Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 147:586 (Apr 1990)
Article: The Theological Significance of Paul’s Conversion
Author: Timothy J. Ralston

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BSac 147:586 (Apr 90) p. 198

The Theological Significance of Paul’s Conversion

Timothy J. Ralston

Instructor in Pastoral Ministries
Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas

The moment of saving faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has often come as a result of a traumatic personal crisis. This was especially true for a Pharisee in the first century after Christ by the name of Saul of Tarsus, later known as the Apostle Paul. His conversion dramatically reoriented his life of devotion to the will of God from Pharisaic Judaism to primitive Christianity.

When reading Acts, one is struck by the immediacy of Paul’s activity as an apologist and theologian for the Christian community after his conversion (Acts 9:20–22, 28–29). His theological views were already so profound as to be irrefutable by his first-century Jewish opponents (9:22). Neither the brevity of the Damascus event nor the three short days of blindness following it allowed for a new theological education. Therefore the encounter with Jesus must not have required the abandonment of his former learning, but informed and reoriented it toward a new understanding of salvation-history around some key theological point revealed to him in the event.1

Paul does not seem to have precisely identified this theological pivot in his writings. Scholars have long debated the key to his theological reorientation. The assumption is that by identifying the precise issue resolved for Saul the Pharisee through his encounter with the risen Christ, it will be easier to understand the theological

BSac 147:586 (Apr 90) p. 199

workings of the apostle, perhaps resolving theological difficulties inherent in his epistles. This study presents a hypothesis for the theological center of the Damascus Road event and suggests how it catalyzed Paul’s theological reorientation and appeared throughout his theology. Such a study requires the following threefold strategy: to collect the available historical sources and determine their rhetorical stance with respect to the Damascus event; to determine the role of Paul’s conversion as a spiritual/theological climax in his life; and to examine its thematic outworking in his theology.

The Accounts of Paul’s Conversion

The New Testament includes six summaries of Paul’s conversion, three in Luke-Acts (Acts 9:1–30; 22:1–21; 26:1–23) and three in Paul�...

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