One objection to this interpretation of the passage is that it proves too much. If it means anything, it means that Paul had extended personal acquaintance with Jesus before the crucifixion; for if Paul merely saw Him for a few moments—for example, when the crowds were surging about Him at the time of the last Passover—he could hardly be said to have "known" Him. But, for obvious reasons, any extended intercourse between Paul and Jesus in Palestine is exceedingly improbable. It is natural, therefore, to look for some other interpretation.
Other interpretations undoubtedly are possible. Some of the interpretations that have been proposed must indeed be eliminated. For example, Paul cannot possibly be contrasting a former immature stage of his Christian experience with the present mature stage; he cannot possibly mean, "Even if in the first period after my conversion I had a low view of Christ, which made of Him merely the son of David and the Jewish Messiah, yet now I have come to a higher conception of His divine nature." For the whole point of the passage is found in the sharp break which comes in a man's experience when he appropriates the death and resurrection of Christ. Any consciousness of a subsequent revolution in the thinking of the Christian is not only unsupported anywhere in the Pauline Epistles, but is absolutely excluded by the present passage. Another interpretation also must be eliminated. Paul cannot possibly be contrasting his pre-Christian notions about the Messiah with the higher knowledge which came to him with his conversion; he cannot possibly mean, "Even if before I knew the fulfillment of the Messianic promise I cherished carnal notions of what the Messiah was to be, even if I thought of Him merely as an earthly ruler who was to conquer the enemies of Israel, yet now I have come to have a loftier, more spiritual conception of Him." For the word "Christ," especially without the article, can hardly here be anything other than a proper name, and must refer not to the conception of Messiahship but to the concrete person of Jesus. But another interpretation remains. The key to it is found in the flexible use of the first person plural in the Pauline Epistles. Undoubtedly, the "we" of the whole passage in which 2 Cor. v. 16 is contained refers primarily to Paul himself. But, especially in 2 Cor. v. 16, it may include also all true ambassadors for Christ whose principles are the same as Paul's. Among such true ambassadors there were no doubt to be found some who had known Christ by way of ordinary intercourse in Palestine. "But," says Paul, "even if some of us have known Christ in that way, we know him so no longer." This interpretation is linguistically more satisfactory, perhaps, than that which explains the sentence as simply a more vivid way of presenting a condition contrary to fact. "Granted," Paul would say according to this interpretation, "even that we have known Christ according to the flesh (which as a matter of fact we have not), yet now we know him so no longer." But our interpretation really amounts to almost the same thing so far as Paul is concerned. At any rate, the passage is not so clear as to justify any certain conclusions about Paul's life in Palestine; it does not clearly imply any acquaintance of Paul with Jesus before the passion.
If such acquaintance is to be established, therefore, it must be established on the basis of other evidence. J. Weiss[31] seeks to establish it by the very fact of Paul's conversion. Paul, Weiss believes, saw a vision of the risen Christ. How did he know that the figure which appeared to him in the vision was Jesus? Why did he not think, for example, merely that it was the Messiah, who according to one strain of Jewish Messianic expectation was already existent in heaven? Apparently he recognized the person who appeared to him as Jesus of Nazareth. But how could he have recognized Him as Jesus unless he had seen Jesus before?
This argument depends, of course, altogether upon the naturalistic conception of the conversion of Paul, which regards the experience as an hallucination. In the account of the conversion given in the Book of Acts, on the contrary, it is distinctly said that far from recognizing the person who appeared to him, Paul was obliged to ask the question, "Who art thou, Lord?" and then received the answer, "I am Jesus." Such a conversation between Paul and the One who appeared to him is perfectly possible if there was a real appearance of the risen Christ, but it exceeds the ordinary limits of hallucinations. Weiss has therefore merely pointed out an additional psychological difficulty in explaining the experience of Paul as an hallucination, a difficulty which, on naturalistic principles, may have to be removed by the assumption that Paul had seen Jesus before the passion. But if Jesus really appeared to Paul in such a way as to be able to answer his questions, then it is not necessary to suppose that Paul recognized Him. The failure of Paul to recognize Jesus (according to the narrative in Acts) does not indeed positively exclude such previous acquaintance; the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, for example, also failed to recognize the Lord, though they had been acquainted with Him before. But, at any rate, if the supernaturalistic view of Paul's conversion be accepted, the experience sheds no light whatever upon any previous personal acquaintance with Jesus.
Thus there is no clear evidence for supposing that Paul saw Jesus before the passion. At the same time there is no evidence to the contrary, except the evidence that is to be found in the silence of the Epistles.
The argument from silence, precarious as it is, must here be allowed a certain amount of weight. If Paul had seen Jesus before the crucifixion, would not so important a fact have been mentioned somewhere in the Epistles? The matter is by no means absolutely clear; a brief glimpse of Jesus in the days of His flesh would perhaps not have seemed so important to Paul, in view of the richer knowledge which came afterwards, as it would seem to us. The silence of the Epistles does, however, render improbable any extended contact between Paul and Jesus, particularly any active opposition of the youthful Paul toward Jesus. Paul was deeply penitent for having persecuted the Church; if he had committed the more terrible sin of having helped bring the Lord Himself to the shameful cross, the fact would naturally have appeared in his expressions of penitence. Even if Paul did see Jesus in Palestine, then, it is highly improbable that he was one of those who cried out to Pilate, "Crucify him, crucify him!"
One thing, however, is certain. If Paul never saw Jesus in Palestine, he certainly heard about Him. The ministry of Jesus caused considerable stir both in Galilee and in Jerusalem. These things were not done in a corner. The appearance of Jesus at the last Passover aroused the passions of the multitude, and evidently caused the deepest concern to the authorities. Even one who was indifferent to the whole matter could hardly have helped learning something of the content of Jesus' teaching, and the main outline of the story of His death. But Paul, at least at a time only a very few years after the crucifixion, was not indifferent; for he was an active persecutor. If he was in Palestine at all during the previous period, his interest probably began then. The outlines of Jesus' life and death were known to friend and foe alike, and certainly were not unknown to Paul before his conversion, at the time when he was persecuting the Church. It is only a woeful lack of historical imagination which can attribute to Paul, even before his conversion, a total ignorance of the earthly life of Jesus.
The opposite error, however, is even more serious. If Paul before his conversion was not totally ignorant of Jesus, on the other hand his knowledge only increased his opposition to Jesus and Jesus' followers. It is not true that before the conversion Paul was gradually coming nearer to Christianity. Against any such supposition stands the explicit testimony of the Epistles.
Despite that testimony, various attempts have been made to trace a psychological development in Paul which could have led to the conversion. Paul was converted through a vision of the risen Christ. According to the supernaturalistic view that vision was a "vision," not in any specialized meaning of the word, but in its original etymological meaning; Paul actually "saw" the risen Lord. According to the modern naturalistic view, which rejects any direct creative interposition of God in the course of nature, different in kind from His works of providence, the vision was produced by the internal condition of the subject, accompanied perhaps by favorable conditions without—the heat of the sun or a thunder storm or the like. But was the condition of the subject, in the case of Paul, really favorable to a vision of the risen Christ? If the vision of Christ was an hallucination, as it is held to be by modern naturalistic historians, how may the genesis of this pathological experience be explained?
In the first place, a certain basis for
