They had been left to their own powers and did not have the beneficent guidance from above. Therefore the work of redemption now had to extend to them also, and even more fully, according to their greater spiritual need.
But for the Gospel to be spread among them, a special preacher was required, one who had not yet appeared among the Apostles. He had to be equally acquainted with the Jewish and Gentile worlds, and had to grasp in the highest degree the mystery of Christianity as a new and universal religion.
Such a preacher appeared in the person of the Apostle Paul. His history gives a striking example of how the providence of God, for every spiritual need, raises up great workers, sometimes calling them from the very midst of the hardened enemies of truth.
At the dreadful martyrdom of Saint Stephen, the tormentors who stoned him laid their garments “at the feet of a young man named Saul.” This was the great chosen vessel of God.
Although he himself apparently did not take part in stoning the protomartyr, he was so embittered against the great preacher of Christianity that “he approved of his killing” (Acts 8:1).
Even after that bloodthirsty deed, he did not calm down. He “made havoc of the Church, entering house after house, and dragging off men and women, committed them to prison.”
This furious persecutor of Christianity was a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia. He therefore belonged to the Jews of the Dispersion.
Yet he came from a family that prided itself on the purity of its Jewish blood. It remembered its descent from the tribe of Benjamin and gave its son his very name in honor of the king from that tribe, Saul.
Thus, being “a Hebrew of Hebrews” (Phil 3:5), Saul at the same time possessed a very important civil right. This was the right of a free Roman citizen, which guaranteed the inviolability of his person throughout the vast expanse of the Roman Empire.
This right had probably been acquired by his father for some service to the Romans during the civil wars, and from him it passed to his son.
Tarsus, located on the banks of the Cydnus in a narrow, fertile plain between the Mediterranean Sea and the snowy heights of Taurus, was a large commercial and industrial city. It was a depot for goods involved in trade between the East and Asia Minor.
But the inhabitants’ special craft was the production of woolen fabrics, carpets, and tents from goat’s hair, which was famous throughout the East. Saul was trained by his parents in this craft, namely as a tentmaker.
This does not mean that his parents were poor and unable to prepare their son for some higher social position. It was simply a common custom among the Jews to accustom their children to some trade.
They did this to give them the ability to earn bread amid all the reversals of life. Saul indeed more than once had cause to remember his parents with gratitude, when he had to resort to his craft for sustenance.
After teaching their son a craft, his parents then gave him a good general education. Since Greek was the common language in such a large city as Tarsus, Saul knew it perfectly.
He was so familiar with Greek literature that he freely cited Greek poets (Acts 18:28; Titus 1:2), and even deeply understood the very spirit of Hellenism.
This high education made him an especially suitable instrument for the aim for which providence was preparing him, namely to be the “Apostle of the nations.” But this was only one side of his education.
After giving their son a general classical education, his parents also took special care to give him a higher Jewish education. For this purpose Saul was sent to Jerusalem, where various higher schools flourished.
There he was “brought up at the feet of Gamaliel,” the most famous jurist of his time. Gamaliel was distinguished not only by the depth and breadth of his learning, but also by a remarkable spirit of tolerance toward opinions differing from established views.
In the school of this great teacher, Saul was “carefully instructed in the ancestral law” and was zealous for God (Acts 22:3).
All this extensive education, joined to lofty natural gifts, made Saul a very notable person. Already in Jerusalem, among the Pharisees, he enjoyed great renown, not only for his learning, but also because he “lived as a Pharisee according to the strictest sect of the Jewish religion” (Acts 26:5).
After completing his education, Saul surely returned to Tarsus. But that city had now become too narrow for the highly learned and ardent young man. His soul longed for a broader field, and he soon appears again in Jerusalem.
There he first had to encounter new preachers, who were successfully preaching some new teaching unknown to him. The highly learned Pharisee from Tarsus did not fail to listen to these new preachers.
To his horror and indignation, he learned that they were preaching the abolition of the Mosaic law. In its place they were teaching the doctrine of some obscure Galilean, Jesus of Nazareth.
This Jesus, for His rebelliousness and blasphemy, had been condemned to death and crucified between two criminals.
To Saul, as an ardent zealot for the law and at the same time a highly educated expert in it, all this could appear only as outrageous madness. It would not have deserved the slightest attention if the preachers of this new teaching had been only illiterate villagers.
Such were those who had followed the Founder of the teaching in crowds. But now the preachers included educated Hellenists such as Stephen. Clearly, this teaching had already put down deep roots and could not be ignored.
These preachers had to be refuted and struck down. Saul did indeed come forward against Stephen and was undoubtedly one of those “from Cilicia” who entered into dispute with Stephen (Acts 6:9).
The dispute between such opponents could only have been most heated. Saul saw to his horror that, despite all his learning, he “could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit by which” his opponent spoke.
Then his zeal took on a bloodthirsty character. He could wash away the shame of his defeat only with Stephen’s blood, and he approved his killing.
The circumstances accompanying this terrible martyrdom could not pass without leaving a trace in such an ardent man as Saul. A dreadful feeling of regret and repentance stirred in his soul, because in his zeal he had gone so far.
At the same time, a spark of doubt about his own rightness was kindled. But this was a heavy feeling. It had to be suppressed.
This could be achieved only by new and intensified zeal in defense of the Mosaic law and in persecution of its enemies.
If such a highly educated and heroic preacher of it as Stephen had been destroyed, then the mass of his followers no longer deserved any pity. They had to be annihilated, and then the hated teaching would be uprooted.
With such thoughts and feelings, Saul, contrary to the instructions of his great teacher Gamaliel, positively began to “make havoc of the Church” and persecuted its members “to the death” (Acts 8:3; Acts 22:4).
This persecution brought terror upon the Christians. Before the face of the formidable persecutor, they scattered and disappeared. Jerusalem apparently was completely cleansed of them.
There was no longer preaching or miracles at Solomon’s Porch. Crowds no longer gathered in the streets waiting for the shadow of the Apostles Peter and John to pass by.
In the house of Mary, the mother of Mark, there were no longer large assemblies. If Christians gathered, they gathered only with fear and in secret, in small numbers.
The agape meals, if they were still held at all, probably took place as in the first days after the Resurrection, behind locked doors for fear of the Jews.
Some Christians endured cruel suffering for their faith. Less devoted members of the Church undoubtedly fell away from it. The majority fled at once, even before the storm of persecution broke.
Such success in the matter must have greatly rejoiced the high priests and Jewish elders. At last they could hope for the complete extermination of the sect that had caused them so much trouble.
They would even have been satisfied with what had already been done. But Saul wanted to bring the matter to an end. “In excessive rage against them, he persecuted them even to foreign cities” (Acts 26:11).
He had heard that there were especially many Christians in Damascus, where they had made themselves a nest under the authority of the Arabian prince Aretas.
And so, in order to destroy this nest also, Saul turned to the high priest. He asked him to give letters of authority to Damascus, so that he might set up a tribunal there.
With these letters he would bring in chains from there to Jerusalem all Christians he could find, both men and women. The purpose was to subject them to the highest court.
For them, the fate of Saint Stephen could serve as an example of that court’s justice and mercy.
And so, having received the letters, he set out on the road, “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” Yet by the inscrutable designs of God’s providence, this road led him to an outcome utterly unexpected by him.
He left Damascus not as a fearsome persecutor, with a whole group of Christians bound in chains and trembling for their fate. He left as a humbled and broken Nazarene, a follower of that very Jesus of Nazareth.
Until then, the very name of Jesus had sounded to him with contempt and had stirred in him an ineradicable hatred.
THEOSIS