Is the Damascus Christophany Paul's conversion or calling to mission?
Some aspects of Paul's kerygma (message of proclamation) springs from that Christophany experience on the road to Damascus.
Seyoon Kim pointed out that Paul himself interpreted the Christophany as the pleasure of God "to reveal his Son in me" (The gospel) so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles (The commission).
If Paul developed the gospel of justification by faith later during the Antioch controversies, as James Dunn suggests, then the polemical context in Galatians 1 and 2 would make little sense.
Here, Paul defended his gospel, apostleship and the Gentile mission as having an inseparable and divine origin in the Christophany. If he came to realize the gospel sola fide or the Gentile mission only much later, the argument would inevitably fall apart .
In this context, Paul's sojourn to Arabia immediately after his conversion could more naturally refer to his missionary activities for which king Aretas would later pursue him in Damascus. If so, Paul embarked on his Gentile mission shortly after his conversion and probably understood his calling as parallel to that of Isaiah and Jeremiah . One can justly question what kind of good news he could possibly have preached if justification by faith was a later tactical development.
Seyoon Kim's thesis is remarkably compatible with Luke's account that the commission Paul received from Christ to both Jews and Gentiles (Romans 1:16) is primarily salvific - to open their eyes from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God so that they may receive forgiveness of sins (Acts 22:16-18).
PS: Rembrandt's self-portrait as the apostle Paul looks funny, huh?
Do we make Paul into our own image?
"Reading makes the full man, Writing makes the exact man and conversation makes the ready man"
Francis Bacon
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