In a year in which the Church is celebrating the Jubilee in commemoration of 2,000 years of Christian history, it cannot seem strange that it turns its gaze onto those who were privileged to witness the event that lies at its origin. Doing this, the Church does nothing more than follows in the steps of those who, at the beginning of its history, took it upon themselves to put these events down in writing. One of them, Luke, in the prologue to his gospel, tells us that what he is about to narrate are the events that happened "as these were handed down to us by those who from the outset were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word." (Lk 1:2) In this way we have already had indicated to us the path that all those who came after them had to follow, so that we do not end up overcome by our imagination in inventing Christianity for ourselves (instead of learning what it is in reality by observing carefully how it has manifested itself in human history).
Some have yielded to this temptation: those who, refusing to learn from those who were actual witnesses, believed they could gain a better knowledge of the Christian event by using only the tool of reason, detached from whom alone could lead it, without losing the way, to the event which they wanted to know. Instead of listening to the "eyewitnesses," as the evangelists taught us to do, and to those who have followed them over the centuries, they preferred to set out for themselves on a path that got them lost.
The reason they did not want to follow the witnesses was the suspicion that those who wrote the sources that allow us to know it were more creators, inventors, than witnesses. This was the charge that was made to Paul above all. So what we, following the New Testament, consider the distinguishing trait of Christianity, the one that places it on a different level from any other form of religion, that leads us to celebrate the Jubilee on its two-thousandth anniversary, and that Mystery caused to enter into history, would be nothing more than a creation of the ingenuity of a man, Paul of Tarsus. (...)
Within the group of texts produced by the early Christian community, which we know as the New Testament, today we shall concern ourselves essentially with Paul's letters.
These letters are especially important to us, first of all, because today no one questions the fact that a large part of the letters that are attributed to him were written by Paul personally. Secondly, they are important because in general agreement is practically unanimous on their dating: in the decade of the 50s of the first century of our era. And the first element that attracts attention is that between Paul's first letter, First Thessalonians, written at the beginning of 50 A.D. (at the beginning of his missionary activity in Corinth), and the last, the one to the Romans, written presumably in the winter of 56-57 (once again from Corinth), no evolution can be noted in what Paul thinks of Christ. In them, Paul uses titles, formulas, and Christological concepts that he does not explain. In effect, he assumes that the communities were able to understand them. No one writes a letter that will be incomprehensible to its addressee. The only way they could understand these terms would have been from the missionary activity of the apostle at the time these communities were founded.

An ancient witness
All the essential characteristics of his Christology were completely developed toward the middle of the 40s, before he began his great missionary voyages. There thus remain some 15 years, between the middle of the 40s and the year 30, the generally accepted date of the death of Christ. During this period, Paul would have finished his presumed work of creating the Christian faith, as it is handed down to us in his letters. (...)
In order to demonstrate the early date in which the gospels or their sources were written, it is necessary to have a very early and absolutely reliable witness. Well, we have it in some passages from one of St. Paul's epistles-the second letter to the Corinthians-which are famous for their obscurity or strangeness. Even if it is not possible to deal with the question here in all its profundity, one of the facts that can be deduced from the texts is that St. Paul speaks of written "gospels" and that these were not written for the exclusive use of the preachers, but also, and perhaps even more importantly, so that believers in Christ would have a sacred writing telling of Him for their celebration of the Lord's Supper on Sundays. Thus, in II Corinthians 1:13 the Greek text says literally: "Because we are not writing you anything other than the things you read." This statement by the apostle is enigmatic despite its simplicity, as is demonstrated by the efforts made by scholars to find its meaning.
In our opinion, the only explanation possible is given by the original Aramaic. In fact, in Greek and in Aramaic, besides the direct accusative case, which acts as an object for transitive verbs, there are also indirect accusatives, and among these the so-called "accusative of specification" which is translated by placing in front of it the preposition "on" or "regarding." Reading the accusative in the statement that we are examining here as an "accusative of specification," the original Aramaic said, "Because we are not writing you anything but 'on' the things you read." It is clear, in our opinion, that St. Paul meant by these words: what I am writing in my letters is a theological reflection, a comment on what you read in your sacred Sunday readings. The apostle says that he is tied to this tradition about Jesus which has been fixed in writing.
It must be kept in mind that where believers in Christ came together for the celebration of the Sunday liturgy, writings with this content and of this sacred type had to be read; only in this way could the preservation of the faith be ensured within the community. Communities of believers in Christ were formed in Palestine very soon after His death and resurrection, and since these communities spoke Aramaic, the writings they composed had necessarily to be in Aramaic, immediately thereafter translated into Greek.

The encounter with Peter
(...) Paul says that he did not receive his gospel from a man, but that it was revealed to him, and that he did not consult the apostles in Jerusalem before he began to proclaim it. Just three years later Paul met Peter, and 14 years later he expounded his gospel by the columns of the church in Jerusalem to verify if he was going in the right direction. This shows how independently Paul came into contact with the gospel. Nonetheless, despite this independence at the beginning, he was concerned about emphasizing how much the content corresponded completely. "They asked nothing more than that we should remember to help the poor." (Gal 2:10) Then how did Paul know the gospel? The answer to this question will allow us to understand to what extent Paul is a qualified witness to the Christian event.
From the strictly historical standpoint, there is nothing that is more indisputable in Paul's personal experience than the change of direction his life underwent in a definite moment, when he was on the road to Damascus. At the beginning of his letter to the Galatians, he told the story of this change in these words, "You have surely heard how I lived in the past, within Judaism, and how there was simply no limit to the way I persecuted the Church of God in my attempts to destroy it; and how, in Judaism, I outstripped most of my Jewish contemporaries in my limitless enthusiasm for the traditions of my ancestors. But then God, who had set me apart from the time when I was in my mother's womb, called me through His grace and chose to reveal His Son in me, so that I should preach him to the Gentiles…." (Gal 1:13-16)
(...) We know from other passages from his letters that this revelation was based on the appearance of the risen Christ. The two occasions on which Paul alludes to this fact, in his first letter to the Corinthians, place his experience on the road to Damascus in the context of the appearances on the first Easter. In I Corinthians 9:1, "Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?," he uses the same word orao, "see," which is found in Easter contexts (Jn 20:14,18,20,25,27,29; Mt 28:10,17; Lk 24:37,39). And in I Corinthians 15:8, Paul cites the appearance of the risen Christ, which happened to him, at the end of a list of appearances, thus it has to be catalogued as one of them. From these texts we can thus deduce that "Paul saw Jesus" and that he "considers this vision identical to, and of the same value as, those conceded to Peter, James, and the other witnesses to the appearance of the Risen One." (S. Légasse, Paul Apôtre, Paris 1991, 62)
If "experience is the emergence of reality in the human conscience, reality which makes itself transparent to human reason," in this experience of the encounter with the Risen One the reality of Christ became transparent to Paul. (L. Giussani, Il miracolo del cambiamento [The Miracle of Change], Rimini 1998, p. 15) In no other moment in his life were Paul's reason and freedom challenged, placed on the line, as in this episode. In an absolutely unexpected way, on the road to Damascus, the risen Christ came to meet Paul, whose reason was expanded by the grace of faith, so that it would be adequate to the exceptional reality he had before his eyes (...) Like many Jews, Paul had shared the judgment of Jesus Christ contained in the Sanhedrin's sentence: a blasphemer, contrary to the most precious traditions of Israel, the Temple and the Law. He believed he knew who Jesus Christ was. Now, instead, the unexpected invasion of the risen Christ into his life gave him a knowledge that he had not taken into account. Starting with this moment he would understand that he knew Him only-as he would say later-catà\sarcàs, "according to human standards." (II Cor 5:16)
A reasonable man
If, according to Guitton's axiom, "'reasonable' means submitting reason to experience," Paul demonstrated that he was a reasonable man by accepting to submit his reason, that is, what he thought about Jesus, to the knowledge of the reality of Christ as it was made manifest in that experience. (J. Guitton, Arte nuova di pensare [New Art of Thinking], Cinisello Balsamo 1991, p. 71)
"That revelation of the 'Lord of glory' who was crucified (I Cor 2:8) was an event that transformed Paul, the Pharisee, not only into an apostle, but into the first Christian theologian" (J. Fitzmyer, Teologia de San Pablo. Sintesis y perspectivas, Madrid 1975, p. 62) Numerous scholars have linked Pauline theology to Paul's experience on the road to Damascus. According to J. Jeremías, "neither mystery religions nor the cult of the emperor, nor Stoic philosophy, nor the presumed pre-Christian Gnosticism constitute the apostle's original humus. Paul, the German philosopher continues, is one of those men who have experienced a drastic break with their past. His theology is a theology rooted in a sudden conversion." (J. Jeremías, The Key to Pauline Theology, Exp. Tim 76, 1964/5, p. 28)
This revelation became the fundamental criterion for judging everything. "Christ opened his eyes for him, and after he knew Him, his criteria for evaluating were simply turned upside down." (J. Barbaglio, Pablo y los origenes cristianos [Paul and the Christian Origins], p. 72) Paul himself confirms this explicitly: "Circumcised on the eighth day of my life, I was born of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrew parents. In the matter of the Law, I was a Pharisee; as for religious fervor, I was a persecutor of the Church; as for the uprightness embodied in the Law, I was faultless. But what were once my assets I now through Christ Jesus count as losses. Yes, I will go further: because of the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, I count everything else as loss. For Him I have accepted the loss of all other things, and look on them all as filth if only I can gain Christ and be given a place in Him." (Phil 3:5-8) Paul thus feels obligated to rethink all the basic categories of his way of thinking, his old convictions, in the light of this new knowledge of Christ. The result of this revision and the new mental outlook that arises from it is what we call Pauline theology. He made this theology known not by means of a handbook of theology, but by some letters addressed to communities that he himself had founded. Through them, Paul continues to testify, to whoever approaches them and reads them with simplicity of heart, to the event that transformed his life, the same event that has transformed ours and that we are preparing to celebrate in this Jubilee Year.