Sermon for the Eve of the Conversion of St. Paul

admin | 24 January 2017

“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.

His conversion is itself the result of a kind of intellectual struggle, a break-through of the understanding about the nature of God’s engagement with our humanity. The glory of the Messiah and the sufferings of Christ come to be seen not in opposition but more dialectically as drawing out the deeper meaning of God’s purpose for Israel, herself the suffering servant of Isaiah’s prophecies which can now be seen in relation to Jesus Christ and him crucified. The break-through moment means the beginning of a whole new way of thinking about God and our humanity.

For that reason, Paul is sometimes seen as the second founder of Christianity but it would be more correct to say that he builds upon the central insight of God’s engagement with us in Jesus Christ. And for Paul especially, the words of Christ as he comes to learn about them from the followers of Jesus are seen through his deep knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures and, it seems fair to say, his grasp of the philosophical traditions of Hellenism.

His speech is itself an early exercise in what will come to be known as apologetics – the attempt to explain the principles of Christianity to others. Perhaps, the challenge of our age is to reclaim those same principles of understanding for ourselves but always as within a confluence of cultures, religious and even non-religious philosophies. And perhaps, just perhaps, our post-secular world might be receptive again to the idea of God, if for no other reason than the discovery of its own emptiness and nihilism.

There is something wonderful about the convergence of the conversion of Paul with the Epiphany season, itself a season of the making known of the things of God through the humanity of Jesus Christ. We are gathered into the mystery of the God whom Paul encounters on the road to Damascus. It is the constant journey of our souls to be moving more fully into the understanding of this mystery, the mystery of the unknown God made known in Jesus Christ. Conversion, as it really was for Paul, is more than a one-off moment; it marks instead the beginning of a process of learning and thinking upon what has been seen and grasped in a new way. It is about the constant turning of our minds upon the mystery of God in Christ.