Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [242]
Paul understood the messiahship of Jesus through his resurrected appearances in Paul’s own experience, while the Gospels understood the messiahship of Jesus through the events of Jesus’ life and mission. This difference in perspective stamps each writing in unique and sometimes un-reconcilable ways. This difference in perspective is extremely important in the history of Christian ideas about resurrection.
Commission and Conversion
PAUL’S MOST BASIC perspective is as a convert and a missionary. By “convert,” we can mean what Christianity later will mean by “convert.”2 But Paul is not himself the best example of the later Christian model of conversion because he did not convert from paganism to Christianity, rather from a sophisticated and educated form of Judaism to a new, apocalyptic form of it. A minimum definition of “conversion,” then, would be that Paul changes religious community-from the Pharisaic community to a group of sectarian, apocalyptic Jews who had unique and novel notions about the divinity and messiahship of their founder, Jesus of Nazareth. To understand Christianity one really needs to understand the effect of conversion and mission on the organization of the religion. The mission and expansion of Christianity was not just a historical accident but is also traceable to its internal dynamic, which put immense energy into the conversion of the world. Paul’s understanding of conversion was not exactly the model that triumphed in Christianity, though Christians looked back at him as a model for how a missionary should behave.
In one respect, at least, Paul was completely unlike the later model of mission and expansion: Though Paul leaves Pharisaism, he never shows any recognition that his Christianity was different from his Judaism. He never felt that he left Judaism, so we should consider any departure from Judaism to be the opinion of his enemies and not his own opinion. By his own estimation, Paul remained a Jew throughout his life, changing from one kind of Jewish denomination to another.
Paul’s Vision and the Power of the Spirit
PAUL’S REASONS for changing religious communities are plainly stated. He grew to know Christ, whom he took as his Lord:
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ. (Philip 3:7-8)
There is reason to believe him, for revelations were common in his day. The only thing strange about Paul’s further reflection on his conversion is that Paul did not know the man Jesus, or at least there is no evidence that he ever met him. So Paul’s writing, though it is the first Christian writing, is the writing of a convert after the Easter events. Although Paul is not a disciple of Jesus, he is a Jew and he can also claim an important and prestigious pedigree in Pharisaism; in these crucial places, he does so. But he also says that all that is overthrown by his Christian commitment, so he offers himself as a demonstration of the power of the Spirit. This is not only a conversion but it is one that Paul himself ascribes to a religiously altered state of consciousness (RASC). He has received this conversion as a gift of the Spirit. His personal biography functions as a miraculous witness to the power of the Spirit in his life and in the world.
For instance, Paul reminded the Corinthians that they had already accepted his claim of legitimacy and that others too became evangelized because of them, his gentile converts; indeed they are his “letter from Christ” (2 Cor 3:3). His seemingly miraculous success in evangelizing the gentiles also is validation for his claims to