PAUL'S CONVERSION
Sung Kook Hong
<N. T. Theology>
Introduction
This article is to understand the reality of Paul's conversion from sociological perspective. By understanding his radical change in terms of a social concept of conversion, this study aims to define what involves in Paul's conversion and its significance in his new religious movement in the gentile territory.
Until Krister Stendahl, the argument on the problem of Paul's conversion has been centered mainly on the psychological aspect of his conversion as Stendahl points. According to him, "introspective conscience," a pull toward which Paul himself never admits, "came into the theological bloodstream of Western culture and tended to dominate the scene far beyond its original function." As far as Stendahl concerns, such a mind set failed to see Paul's newly identified "calling" from God for the gentile mission as a psychological conversion experience. After Stendahl, likewise, criticizes the traditionally held view on the reality of Paul's conversion, he suggests that the problem should be restated in terms of "call" rather than "conversion." However, Beverly Gaventa, in addition to that, argues that Paul's experience can be viewed as "conversion"--in a sense of transformation of attitude--as well as "call"--in a sense of mission.
While Alan Segal agrees with Gaventa, in acknowledging Stendahl's critique, he introduces a social concept of conversion in terms of "transformation of biography." Despite the fact that his methodology applied in his argument to define Paul's experience as an experience of conversion has its own merit, his adoption of the social theory concerned with conversion proposed by David Snow and Richard Machalek is biased by the Clifford Staples and Arman Mauss reassessment of their proposal and does not apprehend them fully. In that regard Segal's merit can be appreciated partially in terms of his new approach of defining Paul's conversion in a social concept. Thus, if one, along with Segal's approach, can define comprehensibly by means of the Snow and Machalek suggestion what involves in Paul's conversion, one has to adopt them as they propose.
At this point, I have already set the basis idea of how and why this study needs to adopt social theories for fulfilling its purpose. Before furthering its analysis, however, it is necessary to specify the frame of reference with which one can proceed the investigation of Paul's materials. Thus, after setting up the frame of reference this study will define what involves in Paul's conversion and its significance in establishing his local communities.
Frame of Reference
As indicated above, what involves in the Snow and Machalek concept of conversion is surveyed as the frame of reference for investigation. David Snow and Richard Machalek recognize conversion as a radical change of the "universe of discourse," which provides a broad interpretive framework for one's social interaction in which one's social identity and role are predefined and thus social conduct is controlled. With this scheme one is able to comprehend one's biography and the biography of others as well. They suggest that conversion as a radical change of the universe of discourse manifests four indicators for social types: 1) "biographical reconstruction," --orientation of one's biography; 2) "adoption of a master-- interpretation of the events from the standpoint of one pervasive scheme; 3) "suspension of analogical reasoning,"--a new meaning system; and 4) "embracement of a master role"--newly constructed social role. However, I have modified their terminology into change of biography, change of interpreting scheme, change of world view, and change of social role for the following critical argument. Among those indicators of conversion, Staples and Mauss 133-47, accept "biography reconstruction," as the only conversion indicator, on the basis of the analysis of the interview data with members of two religious groups: one, of the so-called `born again' experience; the other, of life-long Christians. Staples and Mauss find that the biography reconstruction indicator is exclusively revealed among the members of the `born again' Christian group, but the other indicators are revealed in both groups. This fact compels us to accept, according to them, that only biography reconstruction is the indicator of conversion but the others are indicators of religious commitment.
But if conversion is conceptualized as a radical change of universe of discourse in reference to social type, as Snow and Machalek contend, the validity of Snow and Machalek's argument is affirmed. The universe of discourse in reference to social type represents in any individual as biography identity, attribution scheme, analogical reasoning, and identity of role. All these are inevitable indicators for any socialized members of society. Alternation of the already constructed universe of discourse in reference to social type takes place within the process of its radical change. This means that alternation requires a radical change of biography, attribution scheme, analogical reasoning, and identity of role. If no alternation, religious or social, occurs in any society, the members of that society still need to commit to behave according to the already constructed universe of discourse as Berger contends. In this sense the life-long Christian groups are already socialized to commit to behave according to the predefined Christian way of universe of discourse. They just do not need to experience a radical change, a "conversion," of universe of discourse into the Christian way in order to live in a Christian way. Thus, not only the change of biography but also the change of attribution scheme, analogical reasoning, and change of master role are necessarily absent in the life-long Christian group. Staples and Mauss' argument, therefore, which is based on the problem of absence of one element in a life-long Christian group, is invalid for deciding what kind of element is the indicator of conversion. This fact leads us to conclude that the four indicators proposed by Snow and Machalek are valid for the ones who experience conversion but not for the ones who do not experience conversion. In this respect the slight change of original terminology can serve as the better descriptive tool to analyze the radical change occurring in conversion without violating the original concept of Snow and Machalek. Likewise, the indicators of Paul's conversion need to be identified according to the original suggestion of Snow and Machalek with the slight change of the original terminology rather than to the limited one, as Staples and Mauss suggest, for Paul's experience can be accepted as a radical change of universe of discourse from the Pharisaic structure to the newly found Christian structure.
Paul's Conversion as a Social Type
As indicated in the survey of a social concept of conversion, the investigation of Paul's radical change is undertaken in terms of four indicators of social types as Snow and Machalek suggest: 1) change of biography, 2) change of interpreting scheme, 3) change of world view, and 4) change of social role.
Change of Biography
As a devotee of Pharisaism, Paul constructs his whole life to achieve righteousness according to the law. He regards Jewish heritage, such as the law, circumcision, tradition, and tribal lineage, as privilege to attain that goal (Phil. 3: 5-7). He even devotes himself to becoming a Jewish missionary who seeks out the gentile converts to lead them into the way of righteousness. Such devotion is only necessary and right to him, for he is convinced that attaining righteousness by means of the Judaic system is as indispensable for gentiles as for Jews. In short, his life before the experience of conversion is constructed on the indispensability of attaining righteousness. For this reason he persecutes the Christians vehemently, for they proclaim that God manifested righteousness in Christ, apart from the law, and moreover, that even the gentiles can attain it only through faith in and of Christ (Rom. 3: 21-22).
After he experiences conversion, however, his whole biography is changed. He sees himself on the wrong track, aspects of his life to boast of as nothing, and his devotion to Judaism and its advance as zeal for God without knowledge (Phil. 3:4-8; cf. Rom. 10:2). His whole life is reconstructed, in confidence of having the righteousness from God, which is through faith in and of Christ (Phil. 3: 9), magnifying Christ in his body (Phil. 1: 20), sharing sufferings, hoping to attain the resurrection of Christ (Phil. 3:10), and reaching the goal of God's mission in Christ (Phil. 3:14). His biography, in sum, constructed formerly on the indispensability of attaining righteousness by means of the Judaic system, is dramatically changed to one of having the righteousness already through faith in and of Christ and exhibiting it in his life. If Paul is convinced that such a biographical change is necessary to him who has considered himself as on the right track endorsed by God and thus as light and guidance of ones who are in the darkness or blind (Rom. 2: 19), much more is he convinced by the dramatic experience of his change into the right direction as revealed by God that such a change is absolutely necessary for the gentiles who are regarded as in darkness.
Change of Interpreting Scheme
Josephus records an episode of Pilate's attempt to carry ensigns of the image of the emperor to Jerusalem and of the Jews' rejection of the practice. The Gospel stories contain accusations against Jesus and his disciples by the Jews. In particular the Pharisees and the scribes are focused on the issue of breaking the law, especially Sabbath keeping (e.g., Mk. 2:23-24; John 5:15-16) and purification (e.g., Mk. 7:1-5). The Acts of the Apostles also records that the first martyr, Stephen, is accused of speaking against the temple and the law (Acts 6:13), and thus, delivers his apologetic message focusing on these allegations (Acts 7:44-53). And even the conference at Jerusalem focuses on the issue of the circumcision of the Gentile Christians (Acts 15:5; Gal. 2). These episodes illuminate a broad picture of how the Jews interpreted everything, including the behavior of self and others and events in the world around them, by means of the law.
As a devotee of Pharisaism, Paul has an interpreting system certainly in accordance with the Jews in his time before conversion. Paul's attempt to delineate an interpreting system of grace and faith in and of Christ in contrast to the Judaic one of law and works (Rom. 4) highlights his change of interpreting scheme. Thus, he confesses that his scheme of interpreting everything is changed from the Judaic scheme to the one of grace and faith in and of Christ (Phil. 3: 5-9), which is applicable to everyone, the Jews and the gentiles alike, who has faith.
He becomes much more flexible in approaching the gentiles than he was in Judaism, and his message focuses on exploration of his newly-found interpreting scheme of grace and faith in and of Christ, a dramatic change from his former propagation of the Judaic ritualism according to the law. The radical change of approach and his full conviction of the power of the message of grace and faith render his preaching successful, gaining many converts from the gentiles. Such a change of Paul's interpreting scheme plays a key role in protecting the gentiles from falling to the Judaic interpreting scheme of legalism and returning even to their former paganish habits such as observation of seasons.
Change of World View
The meaning system of Paul when he was in Judaism may be deduced from the general trend of the meaning system in the major parties in Judea in his time. According to Howard Kee, all the major parties in Judea listed by Josephus attempted to relate their community identity with the heritage of the prophetic promises of "the new covenant." The Sadducees defined their legacy of existence by their proper practice of cultus and priesthood according to the Levitical tradition. The Pharisees found the legacy of their community by preserving the purity and piety as the covenant people through study and their interpretation of the law within their community. In contrast, the Essenes, observing the official cultus in Jerusalem as corrupt and concerned with maintaining the undefiled covenant community, secluded themselves from society in expectation of the new age to come. They asked members' endurance of hard times in obedience to the law and in preservation of the purity of cultus within their own community. Very different from the other three, the fourth party, committed themselves to establishing in their own time the eschatological covenant community by military means.
Whatever their approaches might have been, the meanings of the existence of these groups evolved with respect to the socio-historical interpretation of the covenant. The concept of covenant common to Judaism as a whole is succinctly described by E. P. Sanders. He defines the concept of the new covenant in terms of the ultimate concern of the new covenant community: that is how any one belongs to a covenant community, which will be saved by God in the future. Thus, the covenant and future salvation constituted the core meaning system of groups in Judea around which Jewish apocalyptic and eschatological thought flourished.
Apocalyptic eschatology was formulated in "the components of continuity, of the hidden presence of the kingdom, and of history as a meaningful process" and ultimately in the expectation of God's vindication for the suffering of God's people by God's sending a messiah and in God's universal sovereign reign. It is no doubt that Paul's former meaning system was formulated along the line of the current trend of his time.
His letters written after the conversion experience, however, reflect a stark contrast to this meaning system. He identifies (1) Jesus Christ as the expected messiah of the Jews (Rom. 1:2-3), (2) the past Christ-event (culminating in his death and resurrection) as God's intervening visit (Rom. 8:31-39) fulfilled in Christ into the world, (3) Christ's parousia as a final victory of God for redemption of the world (Phil. 3:20-21) and thus "the apocalyptic consummation of history." In Paul the apocalyptic view of the covenant community is shifted from that of the Judaic, which is predominantly centered on hoping for God's historical intervening on behalf of God's community, to the new view, which is centered on enjoying now the already beginning of God's intervention through the event in Christ and hoping for fulfillment at Christ's parousia. The whole symbolic meaning system of his local Christian community is set up by Paul in terms of the Christ event and of the converts' experience, which is described in the frame of reference of "no longer," "now" or "already," and "not yet."
Before conversion no one, Jews and gentiles alike, is righteous under the power of sin (Rom. 3: 9-18), and all are deemed to judgment of God (Rom. 3:19) and death (Rom. 6:23). But after conversion, his local community becomes an eschatological community of the new covenant, which was established by means of Jesus' blood (I Cor. 11:25) and "already" enjoys freedom from sin in the Spirit, which is a guarantee for their complete freedom (at the consummation), though which is "not yet" at the present time, and they "no longer" walk in the flesh controlled by sin but rather walk in the Spirit for sanctification (Rom. 6:22; 8:13); finally all creatures are to be redeemed at Christ's parousia (Rom. 8:18-21). The Christian community is the new eschatological community walking in the Spirit for a sanctified life "between the times" hoping for the final redemption and consummation at Christ's parousia.
This world view for the meaning of Paul's life and for the meaning of his converts' community emerges through conversion. With this world view he faces various problems related to the implication of eschatology within his local communities.
Change of Social Role
The clearest picture of the change of his social role is seen in Paul's own description of his own life's mission formerly versus presently in Galatians 1. Formerly he has been a zealot for his Judaic religion and a persecutor of the Christians who claimed Jesus as the savior from sin. But now he is an apostle, proclaimer, and defender of Christ. In his conversion experience he has experienced the change of the social role in his life. His zeal for the advance of Christianity is widened toward every nation, tribe, and tongue by his overcoming the boundary of bigotry erected exclusively around the Judaic ritualistic ceremony of circumcision and the legalism in which the Mosaic law was to be kept.
He claims that this change has occurred by the revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal. 1: 12). Though we do not know the exact mode of revelation in Paul's experience, we do know that in the revelation he perceives the power of the gospel of grace and faith in and of Christ. He now sees God's cosmic plan in Christ for redeeming the world, the righteousness of God revealed in Christ apart from the law, the glory of the law of Moses as submerged in the glory of Christ and completed in Christ (II Cor. 3:9; Rom. 10:4), and finally the power of God to save. He now discovers the simplistic equation that anyone who confesses Christ will experience salvation (Rom. 10: 9-10), and in faith the barrier of Judaic racial and cultic chauvinism is broken down. Thus, Paul declares that there is no racial distinction in Christ (Gal. 3:28). Paul's perception of God's impartial consignment of all people to disobedience and under God's mercy (Rom. 11:30-32) leads him to transform the concept of election from a racial to the faith-oriented one.
Significance of Paul's Conversion
Paul's perception of the gospel as appropriate universally, with his heart burning by the constraining love of God (II Cor. 5:14), leads him to embrace a new social role in his life, as a proclaimer and defender of this gospel and builder of its course, in contrast to his old social role as a chauvinistic zealot of Judaism and persecutor of the gospel. His change of social role through conversion is a decisive element in the construction of the local community's conversion-identification. The Pauline visit to and activities in local cities produce new movements with a new social order of conversion in them. Patterns of social conduct before conversion--including social, economic, political, and religious conduct--are already formed by socialization and thus institutionalized for the people of the cities. The Pauline visit and activities, thus, have double tasks: on the one, to advance the dismantling of the already institutionalized social reality; on the other, to provide the converts with a model of conversion imitable and applicable in their typical social situation and with a new community of converts. With externalization, an objective reality of conversion is produced by Paul.
The externalization of the Pauline conversion is that Pauline activities are ipso facto an externalization of his identified role of conversion in the framework of his own biography, a fact which forces us to analyze Paul's own identification with his conversion particularly with respect to a social type. The fact that there is no precedence for such a model makes it the archetypal model for the people in the local cities to adopt as the objectified model of conversion, though the mode of expression of Paul's conversion role may differ according to the different ethos of each city.
The objective conversion reality produced by Paul's externalization becomes internalized as reality into the converts' subjective consciousness through socialization, and the internalized reality is expected to be externalized by them; that is the ultimate goal of maintenance of conversion. The externalized reality of conversion by the converts produces dialectically the institutionalized Christian order.
Concluding Comments
We have analyzed with the help of sociological concept of conversion what involves in Paul's conversion experience and tried to understand its significance in establishing the new converts' communities in the gentile territories. Throughout the process, some matters that merit attention have emerged.
First, the sociological concept of conversion proposed by Snow and Machalek can be adopted as a tool for settling down the debates among the scholars about the issue of Paul's radical experience as either conversion or call or both. In this study one may find that his experience should be regarded as conversion and the call of him as a proclaimer of the gospel as the produced inner-sense by reconstructing his own biography and embracing newly his master role, which are indicators of conversion as social type.
Second, his changed world view after conversion experience are the transformation of the traditional apocalyptic view of Judaism into the christological apocalyptic eschatolgy, which defines the present age as being in the between the times of the first and final parousia of Christ. Thus, his reconstructed biography is defined as heading toward the final attainment of resurrection at the parousia.
Third, his changed interpreting scheme formed with conversion is the radical shift from the scheme of the law and works for attaining the righteousness from God to the one of grace wrought through and in, and faith in and of Jesus Christ, which are relevant indiscriminately to all people, the Jews and the gentiles. Such a radical shift was the key factor for his inner sense of calling as the missionary for the gentiles and for his constructing the typified activity and the content of his preaching.
Finally, Paul's typified activity along with the content of his preaching produced the objective reality of conversion in the gentile territory and became the archetypal model to be imitated by the converts. The dialectic process of externalization of conversion reality by Paul and afterward by his converts constructs the institutionalized order of conversion in Paul's new religious movement.
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