On the other hand, I do not think that the grand vision can simply be
seen as something arising out of the mission as it developed on the ground,
with the forces that were pushing Paul into independent work, further
and further west, somehow, at the same time, leading him to conceive of
his mission in universal and unique terms. For Paul seems to be aware of
a unique call to “proclaim [Christ] among the Gentiles” from the very
beginning of his apostleship (Gal. 1:15–16). Of course, one has to reckon
with the possibility that this is a retrospective view, Paul collapsing into the
moment of conversion a process of realization that stretched over a longer
period (Fredriksen 1986, 3–34). But without denying the possibility of
development, Paul’s (evidently evangelistic) activity in Arabia (Gal. 1:17)
seems to indicate that he was conscious of a mission to Gentiles from a very
early point. This is the most probable explanation of Aretas’s annoyance
with Paul (2 Cor. 11:32–33; cf. Acts 9:23–25; see Betz 1979, 74). This is not
to say that Paul had from the beginning the specific intention of evangel-
izing all the way to Spain, nor that he always understood his call in terms
of the Servant missionary of Deutero-Isaiah. Nevertheless, from a very
early point Paul believed himself to have been called by God to a unique mis-
sion among the ethnê,which means that the grand vision was present,
already then, in implicit or embryonic form.
My suggestion is that the nature of the relationship between grand
vision and gritty reality falls somewhere in between these two extremes. For
the most part, I think that they operated at different levels: the grand
vision providing the horizon within which Paul carried out his mission,
and the actual course of that mission being governed largely by the more
mundane realities on the ground. But, at certain points, events unfolded in
such a way as to bring the two factors into a more dialectical relationship:
Paul’s actual experiences serving to bring dimensions of the grand vision
into clearer focus, on the one hand; the imperatives of the vision imping-
ing upon his actual plans for the future, on the other.
In particular, I believe that we have evidence for two such dialectical
moments. The first is the break with Antioch and the beginning of Paul’s
independent missionary activity. Up to this point, Paul seems to have been
content to work in and around Antioch, or, at least, outward from Antioch
as a home base. The conflict with Peter and the break with Barnabas seem
to coincide with the beginning of Paul’s push to the west, first to the Greek
peninsula and then, in intention at least (“at last” [Rom. 1:10]; “often
intended” [Rom. 1:13]), to Rome. It is at least plausible to suggest that
these developments pushed Paul to a clearer perception of the territorial
dimensions of his apostolic call, and perhaps to the belief that the shape of
“The Field God Has Assigned” 135