33 PLEASING GOD PLEASING PEOPLE ? OR to show the power of the gospel to change character, he undermines his case when he includes the examples of Peter, Barnabas, and the Jewish Christians with them, whose belief in the gospel failed to produce appropriate behavioral changes in them. To strengthen that case, Paul should have omitted this section. In fact, the claim that Paul is proving the power of the gospel to change character, a fundamental claim of the paradigm view, is also a major weakness of the view. For example, that Paul responded to the gospel by preaching it, that he gave up persecuting the church, and that he persevered in the gospel despite opposition are all adduced as evidence of Paul as one transformed by the gospel 30. However, in 1,15-24 Paul portrays more of his fifteen days in Jerusalem than of his three years in Arabia and Damascus and more of his reputation in Judea than of his time in Syria and Cilicia. Therefore, his obedience in preaching the gospel is not his emphasis. Furthermore, Paul’s opponents clearly responded to their gospel by preaching it since they preached it to the Galatians. They did not drag Christians into court since they were associating with them in the churches. And they persevered in their gospel since they taught it in Jerusalem as well as in Galatia. Therefore, these particular practices do little to distinguish Paul’s character from theirs. Paul, then, does not use the gospel’s power to change character to authenticate his message, but he must verify it in some manner to fulfill his stated purpose in 1,11-12. Until this gap is filled, the paradigm view — with or without Paul’s change in character — begs the question because Paul must show which gospel is true before his exemplary response to it will, or even should, be a pattern for the Galatians. Paul does indeed demonstrate throughout 1,13–2,21 that he has turned from pleasing people to pleasing God, and he will use this to verify his gospel. But not by proving its power to change character. Many details of Paul’s narrative ill fit a paradigm pattern — some even oppose it — and Paul does not contend in chaps. 1–2 that the For the first point, see GAVENTA, “Autobiography as Paradigm”, 315; 30 MATERA, Galatians, 61, 64. For the second, see GAVENTA, “Autobiography as Paradigm ”, 316. For the third, see LONGENECKER, Abraham’s God, 148-149. Albrecht Oepke and Michael Winger also hold in general that Paul’s reversal was not caused by human means — A. OEPKE, Der Brief des Paulus an die Galater (ed. J. ROHDE) (THKNT 9 ; Berlin 51984) 55; M. WINGER, “Tradition, Revelation and Gospel: A Study in Galatians”, JSNT 53 (1994) 80.