St. Paul was first a Pharisee and an active persecutor of Christians. After his conversion, he became an apostle to the nations and died for Christ as one of the Pillars of the church.
Compared to other apostles who knew Christ personally and lived with him for several years, the pardoned sinner, Paul of Tarsus, had to build his relationship with the Savior through long-term growth in faith largely by himself. In this, he is very similar to us, modern Christians. Given his nature and previous life as a Pharisee, this process was not without problems or even conflicts. After his conversion, he stayed in Damascus for three whole years, so that as a new creature who had put on Christ, he went to Jerusalem to meet Peter. For the rest of his life, until his martyrdom in Rome, wherever he went, he passionately proclaimed the Savior and Redeemer without compromise.
He conceptualized his metanoia radically and expected the same consistency from those whom he formed in the Christian faith on missionary journeys through the Mediterranean. Paul’s analysis of the world in which he worked can be used even today due to several social parallels with the present. His precision and early Christian response to the surrounding events could give us confidence in the solutions he proposed to make Christianity an authentic instrument of change for the entire human race.
For those who want to learn St. A little more about Paul and his ideas, we offer two excerpts (part of the Preface and a sub-chapter Meeting with the Risen Lord ) from the newly published Slovak translation of the book by the leading world expert on his life and former professor of the New Testament at l’École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem, in 2013 by the late Dominican Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: His Story – Apostle Paul. His story.
Preface
Writing this book has been a wonderful adventure – an attempt to turn life into a story. There are many biographies of Paul of Tarsus, but all are content to emphasize points that we can establish with some degree of certainty. The focus rests on the arguments that confirm certain conclusions and the “facts” that come to light and are presented as trophies in splendid isolation. The very nature of this process guarantees that Paul will never appear as a living being. Certain things have been discovered about him, but he is not seen as a distinctive individual. At many moments, he essentially appears as a disembodied mind from which theological thoughts pour forth.
Unlike Luke, I am not putting any words into Paul’s mouth, but I am busy with what Paul might have thought and felt. Simple common sense is the control here. Paul had to think things through before making any decision. I let him sort through the options, often in the context of a journey to a new situation. He could act impulsively and rashly, rushing into catastrophic strategic or tactical mistakes. In such cases, I try to explain why something went wrong and how Paul worked to avoid similar mistakes in the future.
Throughout my academic career, I have worked on many aspects of Paul’s life and theology, but trying to distill refined knowledge into a story has led me to insights I never knew existed. Paul is now more real to me as a person and more understandable as a theologian. I wish the same to my readers.
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