Diocese of Lexington at 1310 West Main Street, Lexington, KY 40508-2048 US - St. Paul: 'Dreaded Terrorist Becomes Fierce Apostle'

by the Most Rev. Ronald W. Gainer

If a newspaper were to report his story today, the headline might read “Dreaded Terrorist Becomes Fierce Apostle.” Of course, this would be the story of Saul of Tarsus. As we meet him in the Acts of the Apostles and by his own admission in his New Testament letters, Paul was an impassioned persecutor of the church. He appeared to be unstoppable by all human standards, however, God had other plans for this Jewish rabbi from Tarsus.

 With this article, I would like to begin a series of reflections on the life of St. Paul, the “Apostle to the Gentiles.” We are in the special Year of St. Paul declared by Pope Benedict from June 29, 2008, until the same date in 2009.

On July 2, 2008, Pope Benedict began a 20-part series of reflections on St. Paul during his Wednesday audiences. The pope stated the goals of the Pauline Year. During this time we are “to learn from Saint Paul, to learn faith, to learn Christ and finally to learn the way of upright living.” My hope is, through these reflections, you might find some help in your spiritual life in Christ and in the church by growing in an understanding of St. Paul, the man and his writings.

Let’s reflect now simply on the man who was Saul/Paul of Tarsus. It is sometimes stated that Saul’s name was changed to Paul after his conversation. This is really not the case. He had a double name as many of his Jewish contemporaries in Cilicia would have had. Saul was his Hebrew name, Paul his Greek name. This is indicative that the Apostle to the Gentiles grew up in what we would call today a pluralistic culture. He was a devout Jew, trained as a rabbi and fervent in his practice of the faith of Israel. He also lived in a part of the world that immersed him in the Greco-Roman culture. Growing up in Tarsus in the province of Cilicia, Paul would have been familiar with Hellenistic culture and the Roman culture. We can see in this historical fact of his life, how God’s Providence was preparing Saul/Paul from the beginning for his role as God’s instrument in taking the Gospel to the gentile world. Unlike the other apostles who grew up in relative isolation in Galilee and Judea, Paul had a more cosmopolitan openness and familiarity with the Greco-Roman world, in addition to his strict formation in the world of Judaism.

Scholars calculate that Paul was born sometime in the first decade of the time we now compute as Anno Domini, the Year of the Lord. So, it is quite reasonable that we celebrate the 2000th anniversary of his birth during 2008-2009. In Acts 22:3, we learn from Paul’s speech that he studied under the great rabbi of First Century Jerusalem, Gamaliel. This would indicate that he came from a family of some financial means such that he could be sent to study in the Holy City and be trained in a scholarly understanding of the Torah. With this formal education and his strict adherence to Judaism, Paul was well equipped to preach to the Jewish communities in all the places that he visited. This became his usual strategy: to preach the Gospel first in the synagogues of the cities to which he traveled and then to the gentiles.

We also learn from Acts 18 that Paul practiced the trade of a tent maker. While scholars may disagree on the exact meaning of what this trade involved, we know that Paul practiced it during his ministry and that he worked along with others in the same trade, such as Aquila and his wife Priscilla in Corinth. The fact that he practiced this trade is very consistent with the area of the world in which he grew up. His home city of Tarsus was in the region of Cilicia, in Asia Minor, a part of the world that is modern day Turkey. That area was known for producing a cloth known as cilicium, which was a material made from goat hair and, because of its waterproof qualities, was used in making garments for sailors and material for tents, awnings, canopies, and the like. We learn from the Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s letters that he practiced this trade, in order not to be a financial burden or to impose in anyway on the communities to which he ministered.

Thirteen of the New Testament letters are attributed to Paul’s authorship, and the second half of the Acts of the Apostles focuses on Paul and his mission to the nations. Since Paul’s letters predate the earliest Gospel, Paul is the first New Testament author, the first Christian theologian, and responsible for a good portion of the New Testament Scriptures. The legacy of St. Paul that comes down to us in the New Testament is not just an extremely important source of information about the earliest proclamation of the Gospel, the organization and functioning of the earliest Christian churches, the earliest account of the Eucharist, and the earliest account of the Resurrection but is also the living word of God to us. We honor him not merely for these important historical reasons but because he was God’s instrument in carrying the Gospel to the gentile world and the instrument of the Holy Spirit in his preaching and letter writing. As we consider the background of Saul/Paul of Tarsus, the area of the world in which he grew up, the three cultures with which he was familiar in his formative years, we can see so clearly how God was preparing this “Apostle untimely born” (1 Cor 15: 8-9) for the unique and essential mission to which he was called and to which he so completely surrendered.