Was Paul a Christian?

While the "Jewishness" of Paul has been accentuated in the New Perspective on Paul, in the Radical New Perspective on Paul he is portrayed as remaining within "Judaism" and thus not as a Christian. In the latter approach, Paul's Damascus encounter is perceived to be merely a call and not a conversion. In addition, in scholarship generally, both Judaism and Christianity, as full-scale religious systems, are strictly speaking understood as later developments after the Second Temple period, making it problematic to contend that Paul converted from Judaism to Christianity. This article reconsiders both the definition of Christianity and whether Paul has undergone a change of core identity, which is argued to be foundational to the question whether Paul underwent a conversion or not. An assessment of whether Paul underwent a change of core identity is pursued along four categories: (1) the way in which Paul utilises "now" and "us/we" language in describing the "in-Christ" identity; (2) his use of the concepts of "flesh" and "Spirit" in respect of identity; (3) the way in which Paul describes the "in-Christ" identity relative to the law; and (4) the way in which he refers to Judaeans as outsiders.