[This is an
ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series, Christian Origins
and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap between
the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be carefully
analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at the same
time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This series of
posts are concerning volume 3 – The
Resurrection of the Son of God.]
This chapter of N.T. Wright’s book focuses on Paul’s
experience on the ‘road to Damascus.’[1]
Wright’s thesis is that Paul saw the real Jesus appear to him in a bodily
(though transfigured) form. He argues against any idea that Paul had some kind
of inner vision or that Jesus was simply just a form of light in the sky. This
is important for this study because Wright is very interested in discussing
what the resurrected Christ consisted of, so this famous example is worth discussing.
On the whole, the point of Wright’s chapter is not about
what happened to Paul in “conversion” or “call.” He is interested in what
happened on that day that might teach us something about the resurrected body.
Whether or not Paul thought of himself as leaving Judaism or not – as is highly
contested back and forth among Paul scholars since the development of the “new
perspective” - is really secondary to this discussion. Wright’s interest is far
more limited – to simply discuss what happened on that road.
First, Wright sets up the challenge – too many people
discussing Paul think he had a spiritual experience where Jesus shows up as a
disembodied figure of light:
We are told repeatedly that what
happened to Paul was that he had an intense spiritual experience; that this
involved him ‘seeing’, not with ordinary eyesight but with the inner eye of the
heart, a ‘Jesus’ who was not physically present, but who was a being of light
(whatever that is).[2]
Wright might be overstating his case here among actual
scholars, but in the rhetoric of many Christians, this is in practice, what
they actually think. There is some idea that Jesus after his resurrection is a
bodiless ether that hovers in the air and whose presence is so brilliant that
no one can behold it. Wright, in this chapter, is interested in dispelling that
myth – which he attributes more to Michelangelo than to any biblical scholar.
First, Wright rightly focuses on Galatians 1 as his primary
source of the encounter. In that passage, there is one tricky line which has
caused particular problems in understanding: “But when God, who had set me
apart before I was born and called me through his graced, was pleased to reveal
hi Son en me, so that I might
proclaim him among the Gentiles.”[3]
The key term here is the preposition en which
can be translated as either “in” or in a far less common way “to.” The simplest
explanation of the text allows for the meaning “in.” This has led some to think
that Paul’s experience was really one of inner contemplation rather than an
outward experience. Wright addresses this problem directly showing why this is
not accurate:
If this is the emphasis of the
passage, it seems that Paul is here referring primarily to god revealing Jesus through him, though this requires that first
Jesus be revealed to him. This
combination rules out the suggestion which is sometimes made, that the word
‘in’ points to a merely ‘internal’ revelation, a ‘spiritual experience’ as opposed to an outward seeing.[4]
Here, Wright makes a good argument that this phrase is used
with the following phrase – to proclaim him among the Gentiles.
The bigger challenge is Paul’s use of the term apokalypsis. Many think of this term as
presenting a kind of vision of the transcendent realm rather than the actual
one. This has led many to think that Paul either did not “really” see Jesus and
that this was a spiritual vision, or that the Jesus he saw was something more
like Ezekiel’s vision – a wild vision of the only somewhat grounded in reality
– no real “bodily” presence would be there at all.
First, the rhetorical needs of
Paul’s argument lead him naturally to stress the difference between the
‘revelation’ he received and the possibility that he had ‘received’ his gospel
from ordinary human sources, some way down a chain of tradition, in such a
matter that the Galatians could then appeal over his head to the original
source. This is why he chooses the apokalypsis
root to make the point: this was an ‘unveiling’ of the truth itself, indeed, of
Jesus himself, not a secondary handing on.[5]
Here, Wright
argues that in context this makes good sense – it is a term that is used to
contrast two things – Jesus himself compared with his disciples. There is
nothing to suggest that this was in any way “otherworldly.”
He then uses 1 Corinthians 15 as a good example of precisely
why he is arguing that his sight of Jesus was the fully bodily Jesus. He argues
that the figure he saw was the same figure that had appeared to the disciples.
He argues that these were sightings that could be verifiable precisely because
Jesus was so real – there was no spiritual ether that was being expressed:
Third, it is noteworthy that [1
Cor.] 15:1-11 as a whole clearly speaks of a public event for which there is evidence
in the form of witnesses who saw something and can be interrogated. As
we saw earlier, those who have wished to say that the risen Christ was not that
kind of being, that the resurrection was not that sort of event, that it did
not have that kind of evidence, and that any witnesses would simply be speaking
of their own inner conviction and experience rather than the evidence of their
eyes, have had to say that Paul has here undermined the point he really should
have been making.[6]
Wright is correct here – the whole point in 1 Corinthians is
that these sightings were real enough that people could recall them
substantively.
Finally, Wright attempts to drive away the myth that Paul
must have had a mystical experience because only that would cause someone to
change so much of their life in a split second. Wright argues, rightly, that
Paul never says he changed anything in a split second. Instead, Wright argues
that Paul’s reaction was a logical one (meaning he thought about it) if one
accepts that the messiah – rather than reestablishing the state of Israel – was
executed as a criminal and cursed by God:
Having persecuted Christianity
precisely as a false messianic sect, Paul came face to face (so he believed)
with living proof that Israel’s god had vindicated Jesus against the charge of
false messianism. God had declared, in the resurrection, that Jesus really was
‘his son’ in this essentially messianic sense…If,
then, Jesus has been vindicated as Messiah, certain things follow at once. He
is to be seen as Israel’s true representative; the great turn-around of the
eras has already begun; ‘the resurrection’ has split into two, with Jesus the
Messiah as the first-fruits and the Messiah’s people following later, when he
returns.[7]
Wright’s point is that we need to make Paul’s experience far
more real in the real world. He was a thinking human and used that logic to
figure out his role. He is not saying that the experience was not important –
it was singularly important for his life – but that it was not some mystical
type Jesus appearing before him. It was the resurrected Christ was fully in a
body.
In this chapter, Wright was fully convincing when discussing
whether or not Jesus was truly bodily in Paul’s experience. Here, Paul (and
even Acts) is very clear that he experienced Jesus in a body. What Wright does
not do as much as I expected him to, is to discuss what that tells us about
Jesus’ resurrected body. That would lead to many interesting questions. Here,
there is some kind of discussion against a rhetorical straw man that I think is
very popular in general rhetoric among Christians, but far less widespread
among actual scholars of Christianity.
[1] I am well
aware that Paul never mentions Damascus, that piece of data is only in Acts 9.
However, as Wright points out, he does mention in Galatians that after going to
Arabia, he heads “back to Damascus” suggesting that this well could have been
the location. RSG 377. However, I use the phrase simply because it is such a
common trope and I find it a generally harmless one.
[2] RSG, 375.
[3] Gal.
1:15-16a.
[4] RSG, 380.
[5] RSG, 379.
[6] RSG, 383.
[7] RSG,
394-395.
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