Mtr Beth Clarke

Friends in Christ,

We often remember that Saul, before he became the Apostle Paul, persecuted the early Church. However, Acts uses considerably less sterile language than “persecuted.” Acts first introduces us to Saul at Stephen’s martyrdom, where Saul “approved of their killing him.” Soon afterward, in today’s reading, Saul is “ravaging the church,” going from house to house, dragging away men and women and putting them in prison. And when we next encounter him, at the beginning of Acts 9, Saul is “still breathing threats and murder,” seeking permission to expand his campaign as far as Damascus and bring Christians bound back to Jerusalem. Saul was not simply hostile to Christianity; he was openly dangerous.

What makes us so much more comfortable with saying that Saul “persecuted the church” than saying plainly what Acts tells us: Saul was violent, frightening, and complicit in killing? Why do we sanitize the language? I’ve wondered whether it’s because the uglier Saul is, the more astonishing we have to admit his conversion really was.

To believe in conversion is to believe something radical about human beings: that who we have been does not finally determine what we become. Of course, we must not minimize harm or erase the past. Stephen remains dead; the Christians Saul imprisoned were really imprisoned. But Christianity asks us to hold these truths side by side: Saul, who ravaged the Church, became Paul, one of its greatest apostles.

Even Paul himself seems astonished by this. In First Corinthians, Paul writes, “I am not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God,” followed immediately by, “But by the grace of God I am what I am.” From Paul’s reflection, Saint Augustine observes that Paul’s past cannot account for who he becomes; no reasonable progression explains the shift. That distance, Augustine argues, is the work of sheer grace.

Saint John Chrysostom goes even further, explaining why the ugliness matters. Saul was a man violent enough to shed blood and imprison Christians, and then, all at once, he believed. For Chrysostom, the extremes of Saul’s violence made his transformation evidence of the power of the Resurrection.

In the end, perhaps this is why we should resist sanitizing Saul. Grace can produce a future that cannot be predicted from a person’s past. Sin does not get the last word.

Yours in Christ,

—Mtr Beth