Paul and the Religious Experience of Reconciliation

In the ancient world as in contemporary times, religion provides a vital context in which people become who they are and establish themselves with a unique identity. This process of constructing the self is not only a psychological process and a phenomenological reality; it can also be a deeply religious experience. Using the phenomenological tradition of Edmund Husserl and the understanding of religious experience as delineated by William James, Gilbert Bond reaches back to the New Testament to interpret the story of Paul’s conversion as a religious community experience of the self’s creation, mixed with a variety of unique people and thought. Just as Paul experienced Self and Other in the midst of a culture of diaspora and a religion that emphasized the reconciliation of people, today there can be communities of reconciliation that produce such fundamental changes in self-consciousness.