Paul was a religious zealot of the time, a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He was clearly well educated and well respected, trusted by the important people of the time, given free rein to carry out his zealotry and haul converts (heretics) off to prison. Yet he was tutored also by Gamaliel, who we’ve seen from other records took things carefully and slowly, and in perhaps a more considered manner.
Paul goes off hauling folk off to prison. He meets a form of zealotry and passive resistance that astounds him: the martyr Stephen, and others in the towns he rampages. He knows that what he knows – in his head – hasn’t quite reached his heart. But he sees these people have something in their hearts. He’s suspicious, at first; doesn’t believe it’s real, but knows they have a passion that exceeds his own. (They can be a bit scary, that sort of people; yet they have something that grabs one’s attention.)
After his conversion experience and with his welcome and introduction by Barnabas (how astounding that must have been!), Paul wants to know how he got it wrong. He re-examines everything he knows (and it’s a lot). (Just like we have to re-examine everything we learned from TWI in particular, and perhaps from other churches too.) He finally begins to get the big picture. Those of us who still profess to be Christians know those light-bulb moments when something suddenly comes into focus, or when such-and-such a verse appears in our Bible and it’s as though we’d never ever seen that verse before. I’m suspecting Paul had a lot of those moments.
I don’t think Paul was a con-artist, any more than we escapees from TWI are con artists. If anything, we who have re-examined our beliefs and our biased studies are more passionate for what we now understand than we ever were before. Paul started from a high level of knowledge so he could examine a lot of detailed passages and draw threads together in a way that most of us cannot. Finally, finally, he gets God’s big picture, and the more he studies, ponders, preaches, the more he learns. The more he sees others apply it and live it (and it works!) the more he understands.
I wonder if some of those “but I speak by permission” and “in my judgment” sections are things that he’d considered, but hadn’t at that point found any specific Torah or other scroll/scripture to support (and also nothing to negate). He realised “externals” didn’t matter (hair length, modes of dress, religious observances and rituals, etc) but that “internals” manifesting as actions, really did matter.
There is so much more freedom in Paul’s epistles than he’s usually given credit for. He himself had been “under law” for so long – he knew what that was like – and he knew it wasn’t the will of God that men should be oppressed by legalism. He knew the many OT proverbs and sayings about guarding one’s heart, probably knew the oral forms of the gospels – what we know as Mt 15:1-28 for example.
I don’t think a single one of us here could do anything like Paul did (not even the late Steve Lortz, whose contributions I always found interesting and usually enlightening). Paul, a con man? If it were not for Paul, we’d still be worshiping nature, Diana, Dagon, the local emperor, or other false gods.