Was the Apostle Paul the Biblical Equivalent of the Most Loyal Trump Supporter?

Last updated on: March 21, 2017 at 10:44 am by Paul Louis Metzger

Was the Apostle Paul the Biblical Equivalent of the Most Loyal Trump Supporter? 2017-03-21T10:44:30-07:00 Paul Louis Metzger

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Caravaggio, “The Conversion on the Way to Damascus” – Creative Commons

What would it take for the most loyal Trump supporter to give up faith in the President? As shown in this news video, supporters waiting in line for yesterday’s rally in Kentucky appeared undaunted by reports that the President’s team may have had wrongful connections to Russia during the election season and that there was no evidence to support his wire-tapping charges.

I wonder if the faith of those interviewed while the FBI Director was testifying on Capitol Hill, and those like them across the land, would remain unshaken no matter what reports might emerge. Perhaps other Presidents have had a voter base as loyal as that of this Administration. But these followers’ seeming unwavering support is quite striking, perhaps unbelievable.

Was the Apostle Paul the biblical equivalent of the most loyal Trump supporter? This is a question about what constitutes a sound basis for faith, as well as what constitutes a sound basis for the renunciation of one’s faith: did Paul believe in the crucified and bodily raised Jesus no matter what the reports said about the object of his faith? Did he simply discount reports attacking the credibility of his hope as conspiracies perpetrated by the ancient analogues to the liberal media, President Obama, or “evil Hillary”?

If we take the biblical account as credible in any way, and not as “fake news,” we would hold that Paul came late to the party. In fact, while Jesus’ followers witnessed Jesus’ ascension to heaven (Acts 1), Paul (then known as Saul) was possibly gearing up for his murderous attacks on the church. What caused the radical change in his stance from instigating the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:58) and other horrible attacks on the church (Acts 8:1-3; 9:1-2) to giving his life to Jesus? The answer: the Damascus Road encounter, according to Luke’s account in Acts 9:1-19.

This was no easy-believism. In fact, it is predicted in Acts 9:16 that Saul (Paul) would suffer greatly for the faith, as Paul’s own autobiography in 2nd Corinthians 11 confirms. This was no equivalent to the perspective often attributed to L Ron Hubbard: “if you want to make a million dollars, start your own religion.” Paul did not make a million, but lost a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, as well as life itself.

Maybe there are ardent Trump supporters who would undergo severe persecution to protect their hero or their god. But would they ever abandon faith in him? According to 1st Corinthians 15, it appears that Paul would have abandoned faith in Jesus if it could have been proven that he was not bodily raised from the dead. After all, why live such a miserable life suffering for faith in a risen Jesus—the object of his hope, if it were not true? Might as well party now, for tomorrow we’re dead: “What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (1st Corinthians 15:32; ESV).

New Testament biblical scholar and historian NT Wright has claimed that he can think of no more plausible reason for the radical emergence and resilience of the church than that Jesus was bodily raised:

There are many other things to say about Jesus’ resurrection. But, as far as I am concerned, the historian may and must say that all other explanations for why Christianity arose, and why it took the shape it did, are far less convincing as historical explanations than the one the early Christians themselves offer: that Jesus really did rise from the dead on Easter morning, leaving an empty tomb behind him. The origins of Christianity, the reason why this new movement came into being and took the unexpected form it did, and particularly the strange mutations it produced within the Jewish hope for resurrection and the Jewish hope for a Messiah, are best explained by saying that something happened, two or three days after Jesus’ death, for which the accounts in the four gospels are the least inadequate expression we have.

Going further, it is not only the case that Jesus rising bodily from the dead was the most plausible reason for the church’s radical emergence and resilience. It is also the case that there was no plausible reason for Paul to believe in Jesus if he had not been bodily raised. Paul would have accounted for the possibility of facts against his faith, and would have abandoned Jesus if he found reports against Jesus and his resurrection to be true (See 1st Corinthians 15 for example).

So perhaps, Paul was not as undying in his support for his Lord as some of President Trump’s most loyal devotees appear to be.

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