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3.3 - A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age
The Christianity of Paul
First Contact with the Christians
When Paul first came into contact with the Christians we do not know, but it may well be that he had been for some time absent from Jerusalem, and that he returned thither only shortly before the execution of Stephen. It is thus easiest to explain the outbreak against Stephen and his fellows, in which he seems to have been a prime mover.
He may have heard the Christians repeating utterances which seemed to him subversive of the law of God and the traditions of the fathers, and he was perhaps not aware that for a year of more the followers of the man who had spoken such dangerous words had lived the lives of faithful and consistent Jews, and that they had shown no sign of understanding the words of their Master as Paul understood them.
It was therefore natural for him to judge of the movement solely from the consequences that seemed to be involved in the teachings of its founder. And yet it is by no means certain that Paul would have been content to leave Christianity alone even had he know that its adherents remained true to Judaism; for, clear-sighted as he was, he most have seen that the time would come, if it had not yet come, when the teachings of Jesus would have their natural effect, and he must have been anxious to stamp them out at once.
But however that may be, he was at any rate one of the chief if not the chief instigator of the attack upon Stephen; for the executioners of the latter laid their clothes at his feet, implying that he was the principal witness against the accused. [Acts 7:58].
As a native of a foreign city, he would naturally be at home in one of the Hellenistic synagogues in Jerusalem, and it is possible that he became acquainted with Stephen there and was the first to perceive the revolutionary tendency of the teachings of Jesus as rehearsed by him and his fellows. Anxious as he was to serve the Lord, we may think of him as eagerly welcoming this offered opportunity to show his devotion to God and to exercise his zeal for the religion of his fathers.
But he did not rest with the execution of Stephen. He felt himself called to carry the war even beyond Jerusalem, and to put an end to the growth of the pernicious sect in foreign parts.
He was very likely particularly interested in the progress of Judaism in the heathen world. The Pharisees were naturally proselytizers, and as a native of a foreign city, who was in touch to some extent with the life of the work at large, Paul must have been even more interested that his brethren of Jerusalem in the conversion of the Roman Empire to the Jewish faith. If that was the case, he could not but be apprehensive of the consequences of the spread of Christianity among the Hellenists.
It may well be, therefore, that his mission to Damascus was intended only as the beginning of a vigorous campaign against the Christians wherever they had secured a foothold; and that he had deliberately determined to devote not a few days merely, but his life, to a work which was not to be abandoned until it was complete, and which he realized could not be accomplished without long effort.
Used by permission of the publisher.
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