Saul of Tarsus is the most educated, most zealous, most consequential opponent of the early church. He has letters of authorization from the high priest to arrest followers of “the Way” in Damascus. On the road, a light flashes and he falls. The voice speaks twice — the doubling of names (Martha, Martha; Simon, Simon) is a Lukan mark of intimate urgency. Saul asks “who are you, Lord?” — and the answer is the name he has been persecuting.

From the writers we read together

C.S. Lewis

Oxford and Cambridge literary scholar, author of Mere Christianity (1898-1963)

Lewis's conversion, like Saul's, was an encounter with Someone he had not been looking for. He described himself as “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England” — a man who was dragged into faith by a Presence that he had argued against for years. He quoted Saul's road-to-Damascus experience as the paradigm of conversion he understood: not a human searching upward and finding God, but God descending to interrupt the person who is going in the wrong direction entirely.

The question “why are you persecuting me?” is the most disorienting question in Acts, because Saul has been persecuting a movement, an idea, a social nuisance — and the risen Lord tells him he has been persecuting a person. The identification of Jesus with his church (“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting”) is the founding claim of the body-of-Christ theology that will dominate Paul's later letters. Lewis would say the road to Damascus is the template: the person who meets the risen Jesus does not choose the direction of the encounter.