Sermon for the Eve of the Conversion of St. Paul
“What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you”
Paul’s speech on the Areopagus in Athens shows something of the meaning of his so-called conversion. Saul, the persecutor of the followers of the Way, the followers of Jesus, becomes Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles. It is not a conversion from Judaism to Christianity because the latter does not yet really exist. It marks instead a conversion in thought and understanding and therein lies the real importance and significance of Paul’s conversion and indeed, the meaning of all conversion.
The Book of the Acts of the Apostles deals with the emergence of the early Church focusing largely on the apostolic characters of Peter and Paul. The story of Paul’s conversion, of which the change in name from Saul to Paul is a part, is told in Acts three separate times. The accounts are all interesting and informative and reveal the tensions and the dynamic of the time. In a way, the stories and the accounts of the missionary travels of Paul provide the foundations for the apostolic and catholic nature of the Christian church as it begins to emerge out of the cauldron of Jewish religion, Greek philosophy and Roman political order.
Paul’s speech to the men of Athens is a kind of highlight moment. It marks an essential feature of Christian witness, namely, the engagement with other cultures and religious philosophies and allows us to see what is distinct about Christianity. Paul is a major theological voice who sets the stage for the development of Christian doctrine about Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Hans Urs Von Balthasar notes, as a kind of thought experiment, however, that Paul’s speech would never get off the ground today simply because it assumes that God is a concept and a topic which while widely shared then cannot be assumed as such now. The idea of God was the starting point from which to talk about judgment and resurrection; in short, Christ as the God “in whom we live and move and have our being”, referencing the poets of ancient Greece, specifically, Aratus, whose invocation to Zeus has been appropriated by Paul.
That is itself significant and shows the nature of the cultural and intellectual interplay that belongs to the emergence of Christianity and, especially, as grasped by Paul whose learning and grasp of languages as well as his deep study of the Torah make him such a significant figure.
