"But the Lord said to him, "Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name."" (Acts 9:15-16, NRSV).
I may be grasping at straws here, but reading this text, and this excerpt in particular, I thought I noticed some similarities between the god of Stoic belief described by Seneca, and the behavior of god in this passage. God takes a fatherly role over Saul as he chooses him to be his vehicle to spread his teachings. The Stoics believed that gods held a fatherly relationship with men, meaning that they wanted to better the men through adversity. The Stoics also embraced and welcomed adversity and suffering. Saul is going to face great suffering but it will be for a greater good according to the text.
"Saul, like the prophets, was chosen for a special purpose" (Acts 9:15, Annotations). The Stoics believed that the gods only subjected certain men to suffering because those men were the ones who were worthy of it because they had great potential. Here, god has hand chosen Saul for a great task, that will surely entail suffering, because he is worthy of such a task.
I will open this for discussion now. What are your thoughts?
I agree, but I think if we look at it closer, we can see the authors playing at human emotions. The authors are trying to create someone that humans will willingly follow without question. If you create someone who has been tested by God and has passed his tests, you will be more likely to get followers. That is their goal. Their goal is to challenge Romans' faith, and to do this, they need someone that the Romans can look up to such as Aeneas or Hercules. Saul is an idea created by the authors trying to get Roman and Jewish followers.
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