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Showing posts with label Paul in 4D. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul in 4D. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

The Apostle Paul in 4D

Note:  attached below is something I wrote some time ago as an apologetic piece.  I'm not sure how useful it is in detail, but I thought the concept itself might be of interest.  So, I've presented it here in its entirety.  










Paul in 4D


By
Kevin Lloyd Kilgore
V7.0 May 28, 2015










Table of Contents

Introduction – from Jesus to Paul                     
Paul in 4D – the argument, simply stated 
Paul’s Letters – indisputable                             
Deceived                                                          
Deceiver                                                          
Delusional                                                        
Disciple                                                            
Decision – your turn                                          



Introduction – from Jesus to Paul

In the book Mere Christianity, CS Lewis presented a Christian apologetic argument regarding the deity of Jesus Christ that has become known as the “Lord, Liar, Lunatic Argument.”  This argument has become very popular among Christians and really helps to put into context how we view Jesus as more than just a “good man.”  We believe that Jesus was, and is, God; and that his life and teaching demands much more of a response than you would normally afford to a human being.  It is worth reading Lewis’ complete argument in context, but I will summarize the key points here.

The key point Lewis is stressing in this argument is that you can’t call Jesus a “good man” or “great teacher”, but then reject his claim to be God.  Jesus, by His life and words, didn’t allow such a response.  The central point of Jesus’ teaching is that He was God, and salvation is through Him only.  If you throw away that part of Jesus’ teaching then you have no substance left.  How can you call Jesus a good teacher if His whole premise was wrong and misguided?  Lewis points out that you only have three options regarding who Jesus is, and “good man” isn’t one of them.  The three options are that Jesus was either: 1) a Liar, 2) a Lunatic, or 3) Lord.  These three views are summarized as follows:

Liar:  When Jesus speaks about being equal with the Father, the “I am”, etc., he knows that he is exaggerating.  He is intentionally deceiving his disciples.  However, with this view, it is hard to explain the miracles of Jesus and, of course, impossible to explain His resurrection.
Lunatic:  Jesus was crazy.  This is essentially the approach the Pharisees took when they claimed He was of the devil.  This could explain some miracles, but doesn’t explain his teaching.  You don’t hear this argument much.
Lord:  Jesus was who He said He was.

I find the argument to be quite compelling, and I think most people do.  In fact, I rarely find people will attack the logic of this argument directly. Instead, they attack the assumptions that this argument is based on.  In Mere Christianity, Lewis explains those assumptions and presents his arguments for believing them, but when the “Lord, Liar, Lunatic” argument is expressed in daily conversation, the background information is usually dropped in favor of presenting a brief, simple argument.  But, like all arguments, the foundational assumptions are important and should not be forgotten.

The important assumption of the Lord, Liar, Lunatic argument is that the gospels, as we have them today, accurately record the words and actions of Jesus.  Since people don’t want to accept Jesus as Lord, and they can’t get their minds to accept the Liar or Lunatic argument (because they’d like to think he was a “good man” or represents the “good in all of us”, but want to reject any idea that Jesus was God or represents the “only way”), then they have to attack the assumptions of this argument.  This shifts the focus from Jesus Christ to the reliability and accuracy of the gospel accounts.  When it comes to the accuracy of the gospel accounts, there is room for scholarly argument.  Personally, I think the arguments are weak, but I don’t believe you have to commit intellectual suicide to at least place some doubt on the literal wording in the gospels.  You can argue that they were written well after Jesus’ death, and if 30 years qualifies as “well after”, then you could say that.  The Gospel of John was probably written 70 years after the events.  And you can argue about specific wording in terms of some of the differences in the manuscripts (although that really doesn’t get you very far).  Further, if you want to go the way of the Jesus Seminar and similar groups, you can convince yourself that the real words Jesus spoke were only a small subset of what is in the gospels, and words were added in the intervening couple of decades or centuries.  These issues have been debated for a long time.  The debate regarding the accuracy of the gospels is important, but it is likely to go on and on.  People who don’t want to accept Jesus as the Son of God will find enough doubt regarding the reliability of the gospels that they will never seriously consider the Lord, Liar, Lunatic argument.  This, I feel, unfortunately diverts the power of the argument.  In fact, what I find is that even people who really don’t know that much about the evidence for the accuracy of the gospels, or who basically accept that the gospels are true, still persist in this idea of “Jesus as a good man”.  I think they feel they can do this because they have this vague notion that you can’t rely on the Gospels as completely true, so there is some wiggle room in interpreting Jesus’ sayings.  It is not a well thought-out dismissal of the Lord, Liar, Lunatic argument, but it is a dismissal nonetheless.  Therefore, there are many people who, I believe, would really benefit from a deeper understanding of this argument, but who do not take it seriously because of the perceived doubts about the authenticity of the gospel accounts.

It struck me, though, that a similar argument could be made in regards to the Apostle Paul, what I refer to as the “Deceived, Deceiver, Delusional, Disciple” argument.  The strength of this approach is not necessarily in the logic of the argument itself, since it simply follows the same logic as the Lord, Liar, Lunatic argument.  Rather, the strength of the argument is in the difficulty of “working around” the argument and claiming that the epistles of Paul do not accurately reflect his writing.  Specifically, there is almost universal agreement that at least some of the key letters of Paul were written by Paul.  There are no “Paul Seminars” where a group of scholars decide which of the passages in the key epistles were originally written by Paul and which passages were added later by Christian heretics trying to popularize their own views.  I will address this in more detail in the next chapter, but for now, let us suffice by consulting Wikipedia (never known to present a highly conservative view!) regarding the authorship of Paul’s epistles:

“There is wide consensus, in modern New Testament scholarship, on a core group of authentic Pauline epistles whose authorship is rarely contested: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.”   ...and…  “These seven letters are quoted or mentioned by the earliest of sources, and are included in every ancient canon, including that of Marcion (c.140).[15] There is no record of scholarly doubt concerning authorship until the 19th century when, around 1840, German scholar Ferdinand Christian Baur accepted only four of the letters bearing Paul's name as genuine, which he called the Hauptebriefe (Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, and Galatians). Hilgenfeld (1875) and H. J. Holtzmann (1885) instead accepted the seven letters listed above, adding Philemon, 1 Thessalonians, and Philippians. Few scholars have argued against this list of seven epistles, which all share common themes, emphasis, vocabulary and style.”

I should note that, for the sake of the argument I am presenting here, I only want to claim the authenticity of Romans and I Corinthians.  The point is that there are a lot of non-Christian secular scholars who would, at the very least, accept the authenticity of these two books.




Paul in 4D - The Argument, Simply Stated

The argument is simply this:  Paul, who clearly believed that Jesus Christ rose from the dead [I Cor 15:12], that He appeared alive after His death [I Cor 15:5-8], that He died for our sins [Rom 5:8], and that justification for our sins is through faith in Him alone [Rom 3:28]; was either:

1. Deceived:  Paul was tricked into believing these things by the Disciples of Christ, who misrepresented (i.e. lied) about what they heard, saw, and experienced regarding Jesus.  Paul genuinely believed that they were telling him the truth – was totally convinced by them – and then became completely sold-out to their way of thinking.  Paul died still completely convinced of the lies he was told by the Disciples of Christ.
2.  Deceiver:  Paul knew that what he was preaching was false, but he continued to preach it anyway.  Paul was, potentially, on an ego trip and found that he could become famous by making the audacious claims that he made.  He took some vague stories and ideas that he learned from the Disciples and turned them into the biggest religion in the world.  He knew he was stretching and bending the truth, but he kept at it all the way to his death.
3.  Delusional:  Paul had some disease (some have suggested epilepsy) that caused him to see visions.  Paul was so convinced by these visions, particularly the vision of Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, that he was totally convinced of the truth of his mission.  Once so convinced, he melded the things he heard from the disciples (or maybe he had visions of those stories as well) with his own experience.  Paul went to his death believing that the visions he had were real when, in fact, they were symptoms of some type of physical or mental disorder.
4.  Disciple:  Paul faithfully recorded what he witnessed and faithfully preached what he learned from Jesus Christ, speaking the truth and teaching the truth.  When he speaks about his own experiences and visions, and when he relays the events he learned from the disciples and others, he speaks the complete truth.

I suggest that this argument could be as compelling as the Lord, Liar, Lunatic argument because there is considerably less argument about the timing and validity of Paul’s writings.  Specifically, a fifth option could be considered and then fully disputed (see next chapter):  Paul’s letters were written sometime after the events in question by later Christians hoping to justify their religious views and make their views more credible to the general public.  As we will show, no intelligent person can hold this latter position.  Therefore, my proposition would be that anyone who rejects option #4, that Paul was telling the truth, must pick one of the first three options to justify his or her stance regarding Paul.  And, as we will show, these first three options are tenuous and poor choices at best.

Although there are many many excellent passages in Paul’s epistles, I suggest that the beginning of the 15th chapter of I Corinthians may be the best to keep in mind as we consider the Deceived, Deceiver, Delusional, Disciple argument:

Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.  By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.  For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.  After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.” [I Cor 15:1-8]

This is either worthless, meaningless and deceptive drivel, or it is among the most important life-changing statements ever written.  What I want you to consider with respect to the 4D argument is that it does not allow anyone to consider these statements of Paul (and many like them in the epistles) as “good advice” or “nice principles to live by”.  They are either true and life-changing, or false and meaningless.  Paul is either one of the most important individuals in the history of mankind, or he is a complete nobody.  The point of the 4D argument is that there is no middle ground.





Paul’s Letters – indisputable

From nearly the time they were written, Paul’s letters were known around the Christian world.  In fact, even in his own letters, Paul suggests that one church share the letter with other churches.  The original letters were not read by a single person, but by a whole community of believers.  Paul’s importance in the early church, and the important content of these letters, insured that they were instant “hits” and were afforded respect from the moment they were received.

It seems clear that, very quickly, copies of these letters were distributed at least regionally and became very well known and read in public.  When documents become widely distributed, there is, of course, some risk that these documents will be modified.  When that happens, a multiplicity of versions arise in the extant copies.  However, there is no multiplicity of versions with respect to the key letters of Paul.  There are minor variations that indicate copying mistakes but there are no variations that indicate intentional changes to the meaning of the text.  People did not take the approach of trying to change Paul’s letters – probably because of the fact that there were so many existing copies out there so quickly that it was virtually impossible to introduce false text.  Instead, anyone wishing to propagate their own ideas wrote their own documents (e.g. the various Gnostic documents).

The earliest nearly complete physical copies of Paul’s epistles extant today are dated 175-225AD.  This is the Chester Beatty Papyrus and includes almost all of Paul’s epistles, starting with Romans 5 (the first few pages, presumably containing the beginning of Romans, were lost).  Thus, by 225AD, there is no question that the letters are what they are and contain the words that we have in front of us today.  Therefore, we just need to establish a “chain of custody” from Paul’s original writings to 225AD.

When did Paul write these letters?  First, he obviously wrote them before he died (again, focusing, for the sake of argument, on Romans and I Corinthians).  In the letters, he claims to have written them himself (possibly with the help of someone taking dictation).  Further, the letters are full of clues as to the time of the writing, based on the various events that he refers to.  Although the exact date of Paul’s death is not known with certainty, later Christian writers claim that he died 65-67 AD.  The other information that we have is from the book of Acts, which traces Paul’s travels and provides us with time points at which the letters could have been written.  Given this, the writing of I Corinthians is dated as 53-57 AD.

Between the writing of the letter in the 50’s AD and the extant copies we have available to us in 225 AD, there is a continuous chain of references to Paul’s writings.  These are summarized below.

~ 60 – 67 AD Peter refers to Paul’s writings…
II Peter 3:15-16  “And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.”

~ 90 AD Clement refers to Paul, his teaching and his writing in I Clement.
"By reason of jealousy and strife Paul by his example pointed out the prize of patient endurance. After that he had been seven times in bonds, had been driven into exile, had been stoned, had preached in the East and in the West, he won the noble renown which was the reward of his faith, having taught righteousness unto the whole world and having reached the farthest bounds of the West; and when he had borne his testimony before the rulers, so he departed from the world and went unto the holy place, having been found a notable pattern of patient endurance".

Also in I Clement he states: “Take up the epistle of the blessed Paul the Apostle” (I Clement xlvii. 1)

~105 AD  In Ignatius of Antioch's letter To the Romans, he writes that Paul was martyred.
“Ye are initiated into the mysteries of the Gospel with Paul, the holy, the martyred, inasmuch as he was “a chosen vessel;”” Ignatius Letter to the Ephesians XII.

Ignatius also wrote:  “I do not enjoin you, as Peter and Paul did. They were Apostles, I am a convict; they were free, but I am a slave to this very hour.” Letter to Romans 4:3

~110 AD
Polycarp's letter to the Philippians (early 2nd century); composed around AD 110 to 140 quotes Romans and I Corinthians (and many other New Testament writings).  Specifically:

Polycarp 11:2
“But he who cannot govern himself in these things, how doth he enjoin this upon another? If a man refrain not from covetousness, he shall be defiled by idolatry, and shall be judged as one of the Gentiles who know not the judgment of the Lord, Nay, know we not, that the saints shall judge the world, as Paul teacheth?”

The phrase “that the saints shall judge the world” is a quote from I Corinthians 6:2.

Note that Irenaeus (130 AD – 202 AD) refers to this letter by Polycarp.

~170 AD
The Muratorian fragment mentions "the departure of Paul from the city [of Rome] when he journeyed to Spain". The Muratorian Fragment lines 38–39 lists the books of the NT, particularly the letters of Paul and mentions Paul many times.
“…As for the Epistles of Paul, they themselves make clear to those desiring to understand, which ones [they are], from what place, or for what reason they were sent. First of all, to the Corinthians, prohibiting their heretical schisms; next, to the Galatians, against circumcision; then to the Romans he wrote at length, explaining the order of the Scriptures, and also that Christ is their principle. …”

~200 AD
Chester Beatty Papyrus, as mentioned above.


Paul’s writings were known by other Christians from the time of the apostles (within a few years of the letters being written).  Throughout the entire period, from ~65AD to 200AD, Christians continuously referred to Paul’s letters, and their comments indicate that these letters were well known to all Christians.  We have a physical document that lists Paul’s writings by name that is dated 170AD (Muratorian fragment).  If someone around that time (170AD) wanted to “create” the letters of Paul, they would also have to create the history of Polycarp, Ignatius, and Clement.  This is very unreasonable. 

The point is this:  even reasonable skeptics and atheists agree that the letters of Romans and I Corinthians are genuine.  They were written by Paul as first-hand accounts of his views and teachings.  They were written while Paul was alive and in the heat of the battle (i.e. they are not recollections of past events many years later).  The early Church Fathers were aware of Paul’s writings.  They quoted from them.  There is no mystery here.  No one can dream up a DaVinci Code for Paul’s writings, or have a “Paul Seminar”.  These letters are what they claim to be. 






Paul the Deceived

It seems almost certain that Paul did not see the risen Christ along with the original disciples, as he was an enemy of Christians at that time.  It seems unlikely that he spent much time listening to Jesus preach and heal.  By Paul’s own admission, he was a committed Pharisee, completely focused on observing the Jewish law.  So, in that sense, Paul comes along “after the fact”, just like any believer today.  Paul was not converted by seeing Jesus’ earthly ministry.  If we are skeptical of Christianity, then we are skeptical of the conversion stories of all Christians, and especially of the disciples.  Did they really see what they claimed to see?  Given this, we may hypothesize that the original Christian believers preached to Paul, and Paul was convinced by them to believe.  Therefore, if the original story (about Jesus) was not true, then Paul was, following this line of thinking, deceived into believing.

Here is where we need to understand the unique nature of Paul’s conversion.  Paul’s conversion is recounted in some detail three times in the book of Acts.  Among the unique aspects of his conversion is that there were no other Christians around when he was converted.  He was with his travelling companions, who certainly were not Christians.  The early Christians were afraid of him, at least initially, and so Paul was fairly isolated.  The point is, Paul did not come to Christ because of what other people told him – he came to Christ because of what he experienced first-hand.  Here is what Paul says about what he heard:

1Co 15:3,5,8 “For what I received I passed on to you … that he appeared to Peter…and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.”

The phrase “…he appeared to me also…” shows that Paul was converted as a direct result of a vision of Jesus Christ.  The disciples were not around at the time, so he was clearly not deceived by them.  He believed first, and only afterwards came to them to learn more.

I suppose one could claim that Paul was deceived by the spiritual visitor.  Rather than Jesus Christ appearing to Paul, it was an evil spirit, appearing as an “angel of light” to deceive Paul.  But I will not seriously consider this possibility here, as most people who are doubters of Christianity would not believe that there are evil spirits either.  They would consider those who see any “spirits” or “visions” as delusional, something we will deal with in the discussion on “Paul the Delusional”.



Paul the Deceiver

If Paul was not deceived, then we might claim that Paul himself was deceiving others.  We could claim that Paul made up the stories about his own conversion and intentionally set out to deceive people.  This argument is the weakest of all, because there is no motivation at all for Paul to do such a thing.  It’s not like Paul joined a popular cause – he joined something that was particularly unpopular.

Probably the most logical way to present this argument is to suggest that Paul was secretly a Christian before his “conversion”, and that he made up most or all aspects of his conversion story to have something attention-grabbing to tell to others.  This means that most of the book of Acts is wrong and also that many of the early Church Fathers, who had nice things to say about Paul, were also deceived by him.

Paul lived a very difficult life.  He was persecuted and imprisoned and eventually killed for his faith.  It is very hard to make any kind of strong case that anyone would willingly do what Paul did for a known lie. 

Paul’s teachings, particularly as detailed in Romans and I Corinthians, are also not dependent on his personal conversion.  In his letters, he refers to the “power” of the gospel, but when he does, he is referring to the power of God that was experienced by those he is writing the letter to.  He is not referring to his own past.  In that sense, each Christian had his or her own conversion experience, and Paul makes reference to their experiences as the important point leading to each individual’s belief. 

 



Paul the Delusional

For those who want to discredit Paul’s conversion and teaching, the most common way is to claim that Paul was delusional.  Specifically, regarding his conversion, some suggest that Paul only thought he saw some sort of a vision, but in reality he did not.  The thinking goes along these lines: “Paul had a seizure, heard a voice, and was convinced it was Jesus talking to him”.  From there, everything else is built upon this single delusional event (or series of delusional events).  This approach assumes that Luke embellished Paul’s conversion story by saying that others saw something and linking Paul’s blindness and the subsequent healing, which must have been a coincidence.  The result of this line of thinking is the suggestion that Paul was epileptic or schizophrenic or had some similar psychological malady.

As we explore this line of thinking, we will start with the principle that Paul really believes that Jesus appeared to him.  Specifically, we have already dealt with “Paul the Deceiver” and we have demonstrated that this is not in line with the rest of Paul’s life.  Here we consider the possibility that Paul did not fabricate this story of conversion, but instead had a psychotic vision. 

It is important to point out that even if delusions could explain Paul’s personal experiences, they do not explain Paul’s other teachings.  Specifically, Paul talks about the resurrection of Jesus, describing how he was the last to see Jesus.  Paul’s teaching is about the power of the resurrection as witnessed by many different people.  To some extent, Paul’s own conversion experience is not important to his message.  Therefore, even if Paul had psychotic visions, these may explain his own personal drive, but we still need Paul to be either deceived or a deceiver in order to explain his message.  It seems to me that the most likely case to build on top of “Paul the Delusional” argument is that, because Paul was convinced by his vision of Jesus, he wanted to strengthen his message and therefore twisted and modified the previous stories of Jesus to fit his message.  This would mean, specifically, that the disciples hadn’t really seen the risen Jesus, but rather Paul reported that they had and the rumor spread.  As unlikely as this scenario seems to be (particularly given that Paul is teaching this while the disciples are still living), the point is that attributing delusional visions to Paul is not sufficient to reject Paul’s teachings.

Two possible diseases have been proposed to explain Paul’s visions:  schizophrenia and temporal lobe epilepsy.  In general, it doesn’t seem like schizophrenia fits the key features of Paul’s vision, such as a conversation (Jesus speaks to Paul in the vision) and temporary blindness.  Instead, epilepsy seems to be the most commonly proposed pathological reason for Paul’s visions.  For example, the idea that Paul had temporal lobe epilepsy is taken up in Lansborough, “St. Paul and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy”, J. Neurology, Neurosurgery, Psychiatry, 50:659-664, 1987.  Basically, there are two features in line with epilepsy and two that are not in line.



In line:
1.  Paul saw a light and had a religious experience resulting in religious conversion.  This has also happened with a few epileptics after seizures.  It is extremely rare, but feasible.
2.  Post seizure blindness does occur in rare cases. 

Not in line:
1.  Paul reports a two-way conversation with Jesus in his vision.  Such a two-way conversation is not typical of a seizure.
2.  The people around Paul reported seeing a light and hearing something.  This obviously would not be consistent with a seizure.

In fact, these two latter issues must not have happened, or they would completely exclude the possibility of an epileptic event.  Therefore, to even consider this single vision of Jesus as an epileptic event, it is necessary that the story (in Acts) has been embellished in these two areas.  How and why would such embellishments come about?  Surely Paul, or Luke (the writer of Acts), would not have anticipated that people would later claim this event was an epileptic fit and therefore altered the story so that it would be harder to make that claim in the future.  As we have already discussed, intentional deceit does not fit the entirety of Paul’s life, and therefore we must consider any embellishments to the story to be unintentional.  Unintentional embellishments would need to be fairly minor.  It could be argued that embellishing a vision so that it included a brief give-and-take conversation might be possible, especially if initially the portion of the conversation contributed by Paul was really relaying his thoughts on the matter rather than what he actually said.  It seems to me harder to imagine that the story was embellished by relaying that the others heard something, didn’t see anything and couldn’t understand what they heard.  First, to embellish the story with details that can be refuted by those who were with Paul at the time (who, it could be expected, were now his enemies since they were joining him on a mission to arrest Christians) seems somewhat unworkable.  Maybe they waited until all those people died first before spreading the story.  A pretty weak argument.  But, further, the embellishment involving others seems too weak of an attempt at embellishment.  Specifically, it still means that Paul, and only Paul, is relaying what Jesus said and that no one else in the party Paul was with could corroborate his vision of Jesus.  It seems to me that usually an embellishment has some useful, interesting, or valuable component to it - something that makes the story more believable.  By relaying such a weak experience by the others, how does that make the story more believable?  About the only thing it does is make it harder to believe Paul had an epileptic fit, but, as we mentioned before, how could first century writers anticipate the argument of an epileptic fit?

If we move on from the Paul’s vision to the events that followed immediately thereafter, there is a further complication.  Paul was blind following the vision which, although unusual, could be consistent with an epileptic event.  However, in the vision, Paul is told to go to Damascus and wait, which he does.  Then, at the same time, another individual living in Damascus, Ananias, has his own vision in which he is told where to find Paul, and that he should go see him and lay hands on him so that he will regain his vision.  Note that Ananias’ vision also included a two-way conversation.  As a result of the vision, Ananias goes and finds Paul, lays hands on him, Paul receives his sight, and then spends time with Ananias.  This, of course, is totally incompatible with an explanation of epilepsy.  We’d have to consider Ananias to also have epilepsy, to have had a similar vision, and for that similar vision to have, by chance, provided him with enough of an address to find Paul.  Also, the timing of Ananias’ laying on of hands has to coincide with Paul’s spontaneous recovering of his vision.  That is all unrealistic.

In order for the epileptic event theory to hold any water, the events related to Ananias have to be complete fabrication.  Specifically, it is necessary to consider that Paul went to Damascus and there, over some time, spontaneously recovered his vision and then later sought out Ananias, whom he knew to be a Christian.  This is too much of an alteration of the story relayed in Acts to have originated with Paul without intentional deceit.  Therefore, the only real option is that Luke added his own embellishments.  What would be his source of embellishment?  He was a companion to Paul, so he surely heard the story from Paul and, in fact, Luke relays the story a second time in recounting Paul’s words before a king in Ephesus.  The story of Ananias could not be an innocent embellishment of second-hand information (or possibly first-hand information if Luke was there to hear Paul speak at Ephesus).  It seems that the only way to reconcile these issues is to consider the book of Acts to have been written much later in time and based on hearsay that was passed around the Christian community.  More specifically, it means that Acts could not have reasonably been written by Luke, since his would have been a first-hand account of at least some of these events, and a second-hand account of Paul’s life in almost all cases.  There is, of course, no evidence that these passages were altered or made up, but that is the requirement if Paul’s conversion experience is to be understood as an epileptic seizure.

If we consider Paul’s life and writings to be the result of an epileptic seizure that convinced Paul to completely devote the remaining part of his life to the message of Jesus Christ, we face some further difficulties.  A convincing seizure could explain why he was willing to undergo hardships and ultimately die for his beliefs, but it does not explain the content of his writings.  Again, focusing on Romans and I Corinthians, neither book is based on Paul’s personal experiences on the road to Damascus.  In fact, Paul doesn’t directly relay his conversion story in any of his own writings.  Instead, his focus is on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This takes us back to Paul being deceived by the disciples regarding the truths related to Jesus Christ, particularly His resurrection and appearance to many people.  Paul relays these events as truths.  One must believe that, because Paul was convinced by his epileptic vision of the truth that Jesus was still alive, he was therefore more accepting of the stories of the disciples and susceptible to deception. 




Paul the Disciple

          The final alternative is that Paul really did have a conversion experience in which the risen Jesus spoke to him.  Paul made a complete turn in his thinking and, for the rest of his life, was completely committed to serving Jesus Christ.  Paul wrote what he believed, which included what he heard directly from Jesus, what he heard and learned from the disciples, and the conclusions he came to using his own logic and training in Jewish law.  If so, his teaching is with power.  His conversion alone is a demonstration of that power.  He is not simply making a logical argument, though he does that.  Though Paul is very learned, and can argue with the best of them, he says this:

“My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.” [I Cor 2:4-5]

It is this combination that you have to wrestle with.  What evidence is sufficient for you to believe Paul’s words? 

Paul also said this in I Corinthians – written at most, 30 years after the event, but probably written within 20 years of the crucifixion:

 “Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.  By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.  For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance:
- that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
- that he was buried,
- that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
- and that he appeared to Peter,
- and then to the Twelve.
- After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
- Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,
- and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.” [I Cor 15:1-8]

Paul also made it clear that belief in the resurrection of Jesus was central to the Christian faith.  Here is what he says at the end of his letter to the Corinthians:

“But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?  If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.  And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.  More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.  For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.  And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.  If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.  But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” [I Cor 15:12-20]

If, as Paul proclaims, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is real, then, we owe it to ourselves to pay attention to what he has written.  In particular, in Paul’s letter to the Romans he outlines the key principles regarding the Christian faith.  It is well worth reading the book of Romans, which has been recognized by people throughout history as critical to the Christian faith.





Decision – your turn

It is now time for you to take the test.  The test only has one question and it is multiple choice.  It is a take-home open book test.  But it is an important test and could be life-changing.  Here it is…




1.  When Paul writes that Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead, and that salvation is through Jesus Christ alone, he was:

A.  Deceived
B.  Deceiver
C.  Delusional
D.  Disciple




The time starts now!