In his 1947
study of New Testament prophecy, Harold A. Guy wrote the following in a section entitled, “Paul as a Prophet”:
Paul himself was a prophet and could advise
restraint in the use of the prophetic gift all the more because he shared the
inspiration and therefore the temptations of the prophetic order . . . It
appears uncertain when the actual moment of Paul’s prophetic call came. He
himself emphasized that he received his essential message not ‘from men’, but
from the living Christ. Like the prophets in the Christian meeting (1
Corinthians 1429f.), he received ‘an apocalypse of Jesus Christ’
(Galatians 112). Paul’s reference here is probably not to the whole
content of his Gospel but to his first commission to preach, and to preach to
Gentiles as well as Jews, and we are justified in seeing in his use of παρελαβον a reference to a definite moment.
As J. Moffatt remarks:
‘he was seen’ [1 Corinthians 155]
refers not simply to a revelation but a choice and summons to declare the
Gospel . . . To be an apostle means not merely to have seen the Lord but to
have done work for the Lord which attested the commission. (1 Corinthians
[Moffatt, New Testament Commentary],
p. 236)
In the account in Acts 9 Paul receives no
commission as such. At the moment of his vision he is told simply to go on to
Damascus, where he will be told what to do (96). There Ananias
confines his mission to the imparting of the Spirit to Paul (917).
But the next paragraph relates how Paul began at once to preach, as if a
commission had been given him, although not mentioned expressly. Paul’s speech
in Aramaic to the mob at Jerusalem (Acts 22) gives an account of a double call.
Ananias had declared that Paul was ‘to be a witness for him (Jesus) to all men’
(2215), while the specific call to go to the Gentiles came while
Paul was in the Temple at Jerusalem (2221). In Paul’s speech before
Agrippa, both these commissions are said to have been delivered to him on the
Damascus road (2616ff.). The words here attributed to the voice of
Jesus are obviously a conflation of the two commissions recorded in Acts 22.
Whenever the call actually came to Paul to preach, it was considered by him to
constitute a special revelation and to be at the instance of God himself. His
words in Galatians 115f. (‘I pleased God, who before my birth set me
apart for his service and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me,
that I might preach him among the Gentiles’) refer to a particular moment, which
constituted also the occasion for his departure into Arabia. They are
reminiscent of Jeremiah 14f, being probably an intentional echo of
the Old Testament prophet’s words. Here again is the emphasis of the great
prophets—that the initiative was with God who had called them. They had not
chosen to be prophets; Yahweh had laid his hand upon them.
The course upon which Paul was set,
inaugurated by a prophetic vision and call, was marked by prophetic experiences
and revelations. The content of one such is given in 1 Corinthians 121ff.
It is generally agreed that Paul is referring to himself in recounting the experience
of ‘a man in Christ’ (see verses 6-7). The vision, fourteen years before the
writing of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, must have happened not long
after Paul’s conversion. That he should have to search so far back for a ‘vision
and revelation’ to put alongside the ecstatic experiences of which the
Corinthians boasted suggests that such experiences were not of frequent occurrence
with him. The content of his vision on this occasion is not recorded. Paul
indeed says that it would be unlawful for him to tell of it (124).
His phraseology (‘unspeakable words’—αρρητα ρηματα—cf. Moffatt’s translation: ‘sacred secrets’)
suggests, as P. Gardner points out, the atmosphere of the mysteries (The Religious Experience of St. Paul, p.
53). It is doubtful, therefore, in spite of Paul’s obvious intention in
referring to it, if this experience may rightly be placed alongside those of
the Christian prophets. It is more akin to those of the mystics, conveying a
revelation meant for the individual, not to be pleased on to other men. As C.H.
Dodd remarks: ‘Paul did not make a Gospel out of such raptures” (History and the Gospels, p.31). It was
not in such a mystic experience that he received his ‘apocalypse of Jesus
Christ’ (Galatians 112). One may be justified in making a
distinction between the ‘visions’ (οπτασιαι) and the ‘revelations’ (αποκαλυψεις) which he says he intends to
relate (2 Corinthians 121) The οπτασια consisted of his experiences in
the third heaven. But the αποκαλυψις, which he was able to state in words and to communicate
to men, was a more definite message, related to his own condition: ‘My grace is
sufficient for thee . . . ‘( 129).
This characterization of Paul as a prophet, or,
to use the category previously employed in the case of Jesus, as a charismatic,
is borne out by the general impression of his writings and the evidence of the
Book of Acts. Otto says:
The numinous atmosphere pervades the writings
of St. Paul. These catastrophes and sudden reversals that befall the religious
consciousness, the tragedy of sin and guilt, or again the glow of beatific joy,
are only possible and intelligible on the basis of numinous experience. (The Idea of the Holy, p. 89)
This sense of the ‘numinous’ breaks forth in
various ways—in an ecstatic cry of ‘Abba, Father’, in which Paul himself
indulged in company with his fellow Christians, in the composing of a Christian
hymn, such as 1 Corinthians 13, and in the experience of leading, referred to both
in Paul’s letters and in Acts. ‘The will’ prevented Apollos from visiting the
Corinthians, in spite of Paul’s urgent desire that he should go (1 Corinthians
1612). The Spirit forbade Paul and his companions to preach in the
province of Asia or to go into Bithynia (Acts 166f.). The ‘negative
guidance’ became positive, taking the form of a visionary call to Macedonia (169)
when it had been duly followed. (Harold A. Guy, New Testament Prophecy: Its origin and Significance [London: The
Epworth Press, 1947], 98-101)
Knowing that
some may object to the characterisation of Paul as a “prophet,” Guy wrote the
following in a footnote for the above:
It is true that Paul does not claim to be a
prophet, but an apostle. This is stated by him in his letters and implied in the
accounts of his call . . .But ‘apostle’ is a vocational description rather than
primarily a psychological one. But it is with the latter that we are concerned
here, and ‘prophet’ may be said to include ‘apostle’. (Ibid., 98 n. a)