Just how did St. Paul evangelize? Did he use evidential means of any sort? Or, did he preach as Christ did; that is, within the context of the elect people - Covenant and Kingdom?
We never see Christ, Paul, or any of the Apostles truly attempt to convince people into the Kingdom with external evidence. When they mentioned miracles to the people, it was done in a psychological manner (Proverbs 26:5). They were throwing the silly doubts and sarcastic questions right back at the people, convincing the people that their current philosophies stemmed from the true God, but with radical inconsistencies and with no authority! They were simply beating the unbelievers at their own game, answering them according to their own inconsistencies, leading them down their own paths.
One of the most controversial passages regarding the apologetical tactics of St. Paul is in Acts 17. Here we can see that Paul was not trying to convince the Greeks that God is real through God’s creation, but he was trying to convince the Greek philosophers, in a very wise manner, that all true knowledge is in fact from God. St. Paul was throwing their own proclamation back at them, reminding them (in verse 23), that they have an altar “TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.” St. Paul goes on to say that the God they worship is the same God that Paul worships, but they just don’t “know Him,” as Paul puts it in verse 23.
Many teachers say that St. Paul is persuading through evidence by briefly proclaiming God’s attributes of creation, when in fact he is not persuading through evidence at all. According to St. Paul’s teachings in Romans 1:22-26, which make the point of showing how man sinfully defaults to worship creation, he would not preach a creation-based apologetic. In Acts 17, Paul was focusing on the Greeks’ authority. The Greeks had a material authority (statues and such), so Paul throws their own insignia at them. He challenges their authority by answering them according to their own folly - the folly of their insignia on the altar. They said they worshipped an unknown God, so Paul fills in the unknown part for them. He goes on in verses 24-31 to explain some of the attributes of God to which they were profoundly opposed, which included creation and resurrection of the dead. Now, of all things he could have mentioned about God, why did St. Paul mention these, considering that the Greeks were so opposed to them? Well, one thing is for certain, Paul was not appeasing them as many evangelists do today, and he was certainly not hitting their hot buttons for the close of the sale. In fact, he was touching on issues that were very sensitive to them, and in the last verse, Luke writes that some “joined him and believed.”
How did St. Paul lead them to belief? St. Paul, once again, was answering them according to their own folly (Prov. 26:5). Their folly of paralleling with Paul’s philosophy was his open door. They admitted that they did not know the god that they worshiped, and they also admitted in their poems that they are God’s offspring (verse 28). They knew there was a “higher power” but they did not know the basic deity of this higher power, which is crucial for conversion. St. Paul throws this point back at them so that if they were to disagree with him, they would have to recant their poems and altar insignia. Paul had complete control of the debate by showing their philosophy to be in line with Paul’s God rather than their own. He used their own words and folly against them while showing them that they were idolaters. That is what humbled them!
The Argument of the Resurrection as “Evidence”
It is also argued that Paul was using evidence to persuade when, in verse 32, the people responded to Paul preaching the resurrection. But Paul did not preach the resurrection as proof. The resurrection was a powerful witness to both the Jew and the Gentile because it shows new life within Christ. General suffering on a cross could have been done by any one, but suffering on the cross, taking our sins outside the gate (Hebrews 13:11-12) to Hades (Acts 2:31), and resurrecting to proclaim this “taking off of sins” could only be done by the Messiah as a fulfillment of prophecy. The resurrection was notjust about Christ dying, and it also was not just about him performing a miracle of resurrecting (an evil generation seeks a sign). The resurrection was about Him taking our sins outside the camp, which was the way the Jews understood atonement.
The only way Christ was able to proclaim this taking out of sins to Hell - as prophesied - was by resurrecting (Acts 2:27; Luke 24:44; John 20:17; 1 Peter 3:19; 4:6). The resurrection was part of Christ’s overall plan to show us that He brought sin out of the covenant AND THEN ascended to heaven. The reformer John Calvin speaks of Christ’s descending into hell as a key factor of Christ’s plan of atonement:
If Christ had died only a bodily death, it would have been ineffectual. No - it was expedient at the same time for him to undergo the severity of God’s vengeance, to appease his wrath and satisfy his just judgment. For this reason, he must also grapple hand to hand with the armies of hell and the dread of everlasting death. A little while ago we referred to the prophet’s statement that “the chastisement of our peace was laid upon him,” “he was wounded for our transgressions” by the Father, “he was bruised for our infirmities” [Isaiah 53:5 p.]. By these words he means that Christ was put in place of evildoers as surety and pledge - submitting himself even as the accused - to bear and suffer all the punishments that they ought to have sustained. All - with this one exception: “He could not be held by the pangs of death” [Acts 2:24 p.]. No wonder, then, if he is said to have descended into hell, for he suffered the death that, God in his wrath had inflicted upon the wicked!…The point is that the [apostles] Creed sets forth what Christ suffered in the sight of men, and then appositely speaks of that invisible and incomprehensible judgment which he underwent in the sight of God in order that we might know not only that Christ’s body was given as the price of our redemption, but that he paid a greater and more excellent price in suffering in his soul the terrible torments of a condemned and forsaken man. (Institutes 2:16:10)
The resurrection was not simply a great miracle, but it showed how we have a new life and how we will also, like Christ, have a bodily resurrection (Romans 6:5). This truth had to be preached to the Old Covenant saints as well as the Gentiles because the resurrection is the very hope of the gospel: that after death, we too will rise to eternal life. The Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection of believers (Acts 23:7-8), so Paul did everything in his power to conquer this heresy (Acts 24:21) including risking death (Acts 23:21). Paul never preached the gospel in a manner of evidence; rather, he used the resurrection to proclaim Christ’s promise of atonement and eternal life within an Old/New Covenant context. St. Paul was evangelizing through a kingdom perspective, just as Christ did.