Is the Damascus Christophany an account of Paul's conversion or the
call of his apostleship to Gentile Mission? Include in your
discussion an evaluation of the New Perspective on Paul.

Introduction

Although reputed to be of small stature and unattractive appearance,
Paul of Tarsus was an exceptional man by any count. His writings
which formed a sizeable portion of the New Testament had such
pervading influence on Christianity that some had labeled him
its 'real founder'? Since the groundbreaking work in E. P. Sanders'
monograph, "Paul and Palestinian Judaism" a paradigm shift had taken
place within New Testament academia with regards to the 'center' of
Pauline theology. The quest for historical Paul's life and thought
continued unabated with intense probing from sociological,
contextual, psychological, political and eschatological angles.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt a survey of scholarly views
which had been put forth in the ongoing debate on the interface
between Paul the Pharisee and Paul the Christian. Could the Damascus
Christophany best be described as Paul's conversion or vocation?
Although the issue is intricately tied with other controversial
issues like Pauline view of law, justification and divine
righteousness, my evaluation on the New Perspective would only
discuss them so far as they fall within this limited scope. There are
five New Testament accounts of Paul's conversion/call - his own
account of the experience in Galatians 1:11- 17 and Philippians 3:4-
17 and Luke's account in Acts 9:1-20, 22:1-21 and 26:2-23. Luke's
likely redactional purpose to defend the Gentile mission does not
necessarily detract from its historical reliability . As Paul's
missionary partner and travel companion, he almost certainly had
access to first hand testimony.

It is crucial to start this investigation with a proper definition of
the term "conversion" or at least, what criteria should the Damascus
Christophany meet in order to merit that label. J. M. Everts
suggested a sociological approach, in which the tell-tale description
of a convert is the tendency to reinterpret his past through the lens
of his new community . Along the same line, Alan Segal defines
conversion as "a decision to change commitments from one religious
community to another", not merely an individualistic communion with
deity. Although helpful, I doubt this sociological definition is
sufficiently precise to settle the issue. Most proponents of the New
Perspective would have no qualms accepting a conversion of sorts that
Paul the Pharisee had reoriented himself to a new community whom he
had previously persecuted. However, was there a change in his pattern
of religion? Did Paul change his mind about the means of getting in
God's covenant community? It seemed to me that if it could be shown
that the Damascus Christophany involved a shift in Paul's
soteriology, then it would be legitimate to call it a conversion. Was
there a radical, salvific discontinuity between the post-Damascus,
Pauline doctrines of justification by faith and the tradition of his
fathers? To risk a definition, conversion is primarily a profound
change in soteriology, or getting a right relationship with God,
resulting in a psychological reinterpretation of the past through the
lens of newfound faith and socialization with the new community.
Other nuances of conversion which include the political and
eschatological hope of Israel could be mentioned but conversion could
not be something less than this .

The Quest for the Historical Paul

Traditional Luther-Calvin perspective has painted a portrait of Paul
as a Pharisee who strived to merit his salvation by observing the law
and amass good works with his own effort. This form of legalism was
characteristic of the Judaism of his day. After the Damascus event,
Paul came to understand that one's legal or forensic standing before
God was not based on works, but justified freely through faith alone.
The Law-Gospel antithesis described the function of the Law as a
means to terrify the sinner with God's justice so as to seek refuge
in the imputed righteousness of Christ sola gratia (Luther) or
primarily a revelation of the perfect, divine will (Calvin).
Previously regarded as the orthodox article of faith on which the
Church either stands or falls, the doctrine of justification sola
fide was the material cause of the Reformation movement.

However, this consensus among Paul's interpreters has been steadily
eroded in the past thirty years. Perhaps the herald of the new
interpretive paradigm was Swedish Lutheran theologian, Krister
Stendahl. In his essay, "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective
Conscience of the West", Stendahl argued that since Augustine's
Confessions, Christians have misunderstood Paul through the lens of
the inward-looking, individualistic mindset of Western culture. Thus,
the apostle's original concerns about the law and communitarian
relationships between Jews and Gentiles were obscured. As a
substitute, the introspective, guilt-ridden conscience in search for
a gracious God was read into the Pauline corpus.

On the contrary, Stendahl argued, the psychological profile of Paul
in the New Testament seemed to have a "robust conscience." In
Philippians 3:6, Paul could claim, "As to righteousness, under the
law (I was) blameless." Attempts to point out any preparation towards
his conversion prior to the Damascus event seemed unconvincing. For
example, the Christophanic saying that it was hard for him to 'kick
against the goads' was probably a proverbial indication of the
futility of opposing God's will, rather than evidence of a tortured
soul resisting the Spirit's wooing . When Paul spoke of his pre-
Christian status in Galatians 1:14, he could confidently claim that
he was 'advancing in Judaism' beyond his contemporaries
and 'extremely zealous' for the ancestral traditions as proven in his
persecution of the church (Philippians 3:6). He was driven by the
belief that his action against the subversive claims about a
crucified Messiah was pious service to God in line with the model of
Phinehas, Elijah and the Maccabeans. For Paul the Shammaite
inquisitor, guilt and sorrow were not foremost in his mind.

If Stendahl heralded the impending paradigm by exposing the
presuppositions of traditional paradigm, the floodgates were opened
with the publication of Sanders's influential "Paul and Palestinian
Judaism". In the preface, Sanders spoke of his attempt to 'compare
Judaism, understood on its own terms, with Paul, understood on his
own terms'. Based on his research on ancient literature on
Palestinian Judaism (as in non-Diaspora), Sanders argued that the
caricature of Judaism as a legalistic religion was a historically
false straw man? He proposed that within the pattern of religion
found in Second Temple Judaism he dubbed covenantal
nomism, "obedience maintains one's position in the covenant, but it
does not earn God's grace as such." Obedience is required to "stay
in" God's covenant but 'getting in' was always based on God's
electing grace. In His mercy, God has chosen Israel and given them
the law. Transgression is punished. However, the law has provided
means of atonement for the restoration of covenant relationship.
Salvation is therefore not earned but solely by grace alone. While
qualifying the drawbacks of using the term 'soteriology'. Sanders
wrote that:

"When a man is concerned to be 'in' rather than 'out' we may consider
him to have a soteriological concern, even though he may have no view
concerning an afterlife at all -covenantal nomism is the view that
one's place in God's plan is established on the basis of the covenant
and that the covenant requires as the proper response of man, his
obedience to its commandments, while providing means of atonement for
transgression ."

If Sander's thesis is correct, how then shall we understand the
polemics of Paul that "a man is justified by faith apart from
observing the law". If Paul was interacting with covenantal nomism, a
religion of grace, what do we make of his Damascus experience? Here,
Sanders argued that Paul began with a prior conviction that Jesus is
the universal Savior of all, and any reference to human plight is the
necessary, rhetorical outworking from that dogmatic conviction. He
didn't start with any plight of humanity or a pre-conversion
dissatisfaction with the Law . The only problem Paul had with Judaism
was: It is not Christianity. Building on this theory, Raisanen went
even further to argue that Paul had no consistent theology of the Law
at all. However, many New Perspective scholars have critiqued Sanders'
reinterpretation of the historical Paul as a let-down despite his
revolutionary analysis of historic Judaism.

The New Perspective, while not a monolithic movement, tends to
emphasize a positive continuity between Paul and Second Temple
Judaism, rather than a Lutheran Law-Gospel antithesis. Dissatisfied
with Sander's solution, James D.G. Dunn, argued that the Pauline
phrase "works of the law" refers to nationalistic 'boundary
markers'like circumcision, Sabbaths and food laws that serve as
evidence of people 'staying in' God's covenant. They already 'got in'
by being part of God's chosen covenant community. The fiery polemics
of Paul could then be recast in the role of the apostle to the
Gentiles, on a crusade to remove such culture-specific badges that
separate Jews and Gentiles. Dunn also spent considerable effort to
argue that the Damascus Christophany was primarily Paul's calling to
the Gentile mission while remaining within covenantal nomism . In his
view, Paul saw Christ's death as breaking the barrier between Jews
and Gentiles, abolishing the boundary-marking roles of the Law. It
was only later, during the controversies in Antioch and Galatia
arising from his missionary activities, that Paul developed the
gospel of justification by faith alone, apart from the works of the
law. It was a tactical maneuver arising later in his life.
Evangelical New Testament scholar, Tom Wright, put it delightfully
that we should not look at Paul's Damascus experience as 'lost and
found' but 'found and founder'

The Case for Paul, the Apostle of Faith

If the New Perspective on Paul is right, then the article of faith
upon which the Church stands or falls is shaken to the core. Atlas on
whose shoulder was the whole world has shrugged and collapsed. But it
is still much too premature to panic and we shall evaluate their
views in light of history and Paul's self-consciousness.

Dr Paul F.M. Zahl pointed out that the real 'straw man' being raised
in the debate was ironically, Luther's Reformation perspective. To
start with, Roman Catholicism was never a Pelagian system that
teaches man could earn his way to salvation by good works and
sacraments. NT Wright's characterization of his previous traditional
understanding of Paul as a 'proto-Pelagian, who thought he could pull
himself up by his own moral bootstraps' showed this common
misunderstanding. In reality both Romanism and past/present Judaism
could be more accurately categorized as 'semi-Pelagianism' Both
patterns of religion teach that man and God are "co-operators in
salvation, that grace could complement and supplement human nature"
The issue is never whether grace or faith is involved, but ever
hinges on the little word ?sola?in sola fide and sola gratia.

According to Friedrich Avemarie, rabbinic Judaism tends to hold the
emphasis of 'electing grace' and 'works' in tension without any neat,
unified system as what Sanders proposed. In light of this correction,
we cannot readily dismiss Paul?s admission that his pre-conversion
status before God was not only based on electing grace, but also his
zealousness for the law, circumcision, ancestry and legalistic
righteousness (Galatians 1:14, Philippians 3:5-6). More recently,
scholarly research into the soteriological pattern found in diverse
Jewish literature from apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, Josephus, Philo,
the Dead Sea Scrolls and other rabbinical traditions had cast doubt
on whether 'covenantal nomism' was an adequate description of
Palestinian Judaism. In volume 1 of 'Justification and Variegated
Nomism' the contributors' findings seemed to suggest that Second
Temple Judaism was much more complex and lack uniformity . In a
review, Craig Blomberg listed some texts especially 2 Enoch, 4 Ezra,
Testament of Abraham and 2 Baruch that seem to favor a more
legalistic theology. The data gathered by Sanders' study can also be
interpreted in support for a legalistic Judaism - for instance, the
sheer number and minute detail of laws in Mishnah, that the covenant
is not even mentioned in Tannaitic writings and the rabbinic
explanation of God's election on the basis of Israel's choice to
accept the covenant or on the merits of their forefathers .
We also need to question Stendahl's thesis on whether a robust
conscience necessarily precludes an acute, introspective awareness of
sin as a peculiarly Western idea . Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and
the tax collector in Luke 18 seems to suggest that a contrite spirit
is the requirement for being 'justified'. David, the Eastern Psalmist,
may have a robust conscience (Psalm 17: 1-5) but he is also known
for struggling with inward guilt in Psalm 51. These two themes seem
to interplay in tension throughout the Old Testament until they find
a resolution and harmony at the event of Jesus' crucifixion. Colin
Kruse expressed doubt that Philippians 3:6 could be a proof-text that
Paul considered himself to have kept the law perfectly. He wrote:

"This verse is found in a context in which Paul deals with externals,
the evidences of his Jewish pedigree and piety?It is better then to
understand Philippians 3:6 in terms of misplaced pride in which the
apostle indulged in pre-Christian days. It does not reflect his views
about the possibility of perfect obedience"

In a significant contribution, Frank Thielman proposed that ancient
Jewish literature, canonical or otherwise, contained a common pattern
in which Israel's inability to keep the law (the plight) will be
cured in the eschatological future where God will free Israel to obey
His commands (the solution). This pattern, he argued, is reflected in
the Pauline corpus, especially Galatians and Romans, even if the
overall picture of Judaism is not legalistic. The bone of contention
lies in whether Israel's hope of restoration is fulfilled or yet to
come. From analyzing each epistle in its own context, Thielman argued
that there are some Jews (Paul included) who believed in a
synergistic relation between human effort and divine grace as the
means of eschatological vindication. Paul wrestled with such beliefs
in Philippians 3: 2-11 and Colossians 2:13 -14. This correction paves
the way for understanding Paul?s conversion as moving 'from plight to
solution'

Contra Dunn, Stephen Westerholm has reasoned convincingly that Paul
could use the phrase 'works of the law' and 'the law' interchangeably
in Galatians 2:16 with Galatians 2:21 . Israel did indeed pursue 'the
righteousness which is based on the law' in the context of one's
righteous status before God (Romans 9:30-31). Westerholm wrote:

'That Paul supports his rejection of the 'works of the law' in Romans
3:20, 28 by showing that Abraham was justified by faith, not works
(4:1-5) is positively fatal to Dunn's proposal. For the 'works' by
which Abraham could conceivably have been justified and of which he
might have boasted, were certainly not observances of the peculiarly
Jewish parts of Mosaic code ."

Beneath the social function of the law lies a deeper soteriological
issue such that Paul?s polemics cannot be limited to the boundary
marking roles of the law. We could note that New Perspective is
itself not based on presupposition-less exegesis. The new Paul has
become a self-reflection of the post-Holocaust inclusivist with an
ecumenical bend. Isn?t it tempting to construct a Paul who could
easily evade charges of anti-Semitism by opposing mere boundary
markers yet essentially in agreement with Judaism? He has become a
product of the spirit of the age . In any case, every responsible
exegete needs to be aware, at least, of the lens with which he
interprets data.

Evidently, Paul understood himself as "formerly in Judaism" (Galatians
1:13), which imply that he was no longer in Judaism. Thomas Schreiner
noted the term Judaism was used only twice in NT to depict his pre-
conversion days in which he was devoted to 'the ancestral traditions'
(Galatians 1:14). The expression was never used to describe his post-
conversion faith, which he described as 'not living Jewishly'
(Galatians 2:14). Dunn?s response is to restrict 'Judaism' in this
text as the sectarian practice of distinctive national markers
founded by the Maccabeans to keep out Gentiles and Hellenist Jews,
rather than generically 'the religion of the Jews.' However such a
neat dichotomy between the Judaisms - Hellenist and Palestinian -
cannot be sustained because Hellenism has intermingled and influenced
Judaism significantly by the time of Paul .

Conversely, a good case can be put forth to trace Paul?s development
of his gospel back to the Christophany. While it may be an
overstatement to claim that every aspect of his kerygma springs from
that experience, Seyoon Kim pointed out that Paul himself interpreted
the Christophany as the pleasure of God 'to reveal his Son in me'. (the
gospel) so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles (the
commission) . If Paul developed the gospel of justification by faith
later during the Antioch controversies, as Dunn suggests , then the
polemical context in Galatians 1 and 2 would make little sense. Here,
Paul defended his gospel, apostleship and the Gentile mission as
having an inseparable and divine origin in the Christophany. If he
came to realize the gospel sola fide or the Gentile mission only much
later, the argument would inevitably fall apart . In this context,
Paul's sojourn to Arabia 'immediately after' his conversion could more
naturally refer to his missionary activities for which king Aretas
would later pursue him in Damascus. If so, Paul embarked on his
Gentile mission shortly after his conversion and probably understood
his calling as parallel to that of Isaiah and Jeremiah . One can
justly question what kind of 'good news' he could possibly have
preached if justification by faith was a later tactical development.

Kim's thesis is remarkably compatible with Luke's account that the
commission Paul received from Christ to both Jews and Gentiles
(Romans 1:16) is primarily salvific - to open their eyes from
darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God so that they may
receive forgiveness of sins (Acts 22:16-18). The notion that Jews
have an equally valid and different system of salvation, apart from
Christ, is therefore excluded. Genuine tolerance in Jewish-Christian
relation should be upheld by the doctrine that man has the image of
God, not by downplaying the central doctrine of justification sola
fide.

Conclusion

In summary, the Damascus Christophany can best be understood as both
Paul?s soteriological conversion and missiological calling. The New
Perspective proponents were right in what they affirm that it is a
vocational call to Gentile mission but they were mistaken in what
they deny because Paul's conversion provided its impetus and
theological basis. His experience could serve as a model for us in
the sense that global mission is the outworking of a personal
conversion from sin to Christ. The New Testament knows nothing of
conversion without a corollary calling to the lost also. As someone
put it, evangelism is merely a beggar telling another beggar where to
find bread. Indeed, Sanders put us all in his debt by refuting a
simplistic portrait of Judaism and Dunn brought to our attention much-
neglected sociological aspects of Pauline theology. However, if we
are to understand the life and thought of the historical Paul
himself, we would do well to heed Westerholm's call to return and
read exegetical masters like Luther once again.

Footnotes:

1 That Romans 7 is an autobiographical account is highly debatable. Kummel'
s view that it was mainly rhetorical in nature became widely held
among NT scholars. However Mark Siefrid qualified that although Kummel was
primarily correct, the identity of 'I' cannot be divorced from Paul's
experience. In any case, it seemed prudent not to be sidetracked by
this debate here. 1 Timothy 1: 12-15 clearly indicated that Paul saw
his experience in 'the vocabulary of repentance' (a phrase by Segal),
as in having received mercy for his past of ignorance and unbelief.
But it has been largely left out from most discussions in view of the
lack of unanimity among NT scholars about its authenticity.

2 D. A. Carson, D. Moo and L. Morris, Introduction to New Testament,
(Leicester: Apollos, 1992) pages 206 ?211

3 G. F. Hawthorne and R. P. Martin, eds. Dictionary of Paul and His
letters, (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity, 993), Article entitled ?
Conversion and Call of Paul?

4 A. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the
Pharisee, (New Haven: Yale, 1990) page 117.

5 Tom Wright is an example of a scholar who emphasized Paul?s hard
line political stance and eschatological vindication of God?s
covenant community.

6 F. Thielman, A Contextual Approach: Paul and the Law, (Illinois:
InterVarsity, 1994) pages 14-27.

7 The article was first published in English in Harvard Theological
Review in 1963.

8 D. A. Carson, D. Moo and L. Morris, Introduction to New Testament,
(Leicester: Apollos, 1992) page 218

9 J. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns
of Religion, (London: SCM Press, 1977), page 420

10 For example, Sanders noted that Rabbinic Judaism is not primarily
other-worldly. 'What must I do to be saved' is not a prominent query
for them. J. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, page 75.

11 F. Thielman, A Contextual Approach: Paul and the Law, pages 35 ?
37.

12 J. D. G. Dunn, 'A Light to the Gentiles' or 'The End of the Law'
The Significance of the Damascus Road Christophany for Paul' in the
monograph Jesus, Paul and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians,
(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1990), pages 98 - 99. Quoted in S.
Kim, Paul and the New Perspective: Second Thoughts on the Origin of
Paul?s Gospel, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), page 22.

13 T. Wright, Saint Paul really said: Was Paul of Tarsus the real
founder of Christianity? (Oxford: Lion, 1997) page 32.

14 P. F. M. Zahl, Mistakes of the New Perspective, Themelios Vol
27:1, page 7.

15 In Summary and Conclusions, Don Carson wrote that "Sanders is not
wrong everywhere but he is wrong when he tries to establish his category
is right everywhere"

16 T. Shreiner, The Law & Its Fulfillment: A Pauline Theology of Law,
(Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993) pages 114 ?117.

17 S. Kim, The Origin of Paul's Gospel, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1981), page 53. Kim cited the Thanksgiving Hymns of Qumran as
suggesting the possibility for rigorous Jews to sometimes doubt their
ability to keep the law perfectly.

18 C. Kruse, Paul, the Law and Justification, (Leicester: Apollos,
1996), page 83.

19 Frank Thielman, From Plight to Solution: A Jewish Framework for
Understanding Paul's View of the Law in Galatians and Romans (Leiden:
Brill, 1989) page 45. Quote was from Kruse, op. cit., page 45.

20 S. Westerholm, Israel's Law and the Church?s Faith: Paul and His
recent Interpreters, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), page 118. Also,
compare Romans 3:28 with Romans 3:31.

21 S. Westerholm, ibid., page 119.

22 Kirster Stendahl, for example, is actively involved in ecumenical
dialogue with Jewish scholars via the International Council of
Christians and Jews. The perceived advantage of improving post-
Holocaust Jewish-Christian relation may be done at the expense of
silencing Paul?s exclusivistic gospel.

23 J.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, (Grand
Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans Publishing, 1998), page 347-348.

24 Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter
in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, 2 volumes
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974)

25 S. Kim, The Origin of Paul's Gospel, page 57. The text was taken
from Galatians 2:16.

26 J. D. G. Dunn, 'Paul and Justification by Faith' in The Road from
Damascus edited by R. Longenecker, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997),
page 99. Quoted in Kim, Paul and the New Perspective, page 27.

27 S. Kim, The Origin of Paul's Gospel, pages 58 - 60.

28 S. Kim, Paul and the New Perspective, pages 101-104.

29 S. Kim, Paul and the New Perspective, page 49. Kim also pointed
out the 'problematic implication of Dunn's minimalistic view' it makes
the gospel practically irrelevant to the Jews? A Messiah who does not
save Israel is a contradiction of terms!



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