Scripture can be found here…
This must be one of the most gripping stories in the Bible.
First, we have Saul. A man of good heritage, strong beliefs, a self-appointed warrior on behalf of the God of Israel. Here’s how he describes himself, in his letter to the church at Philippi, taken from “The Message” Bible:
You know my pedigree: a legitimate birth, circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting the church; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law Book.
~Phil. 3:4b-6, The Message
About that persecuting the church part… The first time we meet Saul in this book, the Acts of the Apostles, he is guarding the coats of people who are stoning a man to death—Stephen, one of the first deacons, the very first martyr. The word “martyr” means, “witness.” Stephen, by his life of service and by his spoken testimony, is a witness to the Way of Jesus, which is what Christianity was called back then. Not “the Faith,” or “the Belief,” but “the Way.”
The next time we meet Saul? Is right here. We find him “breathing threats and murder against the disciples” of Jesus and going to the highest religious authorities to get written authorization to round up those followers of the Way, to put them in chains, and to take them to Jerusalem to be tried, convicted, and executed. Saul is a warrior on behalf of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—Jesus’ God, to be clear. Nothing will stand in his way.
A funny thing happens on the way to Damascus. As Saul is approaching the city, a light from heaven flashes all around him, he falls to the ground, and he hears the voice of Jesus Christ.
He falls to the ground. My entire life, I have believed that Saul falls from a horse, and my guess is, this is why. [Photo 1] It’s a little book that belonged to my brother Paul, but which I read plenty of times: “The Man Who Changed His Name.” (Later in Acts, the narrator starts referring to Saul as Paul; 13:9). Though I can’t prove it, I’m pretty sure that somewhere in these pages is the image that convinced me, always and forever, that Saul (Paul) fell off a horse.
Problem is: it doesn’t say that anywhere in the account we read here in Acts. Nor does Paul himself mention it when he describes the event in his letters to various churches. But that idea has been around for a while.
Charles Dougherty, a Professor of English literature, taught for 19 years at a Catholic University. There, he regularly taught a poem of Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Wreck of the Deutschland.” In the poem, the poet begs God to bring all humanity to faith and worship, either quickly, as in Paul’s rapid conversion, or slowly, as in the interesting case of Saint Augustine, whose mother evidently prayed for him to come to Christ for thirty years before getting any results. Every time Dougherty taught the poem, he mentioned how Paul was knocked off his horse. In his 19 years at that Catholic University, not one student challenged this interpretation. But when he taught the poem in a state university, the Protestant students pushed back. Paul was on foot, they said. Read the passage. No horse. In his 37 years of teaching, Dougherty says, every student who was a practicing Catholic believed Paul had fallen off a horse. Every student from a Protestant background believed Paul was walking when the lightning split the skies and knocked him to the ground.
How did this happen? How did this interpretation take hold? My instinct tells me to go back to the beginning. In her book, “Searching for Sunday,” Rachel Held Evans notes that “the [ancient] pagan writer Celsus dismissed Christianity as a silly religion, fit only for the uneducated, slaves, and women.” There’s lots of scholarship to back this up. Evans writes, “Most of the people drawn to the church in its first three centuries came from the lower echelons of society. Women, especially widows, found a home and occupation within the church, leading some to criticize it as too ‘effeminized…’”[i]
Of course, at the end of that first 300 years something happened that nipped that “too feminine, too many losers” thing in the bud: the Emperor Constantine was baptized and brought much of the Roman Empire with him into the Christian fold. Suddenly, the Way of Jesus wasn’t mostly about people on the frayed edges of society. Now, the Way had a proponent who was the most powerful man on earth.
Could that have something to do with Saul’s conversion looking, suddenly, as if he were a kind of Roman warrior himself? Is the appearance of a horse related to a desire to make Christianity appear less common and more elite? Is the horse a sign that, now that an Emperor was on board with the Way of Jesus, everything needed to be spruced up a bit—that everyone needed to be more regal, even the likes of Paul?
As it turns out, artists create their work in the context of their era. The conversion scene was depicted without a horse until the 12th century. After that, Paul is shown falling from a horse nearly every time. And the reason is simple. In creating a painting of Saul, [Photo 2] such as this 16th century one by Breugel, the artist would have asked himself, How should I paint this great man at this great moment? And part of his answer would have been, “A great man would, of course, be riding a horse.” [Photo 3] Because this is a Bruegel, the scene is absolutely crammed with people and animals, and I’m sure you’re struggling to see Paul, so here he is, in the red circle, a great man who has clearly fallen off a horse.
And that’s how a significant segment of Christianity came to believe that Paul fell off a horse. As to why Catholics believed this and not Protestants? Two related reasons. The Catholic church has, from its early times, embraced iconography—images of bible stories. Many of their sanctuaries contain stained glass representations of the life of Jesus and the apostles, as well as stories of creation, prophets, and more. [Photo 4] As a result, Catholics were exposed more to paintings such as this famous 17th century one by Caravaggio than Protestants. Protestants, remember, returned scripture into the hands of the people; before the Protestant Reformation, scripture was only available in Latin and was almost exclusively read and interpreted by clergy. The Protestant Reformers took note of the second commandment: You shall not make of yourself an idol, sometimes called a “graven image”—no representations of God in painting or statue (or stained glass, for that matter). Thus, Protestants didn’t see much, if any, Biblical art.
Why does it matter? Here’s one reason. The baptism of Constantine ended the era in which Christianity was a persecuted religion and began an era—one that is still with us—in which Christianity became Imperial, part of the Empire, protected by the Empire (as it still is in this country). That shift has ramifications we have to reckon with. Does the Way of Jesus really resonate with worldly power? [Photo 5] Is “warrior” the best image for followers of the Prince of Peace?
The image you’ll see next is one of the earliest we have; it’s a fifth century mosaic from Ravenna, Italy. Paul, not on a horse or falling from one.
[Photo 6]
For his part, Paul talked about his work this way:
You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. ~1 Thessalonians 2:9
And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready… ~1 Corinthians 3:1-2
As servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way… by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. ~ 2 Corinthians 6:4, 6-8
Paul recognized that people had all kinds of opinions about him, but that didn’t worry him so much. Honor, dishonor; good reputation, bad reputation. What did concern him? To the extent he needed weapons, he preferred the weapons of righteousness. To the extent he had a relationship with the churches he served, he used language that conjures a parent, not a conqueror. How we think about the giants of our faith matters. Paul saw himself as a laborer, working night and day, rejoicing all the while.
This is a gripping story, and not because Saul/Paul did or did not fall off a horse. It grabs hold of us because it gives witness to the possibility of a radical change of heart. It gives witness to the kind of love that can turn us around 180 degrees from the direction we have been traveling. It gives witness to the truth: that no matter who we are, no matter what we have been doing, God’s love is available, ready to transform us, and set us on a new path.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church (Nashville, TN: Nelson Books, 2015), 126.