The conversion of Saul of Tarsus provides an unanswerable argument for Christianity. Charles R. Erdman says, “The conversion of Saul of Tarsus . . . forms, indeed, one of the strongest arguments in support of belief in . . . the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (100). This affirmation that the conversion of Saul (Paul) “forms one of the strongest arguments” in support of the historic resurrection of Jesus and, as a result, is itself proof of the Christian faith was the thesis of George Lyttleton in his classic volume on the conversion of Paul first published anonymously in 1747 when Lyttleton was thirty-eight years of age. Lyttleton was educated at Oxford, entered Parliament, and advanced to the position of lord, commissioner of the treasury. He admitted there were those who tried to shake his faith in the Christian religion, and T. T. Biddolph said that he, along with Gilbert West, had imbibed the principle of skepticism (Campbell 353-54). However, Lyttleton examined the reality of Christianity, and he deserted his unbelief because of a thorough examination which terminated in the production of his well-known dissertation on Saul’s conversion (Mitchell 341-42).
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Shortly before his death in 2000, I heard Dr. Thomas B. Warren express that he had been reading the Bible for more than seventy years, and he never had done so without being amazed at some “enormously wonderful truth” in it. Professor Warren had a brilliant mind. When tested for the position of an aerial navigator in the United States military, which position he held during World War II, he achieved the highest score that had been earned on this test up to that time. He graduated magna cum laude from Abilene Christian University. He also earned the Ph.D. in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University. He corresponded with some of the most highly recognized philosophers of the twentieth century. He engaged in public debate, before thousands, with some of the most prominent philosophical thinkers of his day. Because of all of this, it would seem that it is not without great significance that a person of such great ability, training, and experience, after so many years, would acknowledge that he was still “amazed” and challenged by the depth of the information contained in the Bible.
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