the aorist tense 14 times,3 and in the perfect tense a further 3 times,4 when it denotes the present state of being called but does so on the basis of God’s past action.5 These 17 references back to the beginning of the Christian life make καλέω the only verb used by Paul which refers directly to conversion in a majority of cases. We therefore begin our attempt to probe Paul’s understanding of conversion by examining this vocabulary of calling. As noted above, the verb καλέω appears 27 times