Yesterday one of my fellow-travelers on a trip I’m taking wanted to talk about Paul and his self-image, and whether Paul had a rather (or extremely) exalted view of his own importance.  I gave him one of my standard answers, that I think it’s impossible to engage in a psychological analysis of a person’s self-image when they lived millennia ago (it’s certainly hard enough when they share our time and culture and we’ve known them for years).

But it is possible to know, sometimes, what a person actually thought about themselves on some level.  And however we evaluate the psychological elements involved, I do think it’s safe to say that Paul saw himself as an important and inspired person in the history of the salvation of the world.  Make of it what you will!

Here’s how I have explained it before, based on my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene (Oxford University Press), edited here for the occasion.

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To make sense of how Paul’s conversion affected his actual life, not just his theology, it is important to recall  how his conversion to the Christian faith affected his theology.  As I’ve indicated on the blog before, at his conversion Paul came to realize that it is not necessary for gentiles to become Jews in order to be among God’s “chosen ones,” the “people of the covenant.”

They do not need to be circumcised, observe the Sabbath, keep kosher, or any of the rest.  They need only to believe in the death and resurrection of the messiah Jesus.   This was an earth-shattering realization for Paul.  Prior to this, the followers of Jesus – the first Christians – were of course Jews who understood that he was the messiah who had died and been raised from the dead.  But they knew this as the act of the Jewish God given to the Jewish people.  Certainly gentiles could find this salvation as well.  But first they had to be Jewish.  Not for Paul.  Jew or gentile, it didn’t matter.  What mattered was faith in Christ.

Once Paul came to realize this he was blinded yet again by a further insight ,of direct relevance to his view of himself.

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