BEGINNING FROM JERUSALEM

The documents which have been preserved make much of the spread of the faith from the church
in Jerusalem and especially of the missionary labours of Paul. It was natural that the initial centre
of Christianity should be in Jerusalem. Here was the geographic focus of Judaism. Here Jesus had
been crucified and raised from the dead and here, at his express command, the main nucleus of
his followers had waited until the Pentecost experience brought them a compelling dynamic. Peter
was their acknowledged spokesman, but before many years, presumably as his missionary travels
carried him ever more frequently away from Jerusalem, James the brother of Jesus became the
head of the community. During at least part of Jesus public ministry an unbeliever, James had
been won somewhere along the way, possibly by the special appearance to him of the risen Christ.
To their neighbours these early followers of Jesus, for th
BEGINNING FROM JERUSALEM

The documents which have been preserved make much of the spread of the faith from the church
Jerusalem and especially of the missionary labours of Paul. It was natural that the initial centre
Christianity should be in Jerusalem. Here was the geographic focus of Judaism. Here Jesus had be
crucified and raised from the dead and here, at his express command, the main nucleus of h
followers had waited until the Pentecost experience brought them a compelling dynamic. Peter w
their acknowledged spokesman, but before many years, presumably as his missionary travels carrie
him ever more frequently away from Jerusalem, James the brother of Jesus became the head of th
community. During at least part of Jesus public ministry an unbeliever, James had been w
somewhere along the way, possibly by the special appearance to him of the risen Christ. To the
neighbours these early followers of Jesus, for they did not yet bear the distinctive designation
Christian, must have appeared another sect of Judaism, predominantly Galilean in membersh
distinguished from other Jews by their belief that Jesus was the Messiah and by their expectation
the early return of their Lord. Their leader, James, appears to have been especially conservative in h
loyalty to Jewish customs. They continued to use the temple as a place of worship and observed th
Jewish law, including its ceremonies, circumcision, and the dietary regulations. Even some of t
Pharisees joined them. So far as we know, their numbers were recruited entirely from Jews a
proselytes to Judaism.

CHRISTIANITY BEGINS TO MOVE OUT INTO THE NON-JEWISH WORLD

The dream of universality in the teachings and life of Jesus would not down. Early there were those
who believed that Jesus would render obsolete the temple and the distinctively Jewish customs. Of
these we hear especially of Stephen. Stoned by the orthodox Jews for his views, views which
outraged their complacent assumption that they were a people peculiarly chosen by god to the
exclusion of others, Stephen became, significantly, the first Christian of whom we know to suffer
death for the faith. His tragic end made it clear that his convictions, inherent as they were in the
Gospel and soon to be shared by the majority of Christians, would render it impossible for
Christianity to be confined within the boundaries of Judaism. The conflict was unavoidable, for som
of the basic features of the Gospel made of Christianity, if it were to be true to its founder, a religio
quite distinct from Judaism.

The persecution set off by the death of Stephen forced some Christians to realize as they had not
done before the universalism which was of the essence of the Gospel and started a missionary wav
which quickly carried Christianity permanently outside Judaism. Presumably this would have
happened had Stephen not had his revolutionary views so tragically dramatized. Perhaps it was
already occurring, but if so, our records are too fragmentary to tell us of its beginnings. Probably th
experience which soon led Peter to see that non-Jews were “granted repentance unto life” without
CHRISTIANITY BEGINS TO MOVE OUT INTO THE NON-JEWISH WORLD

The dream of universality in the teachings and life of Jesus would not down. Early there were
those who believed that Jesus would render obsolete the temple and the distinctively Jewish
customs. Of these we hear especially of Stephen. Stoned by the orthodox Jews for his views, views
which outraged their complacent assumption that they were a people peculiarly chosen by god to
the exclusion of others, Stephen became, significantly, the first Christian of whom we know to
suffer death for the faith. His tragic end made it clear that his convictions, inherent as they were in
the Gospel and soon to be shared by the majority of Christians, would render it impossible for
Christianity to be confined within the boundaries of Judaism. The conflict was unavoidable, for
some of the basic features of the Gospel made of Christianity, if it were to be true to its founder, a
religion quite distinct from Judaism.

The persecution set off by the death of Stephen forced some Christians to realize as they had not
done before the universalism which was of the essence of the Gospel and started a missionary
wave which quickly carried Christianity permanently outside Judaism. Presumably this would have
happened had Stephen not had his revolutionary views so tragically dramatized. Perhaps it was
already occurring, but if so, our records are too fragmentary to tell us of its beginnings. Probably
the experience which soon led Peter to see that non-Jews were “granted repentance unto life”
without first becoming Jews would have come to him and to others had Stephen never lived. As it
was, however, some of those who were forced to flee by the persecution in Jerusalem won
converts in Samaria, and, what was even more important, still others preached to Greeks in
Antioch, then the largest city in Syria and important radiating centre of Hellenistic culture.
Christianity was moving outside Judaism into that element of the Mediterranean world, Geek-
speaking and Hellenistic, in which it was to have its greatest early growth. It was at Antioch,
fittingly, that the followers of Jesus were first given the distinctive designation by which they have
ever since been known, Christian. The word, Itself Greek, symbolized the emergence of the new
faith into the wider world.

PAUL, MISSIONARY AT LARGE

Outstanding in carrying the faith into the non-Jewish, and especially the Hellenistic world was a
Jew whose conversion is closely associated with the death of Stephen. This was Saul, or, to use the
name by which he is best remembered, Paul. We know more about Paul than we do of any other
Christian of the first century. Not only does The Acts of the Apostles make him and his mission its
main theme, but we also have, most fortunately, a number of his letters which give us intimate
picture of him. Yet much as Paul tells us about himself, and much as Luke add, there are great gaps
in our information, both about what he did, and, still more tantalizingly, in our insight into his
inner life.

It is clear that Paul was of pure Jewish stock, that his father had that highly prized privilege, Roman
citizenship, that the son was born and reared at Tarsus, a Hellenistic city in what we now call Asia
Minor, Stronghold of Greek learning. However, far from conforming to the Greek pattern, Paul had
been carefully nurtured in Phariseeism. While probably not highly educated in Greek philosophy
and literature, he was thoroughly at home in the Greek language, did not use it crudely, and was
steeped in the Septuagint, the famous Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures. He also knew
Aramaic and his training in Phariseeism made him think naturally in the methods of interpreting
the sacred books which were current in that school of thought. Ardent by disposition, the young
Paul may have been all the more loyal and dogmatic in the strict adherence to the Jewish law and
customs entailed by his Phariseeism because of his consciousness of the paganism which was all
about him in Tarsus. As a youth he went to Jerusalem, the citadel of his religion, to study at the
feet of Gamaliel, one of the outstanding teachers in Pharisaic circles. Here he came in touch with
the followers of Jesus and joined in persecuting them. He stood by when Stephen was stoned and
was sent to Damascus with letters arrested and brought to Jerusalem for trial those who were
adherents of the Nazarene heresy.

While on his way to Damascus, just as he was nearing that city, Paul was smitten by a vision which
changed his life. He believed that the risen Jesus appeared to him and spoke whith him, and was
convinced that the experience was as authentic as those which had earlier come to Peter, James,
and the others.

Into the inner history of the processes which led to this climax we can enter only through
conjecture. Yet it is fascinating to make the attempt. We know from his letters that Paul was
intense, sensitive lacking in humour, given to moments of deep depression and of high, quivering
exaltation, unquestioning in his belief in god and in the validity of the Jewish law. We also are
aware that, by what seems to be a strange paradox, Paul regarded himself as blameless when
measured by the Jewish law yet suffered from a deep sense of frustration and inner defeat. In
some of the most poignant passages in literature, passages which because of their very vividness
and obvious emotion seem to be autobiographical, he speaks of having been alive once “without
the law”, but that the commandment proved to be death to him, for sin, “taking occasion by the
commandment,” deceived him and by it killed him. He goes on to say, in moving words which
reflect the experience of many conscientious and high-minded souls: “I am carnal, sold under sin.
For that which I do I allow not, for what I would, that do I not, but what I hate, that do I… O
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” By what he honestly
believed to be God`s will he felt driven to persecute the Christians, yet, perhaps because of the
radiance which he had seen in the face of the dying Stephen, his inner turmoil was accentuated,
for he here glimpsed a life which had found the inward victory and peace to which he was a
stranger. He was set to wondering whether, after all, those whom he was hounding might not be
right and he mistaken as to what God´s will actually was.

Moreover, Paul may have been both repelled and attracted by the universality of the Gospel which
he glimpsed in the burden of the message of Stephen. Reared a strict Jew in a Hellenistic, pagan
city, he was all the more proud of his Hebrew heritage because he was a member of a minority. He
held that his were the chosen people bound to God by a special covenant, and presumably he was
contemptuous of Gentiles as being outside the pale. That the barrier between Jew and Gentile
should be erased by Christ must have outraged much that he had held as axiomatic. Yet it may also
have appealed to him.

The inner debate appears to have been going on during the long ride to Damascus, for in one
account of the vision the risen Christ is quoted as saying to him: “It is hard for thee to kick against
the pricks,” implying that he had been fighting the trend in his mind which was leading him to be,
as he later gladly described himself, “a slave” and a missionary (“apostle”) of Christ. Certainly in
that blinding instant Paul realized that it was not so much the Christians as Jesus whom he was
persecuting.

It appears to be significant that the decisive moment came as Paul was nearing Damascus, where
he would be compelled to act. Seeing the risen Christ and hearing his voice, he was comforted by a
Christian who, in spite of his fears of the persecutor, obeying a compelling voice, came to him,
declared himself a messenger of the lord Jesus, and welcomed him into the Christian brotherhood.

By temperament a mystic, possessed of a usually quick, incisive mind, Paul was susceptible to the
kind of experience which came to him on the road and in Damascus. Again and again later at
crucial times he was to hear a divine command and obey it, but never again were the
consequences to be so soul-shaking and revolutionary.

To suggest the background, disposition, and psychology which prepared Paul for what happened
on the Damascus road is not to deny its reality or the truth of his profound conviction that through
it Christ himself had spoken to him. Here is one of the most important events in the entire course
of Christianity. It gave to that faith one of its greatest instruments. As a missionary Paul was to
have a leading role in the plating of Christianity communities. As a thinker he was to place an
indelible impress upon Christianity in its conceptions of God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the
Church. His spectacular conversion after deep struggle was to be a prototype of the spiritual
autobiographies of untold thousands of men and women, most of them obscure but some of them
among the most prominent in the history of Christianity.

So great has been his influence that Paul is often said to have been the chief creator of what we
now know as Christianity, and so to have altered what had been transmitted to him that it became
quite different from the teachings of Jesus and transformed Jesus from the Galilean teacher and
martyr into the cosmic Christ. That so it seems to the present author, is a mistaken interpretation
of the facts. Paul himself emphatically declared that he and those who had accepted the faith
through him had “the mind of Christ,” That is entirely true. While clearly not a colourless
reproduction of Jesus or one who was slavishly bound to the strict letter of the sayings of his
Master, and while giving evidence on almost every page of his letters of his own distinctive
characteristics, Paul was so loyal to the mind of Jesus as we see it in the Four Gospels that did we
not have these documents we would still be able to know what manner of person Jesus was what
were the essentials of his teachings, and his crucifixion, resurrection, and continued presence.
Without the Gospels we would not have so many of the incidents or of the specific sayings of
Jesus, nor would we be so much aware of his personal characteristics, such as his humour and his
piercing glance, nor was the kingdom of heaven as prominent as in the sayings of Jesus as
recorded in the Gospels, but if we were confined to Paul´s letters we would not be led to a picture
of Jesus essentially different from that which the Gospels give us.

This is all the more so because of Paul´s devotion to Christ. It was of the essence of his new faith
that the old Paul had been crucified with Christ, that the new Paul lived by faith in Christ, for Christ
had loved him and given himself for him. Paul was profoundly convinced that Christ lived in him,
and he expected after his physical death to be with Christ. Possessed by such a controlling passion,
Paul would certainly seek to know all that he could of the teachings and earthly life of Jesus and to
be true to what Jesus had said and been.

Moreover, although the phrase, “the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of heaven,” was not as
frequently in the writings of Paul as it was on the lips of Jesus, the idea was often there. To Paul´s
mind, God had a purpose which includes the entire creation, God´s plan for “the fullness of times”
is “to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth”
and “the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God”
Paul depicted the whole creation as groaning in travail and pain, “for the creature was made
subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope.
Because the creature itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious
liberty of the children of God.” In this the kingdom or reign of God was interpreted, quite certainly
as Jesus viewed it, as having a cosmic sweep including not only the human race and human
history, buy all the vast universe.

Of the precise chronology and detailed course of Paul´s life after his conversion we are not fully
informed. Yet we know much. For a time Paul remained in Damascus. There, to the amazement
and discomfiture of the Jewish authorities, he, the recent persecutor of the new faith, boldly
declared that Jesus was the Son of God and won some to his views. Not unnaturally, there were
those among the Jews who sought to kill him, and he deemed it wise to leave the city, going by
night and being let down in a basket from the top of the wall to escape those who were watching
the gates for him. He then went to Arabia, to which part we do not know but presumably a portion
not far from Syria. Nor are we told what he did while in Arabia or how long he was there. He
informs us that from Arabia he returned to Damascus.

“After three years,” he goes on to say, but whether measured from his conversion or his return to
Damascus seems not entirely clear, Paul went to Jerusalem and was with Peter for fifteen days and
also saw James, the brother of Jesus. We may surmise, although we cannot prove that through
these contacts he learned much of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus. To one of
Paul´s temperament this brief sojourn in Jerusalem must have been deeply moving. Memories of
his student days and of the persecution in which he had an active part, and scenes associated with
the life and death of his new Master must have stirred him to the depths. It is not surprising that in
the temple he fell into a trance and seemed to see Jesus and talk with him, and that the burden of
their conversation was Paul´s future work. Nor is it strange that Paul wished to be a missionary to
his own people. Indeed, he never outgrew his eager longing that all Jews might become as he was,
a Christian. Perhaps it was in that hour of illumination that he could see that from his birth god
had been preparing him to “reveal His Son” in him.

Yet the conviction came to Paul that his mission was to be to the Gentiles, the non-Jews. He was to
be a pioneer. The universalism of the Gospel which may have been one of the causes of his
original antagonism had gripped him he declared that by special revelation the insight had come
to him that through Christ the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles had been broken down,
that to both the way of life had been opened in Crist, and that the prerequisite of entering upon it
was not heredity but faith, faith that was open to all men. He burned to preach the Gospel where
no one else had taken it.

In going into a city for the first time Paul usually to a synagogue and there declared Jesus to be the
Christ. When as generally happened, some heeded him but the majority, outraged, drove him out,
he sought the Gentiles. Nor would he have his converts become Jews and conform to the ritualistic
practices of the Jewish religion. To him the contrast between Judaism and the Christian message
was sharp. His experience had taught the meticulous observance of the law, for no one could ever
fully keep the commands which God had given for men´s instruction and guidance, or, if they
attempted to God´s favour in that fashion, they would either be in despair or deceive themselves
and be proud of having done so, and thus be guilty of the most deadly of all sins. That life is,
rather, so Paul declared, to be received trough simple faith, a full, trusting commitment of one´s
entire self to God in response to God´s amazing love as seen a Christ.