Did Paul remain Jewish during his ministry, even after his Damascus experience, and despite preaching the new (and eternal) covenant made through Jesus’ death and resurrection?
Moving beyond the base knowledge of Paul as a former Pharisee and also former persecutor of Christians, we can see that he was an accomplished theologian, having been skilled in Hebrew scripture, the Mosaic covenant, typology, and differentiating between systemic righteousness through human practice and salvation through Jesus Christ (Soards 19).
Because Paul is so strongly rooted in his Jewish background, and because he never directly calls himself a ‘Christian’ (outside of Acts 26:28, in which the disciples in Antioch are identified as ‘Christians’ and around the same time Paul and Barnabas were there), it makes me wonder why Catholics and Protestants, in their dialogues about Paul as ‘the second founder of Christianity’, do not spend more time highlighting Paul as someone who essentially remained a Jew while he taught the Gospel as the fulfillment described in Old Testament scriptures.
Instead, what often happens, or at least in my experience, is Paul’s mission is oversimplified to his preaching to the Gentiles and Peter preaching to the Jews (Galatians 2:7-9), making Paul out to be more ‘Christian’ than Peter because Paul had received a revelation from Jesus during his Damascus experience. It is almost ironic in way, despite that both Apostles came from Jewish backgrounds: Peter was physically with Jesus and had essentially adopted Christ’s message / the Gospel, though he initially wrestled with accommodating Mosaic Law during his ministry; meanwhile, Paul never claims to be a Christian convert per say, yet he is clearly drawing Gentiles into Christian belief while also abrogating Mosaic Law.
And still, Paul also ends up accommodating Mosaic Law at times — for example, when he has Timothy circumcised in Acts 16:3 (though Timothy had a Gentile father and a Jewish mother). Meaning that rather than have such sharp distinctions between Paul and Peter, I think we can all agree that both Apostles faced complex situations when evangelizing to Jews and Gentiles. Additionally, Paul himself even seems to see his mission as a Jew who is proclaiming the Messiah’s message, the fulfillment of Jewish expectations, yet also to the Gentiles (Stendahl 7).
Perhaps, as Stendahl points out, much of Paul’s life as an Apostle begins with his ‘call’ to share the Gospel, rather than refer to his Damascus experience as a ‘conversion.’ Similar to Ezekiel’s call and also Jeremiah’s call to reach out to the Israelites and bring them back to their covenant with God, Paul’s ‘call’ is to bring the new covenant from the same God of Israel but now to all humankind (Stendahl 10).
But then are we playing a game of semantics when distinguishing between ‘call’ and ‘conversion’? On one hand, Paul does indeed experience a conversion from his prior role as a zealous Pharisee; on the other, he does not give the impression of changing religions: He appears to take what he originally understood as correct Jewish belief and transform it into his new understanding of the actual belief (Stendahl 11).
Works Cited
Soards, Marion L. The Apostle Paul: An Introduction to his Writings and Teaching. Paulist Press, 1986.
Stendahl, Krister. Paul Among Jews and Gentiles. Fortress Press, 1976.