11. Paul Accepts Agrippa’s Invitation to Speak (26:1)
1Agrippa said to Paul, “You may speak for yourself.”1 Paul2 then raised his hand and proceeded to make his defense.
1 Since the proceedings were neither judicial nor in any other way official, Festus left it to Agrippa to conduct them as he thought fit. Agrippa then, turning to Paul, invited him to state his case. Paul was only too willing to accept the king’s invitation, so he raised his hand in salutation to him3 and proceeded to speak. If his speech is called his “defense,” it is so called in no forensic sense; it is rather a defense of the gospel which he preached and of his way of life in conformity with it.
To some extent this speech covers the same ground as that which Paul delivered from the top of the steps leading to the Antonia fortress to the riotous crowd in the temple court below.4 But the general tone and atmosphere of the two speeches are different, each being adapted to its very distinctive audience. Here, in the calm and dignified setting of the governor’s audience chamber at Caesarea, Paul delivered the speech which, above all his other speeches in Acts, may worthily claim to be called his Apologia pro vita sua. In it he undertakes to show that neither his manner of life nor his teaching should arouse hostility, especially on the part of Jews. The construction of the speech is more careful than usual, the grammar more classical, and the style more literary, as befitted the distinguished audience.5 The argument is designed to appeal particularly to the mind of Agrippa, who was reputed to be interested in Jewish theology, even if Festus found himself completely out of his depth after the first few sentences.
12. Paul’s “Apologia Pro Vita Sua” (26:2–23)
2“I congratulate myself, King Agrippa, that it is before you that I am to make my defense today, regarding all the charges brought against me by the Jews.
3especially because6 you are an expert in all the Jewish customs and disputed questions. Therefore, I beg of you, give me a patient hearing.
2–3 Paul congratulates himself first of all on the opportunity to state his case and expound his teaching before a man of Agrippa’s eminence, particularly one so expert in the details of Jewish religious belief and practice. He, at least, might appreciate the strength of Paul’s argument that the message which he proclaimed was the proper consummation of Israel’s ancestral faith. For such a hearer and examiner no perfunctory statement, but a reasoned narration and exposition of his whole case, was appropriate. Unlike Tertullus before Felix,7 Paul did not promise to be brief, but he did ask for a patient hearing; probably he hoped that Agrippa would be interested enough to hear him out at length.
b. The Resurrection Hope (26:4–8)
4“My course of life from my earliest youth8 among my nation, and (particularly) in Jerusalem,9 is known to all the Jews.
5They have known me for a long time back,10 and can testify, if they wish, that I lived as a Pharisee, according to the strictest party of our religion.
6And now it is on the ground of hope based on the promise made by God to our fathers that I stand here on trial.
7It is to the fulfilment of this promise that our twelve tribes, earnestly occupied in the worship of God night and day, hope to attain; and it is with regard to this hope, Your Majesty, that I am accused—accused by Jews!11
8Why is it judged incredible among you12 that God should raise the dead?
4–8 Paul went on, then, to describe his early upbringing. His contemporaries knew all about this, and could bear witness, if called upon, that he had been brought up a Pharisee and lived according to the strictest rules of that party. It went without saying that a faithful Pharisee believed in the resurrection of the dead, and saw no fulfilment of Israel’s ancestral hope apart from the resurrection. But the amazing and indeed absurd feature of the present dispute was that he was being prosecuted for his proclamation of this very hope—and prosecuted by Jews, of all people. This hope was the hope that God would keep the promise which he made to the fathers of the nation long ago; it was the hope which gave life and meaning and purpose to the ordinances of divine worship, faithfully maintained by the twelve tribes of Israel13 generation after generation, especially to the unceasing services of morning and evening sacrifice and prayer. It was the hope that God would one day come down to deliver his people as he had done when they were slaves in Egypt, that he would raise up for them “a horn of salvation … in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old” (Luke 1:69–70). Why should they think it incredible that God should honor their hope and fulfil his promise by raising the dead?14
The Pharisees among them would answer that they did not think it incredible; they ardently believed in God as the raiser of the dead. But Paul’s point was that this belief had now been validated by God in his raising one man from the dead, demonstrating by this very fact that this one man was Israel’s long-expected deliverer, the one in whom the ancient hope was to be realized. Before Agrippa, as previously before the Sanhedrin and before Felix, Paul insisted that his case hinged entirely on the resurrection hope; but by the resurrection hope he meant that hope as realized in “one Jesus, who was dead, but whom Paul claimed to be alive” (25:19). Even Festus had grasped something of the message, despite his total lack of background. Why should those who believed in the resurrection of the dead find it difficult to believe that God had in fact raised up Jesus, thus designating him “Son of God in power” (Rom. 1:4)? If God did not raise up Jesus, why believe that he raises the dead at all? So Paul now reasoned, but once upon a time he had reasoned quite differently.
c. Paul’s Persecuting Zeal (26:9–11)
9“To be sure, I myself once imagined that I ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
10I opposed his name in Jerusalem: I shut up many of his saints in prison, having received authority to do so from the chief priests, and when they were put to death I cast my vote against them.
11In all the synagogues I took penal action against them repeatedly and tried to make them blaspheme. In the excess of my fury against them I pursued them even to foreign cities.
9–11 But Paul understood his opponents’ frame of mind very well; he had once shared it himself. He himself, for all his belief in the resurrection of the dead at the last day, thought it incredible that God should have raised the crucified Jesus; and when the disciples insisted that he had indeed raised him, Paul treated them as charlatans and blasphemers. He could not take seriously their claim that they had seen him alive again. Their movement, as he saw it, was a cancer attacking the vitals of Israel’s life; it must be uprooted, and Paul himself eagerly took the lead in uprooting it.
Armed with authority from the chief priests, he said, he went from house to house and dragged the followers of Jesus off to jail; he went from synagogue to synagogue and enforced judicial proceedings against them, and when they were put on trial, he cast his vote for their condemnation and demanded the death-sentence against them. The ruling body of each synagogue constituted a minor law court or beth din, but certainly under the Roman administration such a court had no competence to carry out the death-sentence. This competence belonged in principle to the supreme Sanhedrin, but under the Romans it was only where the sanctity of the temple was violated that the Sanhedrin had the authority to inflict capital punishment without reference to the governor. This probably explains Stephen’s summary execution, but such restricted authority could not extend to the rank and file of Jesus’ followers. In Paul’s eyes they might be sharers in Stephen’s offense, but his opinion need not have been given legal effect. One possibility is that in the reference to their being put to death the plural is generalizing, and that it is Paul’s consent to Stephen’s death that is really in view.15
In any case, Paul did not want to make martyrs of them if he could help it; if he could make them forswear their faith in Jesus, that was much more satisfactory. He did his best16 in synagogue after synagogue to force them to blaspheme, to call Jesus accursed,17 and thus repudiate his claims. But such attempts met with little success: the disciples preferred death or exile to apostasy.18 Nor did Paul confine his activities to Jerusalem and Judaea: when his victims took refuge beyond the provincial frontiers he pursued them into the synagogues of Gentile cities as well, where the writ of the Sanhedrin was honored. At the time in question, the new movement was developing exclusively within the community of Israel: the believers were members of the synagogue and amenable to its discipline.
d. The Heavenly Vision (26:12–18)
12“While I was thus engaged, I was on my way to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests.
13It was about midday, Your Majesty, when I saw on the road a light from heaven, brighter than the sun. It shone around me and my fellow travelers.
14We all fell to the ground,19 and I20 heard a voice in the Hebrew speech saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick out against the goads.’
15‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked. The Lord said to me, ‘I am Jesus,21 the one whom you are persecuting.
16But get up and stand22 on your feet. This is why I have appeared to you: to appoint you as my servant, a witness to what you have seen of me and to what you will yet see of me.23
17I will deliver you from the people and from the Gentiles: it is to them that I am now sending you,
18to open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light, from the dominion of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who, by faith in me, have been made my holy people.’
12–15 It was while Paul was thus engaged in the harrying of Jesus’ followers that the revolution in his life took place. Again he tells of his journey to Damascus, of the lightning flash that blinded him, of the challenge from the risen Christ. In this version not only Paul himself but all his companions fall to the ground. This is, moreover, the only one of the three accounts of the event to report the Lord’s words to Paul, “it is hard for you to kick out against the goads.”24 This homely proverb from agricultural life25 has been thought to suggest that Paul had already begun to suffer from the prickings of an uneasy conscience, from a half-conscious conviction that there was more in the disciples’ case than he was willing to admit. It is even suggested that, at one level of his mind, there was a realization that Stephen’s argument was unanswerable and his demeanor strangely disquieting. But there is no hint, either in Acts or in Paul’s letters, that before his conversion he was subject to any such inward conflict. His repeated claim in his apologetic speeches to have maintained a clear conscience all his life (23:1; 24:16) is confirmed by the evidence of his letters. Paul enjoyed a robust conscience: up to the moment of his confrontation with the Lord on the Damascus road he regarded his persecuting campaign as a service acceptable to God, and at the height of his apostolic career he could say that (subject to the judgment of the Lord, with whom the last word lay) he was not aware of anything against himself (1 Cor. 4:4). When Augustine and Luther discovered that Paul spoke so directly to their condition, it may have been natural for them to assume that, before his conversion, he endured the same kind of spiritual disturbance as they had known in their own lives; and this has led to the traditional ascription to Paul of what Krister Stendahl has called “the introspective conscience of the West.”26 But if Paul’s conversion was preceded by a period of subconscious incubation, it has left no trace in our surviving records (no light is shed on such a period by Rom. 7:7–25). The “goads” against which he was now told it was fruitless for him to kick were not the prickings of a disturbed conscience but the new forces which were now impelling him in the opposite direction to that which he had hitherto pursued, the new “necessity” which was henceforth laid upon him (1 Cor. 9:16).
16–18 There was no need on this occasion to enlarge on the part played by the pious and law-abiding Ananias, as Paul had done when he addressed the crowd of Jerusalemites in the temple court. Here the Lord’s message through Ananias is merged with his words spoken directly to Paul on the Damascus road and with those spoken to him in the temple when he returned to Jerusalem (22:14–21). Paul relates the terms in which the Lord commissioned him to be his witness and messenger—terms which recall those in which Jeremiah27 and Ezekiel28 received their prophetic commissions in earlier days. The commission itself echoes the commission of the Servant of the Lord in Isa. 42:1–7, and very properly so, for the commission of Paul and of all Christian witnesses is the perpetuation of the Servant’s commission, as has been made very plain already in Acts (cf. 13:47). As the Servant was to open the eyes of the blind and turn their darkness into light, so Paul was summoned to continue this healing ministry.29 The terms of his commission remained in his mind ever after; they are echoed in the words in which he reminds the Christians of Colossae how God the Father “has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light, … has delivered us from the domination of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:12–14). For these words sum up the blessing which, in the heavenly vision, he was charged to communicate to all who placed their faith in Christ, not only Jews, but Gentiles as well. That believing Gentiles were to have an equal and rightful share in the heritage of God’s holy people was a feature of the gospel which it was Paul’s peculiar mission to proclaim and put into effect through his ministry (cf. Gal. 1:16; Eph. 2:19; 3:1–10). We may well wonder if Agrippa, expert as he was in Jewish religious questions, even began to grasp the purport of all this.
e. Paul’s Obedience to the Vision (26:19–20)
19“Thereupon, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision;
20on the contrary, first to those in Damascus and then in Jerusalem and in every country, to Jews and Gentiles,30 I proceeded to declare31 that they should repent and turn to God, and do the works that matched their repentance.
19–20 From the moment when he heard the words, “I am Jesus,” Paul knew but one Master. Henceforth for him to receive a command from that one Master was to set about obeying it. So, after his conversion, he immediately proclaimed Jesus as the Son of God in Damascus (9:20), then in Jerusalem, during a short visit, to the Hellenistic Jews (9:29), and after that in many lands to Jews32 and especially to Gentiles. In Acts, in distinction from his letters, Paul is a missionary to Jews and Gentiles alike, a “world apostle.”33 With his proclamation went the call to repent and turn to God,34 and to perform deeds which were the natural fruit of true repentance. John the Baptist had called for such deeds on the part of his hearers, who declared their repentance by receiving baptism at his hands; it was incumbent on them to show the genuineness of this repentance by their subsequent way of life (Matt. 3:8 par. Luke 3:8). While Paul insists that it is “not because of works” but through faith that men and women receive the saving grace of God, he equally insists that those who have received this saving grace are God’s “workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:8–10).
21“Because of this the Jews seized me while I was in the temple, and tried to kill me.
21 Was it indeed “because of this,” because of his unceasing missionary activity, that he was attacked in the temple? It was: the charge that he had profaned the temple by bringing a Gentile within forbidden bounds was only a pretext. The hostility of the Jews of proconsular Asia, who raised the hue and cry against him on that occasion, went back to the years of his ministry in Ephesus. What they objected to was not his announcing the fulfilment of what Moses and the prophets foretold; but the terms in which he announced it—his preaching a law-free gospel which in effect obliterated the religious barrier between Jews and Gentiles—were quite unacceptable. This unacceptable feature in his preaching is not mentioned in the present speech (although it may be implied): the reader of Acts is familiar with it (even more so the reader of Paul’s letters), but it is unlikely that Agrippa would learn anything of it from what is said here.
Festus had found it extremely difficult to determine why Paul had been arrested in the first place, and why his Jewish opponents were out for his blood; yet it was important that he should ascertain the reason, in order to include it in his report to Rome. He counted on Agrippa’s help in this matter, and even if Agrippa did not grasp the fundamental point in dispute, he no doubt gathered enough to enable him to give Festus the desired help. Paul had at any rate made it clear that he preached the same message to Jews and Gentiles, and Agrippa, knowing the current climate of Jewish religion as he did, could draw his own conclusions.
22“Having received help from God, then, I have continued to this day, bearing witness to both great and small, saying nothing except what Moses and the prophets said would happen—
23that the Messiah must suffer, and that by being the first to rise from the dead35 he would announce light both to our people and to the Gentiles.”
22–23 In conclusion, Paul emphasized that the teaching which, by God’s help, he had consistently given to all to whom he witnessed was thoroughly loyal to Israel’s ancestral faith and in complete harmony with the divine revelation imparted through Moses and the prophets. Here we are probably to understand that he adduced one text after another from the Old Testament scriptures which found their fulfilment in the life, death, and triumph of Jesus. At an early stage in the course of Christian preaching these texts appear to have been grouped together under appropriate headings, which sometimes took the form of questions. Here Luke does not reproduce Paul’s citations of such messianic “testimonies” in extenso, but indicates them briefly by quoting the interrogative captions under which they were grouped: “Must the Messiah suffer? Must he rise from the dead? Must he bring the light of salvation to the people of Israel and to the Gentile nations?”36 (The “must” of these questions is the “must” of God’s predetermined plan, made known before its fulfilment through his servants the prophets.)37
The announcing of light to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles is part of the ministry of the Isaianic Servant: “It is too light a thing,” says God, “that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isa. 49:6).38 Paul and Barnabas at Pisidian Antioch claimed these words as setting out their own commission (13:47), as Simeon of Jerusalem had earlier echoed them when he greeted the infant Messiah (Luke 2:32).39
13. Interchange Between Festus, Paul, and Agrippa (26:24–29)
24While Paul was making his defense in these terms, Festus spoke up loudly: “You are mad, Paul!40 It is all this learning that is turning you mad.”
25But Paul41 replied, “I am not mad, Your Excellency; the words I speak declare the sober truth.42
26The king knows all about this: indeed,43 I speak to him freely. He is not unaware, I am convinced, of any of these things. This business did not take place in a corner.
27Do you believe the prophets, King Agrippa? I know you do.”
28“In short,” said Agrippa to Paul, “you are trying to make me act the Christian.”44
29“In short or at length,” Paul replied, “I could pray that not only you but all who are listening to me today would become as I am, apart from these chains.”
24 Festus could endure it no longer. Paul was obviously a man of tremendous learning, but equally obviously his learning was driving him mad. Otherwise he could never talk so earnestly and at such length about things to which a sensible Roman could attach no meaning; and no man who retained his senses would have antagonized his whole nation for such insubstantial philosophizing. “You are mad, Paul,” he exclaimed; “all this study is turning you crazy.”
25–27 But what was sheer madness to the governor’s way of thinking was the merest truth and sober good sense for Paul. So he assured Festus, and appealed for confirmation to Agrippa. The events which fulfilled the ancient promises were well known and public: this was no hole-and-corner esoteric mystery, whose initiates were pledged to secrecy. The ministry and death of Jesus were matters of common knowledge; his resurrection was amply attested; the gospel had been openly proclaimed in his name. Anyone who believed the prophets and compared their predictions with the historical facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth must acknowledge the truth of Christianity. Agrippa, who might be expected to believe the prophets, could supply corroborating testimony and tell Festus that Paul’s arguments were sane and well founded, that the gospel which he preached contained “nothing except what Moses and the prophets said would happen.”
28 The king was embarrassed by Paul’s appeal. He may have listened to him with interest enough, but Paul obviously hoped that his apparent interest would grow into something more. The logic of the argument was so plain to Paul that he could scarcely imagine that such an expert in the Jewish religion would fail to accept the obvious conclusion. But Agrippa was not disposed even to appear to lend support to Paul’s case. What would Festus think if he expressed—or even seemed to express—agreement with a man whose head had been turned by his learning? Therefore he could not admit that he did believe the prophets; on the other hand, he could not say that he did not believe them, for then his influence with the Jews and his standing with their religious leaders would be gone. So he turned Paul’s appeal aside with a smile: “In short,” he said, “you are trying to make me play the Christian”—for that seems to be the meaning of his words. He was not going to be maneuvered into anything like that!
29 “In short or at length,” said Paul, “I could pray that not only Your Majesty, but all who are here today listening to me, were Christians like myself—apart from these chains” (indicating his shackled wrist with a gesture).
14. Agreement on Paul’s Innocence (26:30–32)
30Then45 the king, the governor, Bernice, and their assessors rose up.
31When they had withdrawn, they discussed him one with another.
“This man,” they said, “does nothing that deserves either death or imprisonment.”
32“No,” said Agrippa to Festus; “he might have been set at liberty if he had not appealed to Caesar.”46
30–32 However, enough had been heard for the immediate purpose. The audience was over, and the governor, Agrippa, and Bernice, with their adjutants and entourages, discussed what Paul had said. One thing at least was clear: even if Paul was as mad as Festus thought, he had done nothing to incur a major legal penalty. In the eyes of Roman law, indeed, he was completely innocent and, as the king said, he might have been discharged there and then if he had not appealed to Caesar. His appeal, however, had taken the decision out of the governor’s hands, and he had to be sent to Rome. Agrippa presumably had no difficulty in suggesting to Festus the lines along which he should frame his report.
The present unanimous agreement on Paul’s innocence is a further contribution to Luke’s general apologetic motive. But it has been argued that the first readers of Acts would detect a sinister note in Agrippa’s last words: “if he had not appealed to Caesar.” They would understand, the argument goes, that by appealing to Caesar Paul had forfeited any prospect of ever being set free, for they would be familiar with the record of that particular Caesar to whom he had appealed—Nero.47 This is reading too much into the text. Nero is not mentioned by name, and after a few decades the average reader might not immediately realize that Nero was emperor when Paul lodged his appeal. At the time, of course, Agrippa’s words could have had no sinister implication: the quinquennium Neronis (the first five years of Nero’s principate which, as has been said above, were later remembered as a miniature golden age) had not yet run its course.48 What Agrippa meant was that, by making his appeal, Paul had put himself into a new position in relation to Roman law,49 and the course prescribed by the law for citizens in that position—appellants to the emperor—must now be followed. Paul must be sent to Rome, to have his appeal heard in the supreme court.50