinded, stunned, decked, or unhorsed to persuade us to see as God sees and know as God knows, we're demonstrating our kinship with the Apostles. Persuaded by infallible experiences we rejoice in the confidence God places in us.