02 — Conversion and Call
The hinge of Paul’s life and the root of his gospel: the encounter on the road to Damascus, in which the risen Christ arrested the persecutor and made him the apostle to the nations. This section examines the event as Acts narrates it three times (Acts 9; 22; 26) and as Paul himself attests it (Gal. 1:11–17; 1 Cor. 15:8; Phil. 3:4–11), and the transformation of “persecutor to apostle” that became the irreducible center of his self-understanding.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)
Everything in Paul flows from the Damascus road. His apostleship, he insists, came “not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:1); his gospel he “neither received of man… but by the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:12); and his right to be called an apostle rests on having seen the risen Lord — “last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time” (1 Cor. 15:8). The encounter is at once a conversion (from persecutor to believer) and, in the language Paul prefers, a call (the prophetic commissioning of one “separated… from my mother’s womb,” Gal. 1:15, in the idiom of Jeremiah and the Servant of Isaiah). This section holds together the three Acts accounts and Paul’s own testimony, weighs their differences honestly, and draws out why the event grounds both his theology of grace and his sense of mission.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Damascus Road | The encounter itself: the three Acts narratives (Acts 9:1–19; 22:6–16; 26:12–18) and their variations, Paul’s own first-person witness (Gal. 1:11–17; 1 Cor. 15:8), the light, the voice, the blindness and Ananias, and how the accounts are read together. |
| Persecutor to Apostle | The transformation as the center of Paul’s identity and theology: call versus conversion, the prophetic-call language of Galatians, grace measured against the memory of persecution, and the patristic reading of the event as the paradigm of mercy. |
See Also
- Saul of Tarsus — the persecutor before the encounter
- Grace and Righteousness — the doctrine of grace rooted in the call
- Chrysostom and the Apostle — the patristic reading of Paul’s conversion
- The Church Fathers — the tradition through which the call is interpreted
References
- The Holy Bible, King James Version. The Acts of the Apostles; the Epistles to the Galatians, First Corinthians, Philippians.
- John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles. Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 11.
- Kim, Seyoon. The Origin of Paul’s Gospel. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981.
- Segal, Alan F. Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.