St. Paul
Oversimplified
- St. Paul is an Apostle
- St. Paul wrote much of the New Testament
His Story
St. Paul began as Saul, a devoted Pharisee who persecuted the early Church. On the road to Damascus he met the risen Christ, and everything shifted — not into a new religion, but into a new way of seeing the same God and the same promises he had always served. This entry follows the notes: the Damascus encounter, why "conversion" is a misleading word for it, the Jewish mystical background some read behind his visions, the ground of his apostleship, and his earlier work as a persecutor.
The Road to Damascus
The Encounter
Both tellings are in Acts. Acts 9.1-19 narrates it, and Paul retells it himself in Acts 22.1-22. At the time his name was still Saul — a zealous Pharisee traveling to Damascus to arrest Christians. A light from heaven throws him to the ground and a voice says, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" When he asks who is speaking, the answer is "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." He is left blind for three days, until Ananias lays hands on him and his sight returns.
A Witness of the Resurrection
Paul treats this meeting as the hinge of his whole ministry. In 1 Corinthians 15.3-8 he lists the appearances of the risen Christ and places himself at the end of the line: "last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me." In Galatians 1.11-16 he insists the gospel he preaches came not from any man but "through a revelation of Jesus Christ." For Paul, Damascus is not a private religious experience — it is his firsthand sighting of the risen Lord, and the last of the resurrection appearances.
St. Pauls "Conversion"
Acts 9.1-19 speaks to St. Pauls conversion to Christianity. The term "conversion" however carries with it modern baggage, and requires nuance. Conversion often implies leaving one religion and entering into another. Its more accurate to describe it as a natural continuation through new revelation of St. Pauls faith as a Pharisee. He did not switch gods or abandon the Scriptures of Israel; he met the Messiah those Scriptures had promised. Same God, same prophecies, same hope — now seen through the lens of the risen Christ. Calling it a "conversion to Christianity," the way it often comes up in conversation, imports a later and tidier category onto what Paul lived as continuity.
He Never Left the Law
Paul keeps defending the Law after Damascus. When he reaches Jerusalem, James notes how many believers are "all zealous for the law," and Paul takes part in the temple rite to show he still walks in observance (Acts 21.20-21). And in Romans 3.31 he puts the question head-on: "Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law." Whatever changed for Paul, it was not a rejection of the God and Law of Israel.
Paul and Merkabah Mysticism
Caught Up to the Third Heaven
In 2 Corinthians 12.1-6 Paul describes someone "caught up to the third heaven... caught up into paradise" who heard "things that cannot be told." He tells it in the third person — "I know a man in Christ" — but the passage almost certainly describes Paul himself. Verse 7 gives it away: the warning against being conceited "because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations" only makes sense if the revelations were his own.
A Link to Jewish Mysticism
The details here — ascent through the heavens, entering paradise, hearing heavenly speech — match the pattern of Merkabah Mysticism, the Jewish contemplative tradition of the divine throne-chariot. It shows Paul at least knew this world. Modern scholars read Paul's ascent against these throne-vision traditions and even line it up with the rabbinic story of "the four who entered pardes."[^1] This connection rests on modern scholarship; it is a reasonable reading, not a claim defined by the Church's tradition.
Why It Matters
The point isn't to pin down exactly what Paul practiced. It's that a figure like Paul knew this contemplative world firsthand — that the vision of God was something the earliest Christians sought and received. Seen that way, Paul's ascent stands in the same stream that later flows into Hesychasm, where the one who prays beholds the uncreated glory of Christ. (The line from Paul to hesychasm is offered as a synthesis, not a defined teaching of the Church.)
Paul as an Apostle
Paul rests his authority as an apostle on the Damascus encounter. He had not walked with Jesus during the earthly ministry, so his claim to the office stands on having seen the risen Christ and been sent by him directly. That is why 1 Corinthians 15.3-8 and Galatians 1.11-16 matter so much to him: they are not just testimony, they are his credentials.
Saul the Persecutor
Before Damascus, Saul was an active enemy of the Church. He stands approving the death of Stephen, the witnesses laying their coats at his feet (Acts 7.58-60, Acts 8.1). He goes house to house, dragging believers off to prison (Acts 8.3). And he is still "breathing threats and murder against the disciples" when he sets out for Damascus with letters authorizing more arrests (Acts 9.1-2). The man who met Christ on that road was, by his own later admission, a persecutor first.
Paul the Pharisee — within Judaism
It is easy to imagine Paul as a man who abandoned Judaism for a new religion, but neither the New Testament nor recent scholarship supports that picture. Paul never stopped calling himself a Jew: "as to the law, a Pharisee" (Philippians 3.5), trained (Acts says) at the feet of Gamaliel. Even after Damascus he did not reject "the Law" in the sense of the Torah itself — he keeps citing its narratives of Abraham as permanently valid, and can insist, "we establish the law" (Romans 3.31).[^jant] What Paul fought over was narrower and sharper: whether Gentile believers had to take on the specific "works of the law" — circumcision above all, along with the food laws — as a condition of belonging to God's people. His answer, that they need not, because a person "is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ" (Galatians 2.16), was not a repudiation of Israel's Scriptures but a claim about how the nations are now grafted into Israel's God through the Messiah.[^jant] Much recent scholarship therefore reads Paul "within Judaism" rather than against it — a Jewish apostle wrestling, from the inside, with what the coming of the Messiah meant for the Law and for the Gentiles now streaming in (see Fulfillment of The Law, Justification, The Council of Jerusalem).
[^1]: Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven (1982); and C.R.A. Morray-Jones, "Paradise Revisited (2 Cor 12:1–12)," Harvard Theological Review (1993). [^jant]: The Jewish Annotated New Testament (eds. Amy-Jill Levine & Marc Zvi Brettler, Oxford Univ. Press), essays "The Law" (Jonathan Klawans) and "Paul and Judaism" (Mark D. Nanos) — Paul's continuing identity as a Torah-affirming Jew ("we establish the law," Rom 3.31; Abraham's narrative as "eternally valid"), his rejection of certain "works of the law" (circumcision, food laws) specifically for Gentile believers, and the "Paul within Judaism" reading of his letters, (paraphrased). Scripture quoted from the WEB corpus text.