Paul and the Faithfulness of God

October 7, 2013
According to acclaimed New Testament scholar Wright (The Resurrection of the Son of God), most works on Paul focus on his ideas of salvation and justification as the centerpiece of Pauline theology. In this magisterial study, the former bishop of Durham passionately challenges those readings of Paul by exploring the ways that Paul’s theology develops out of, and in conversation with, the competing cultural, philosophical, and religious views of his day. In Parts I and II of his provocative book, Wright painstakingly examines the Jewish, Greek, and Roman contexts in which Paul struggled to develop his thought; in Parts III and IV, Wright closely reads Paul’s letters to illustrate how Paul’s theology evolved in response to these influences. Out of this engagement with his world, Paul develops three categories central to his theology: “monotheism, election, and eschatology: one God, one people of God, one future for God’s world.” Wright concludes: “Paul was doing theology because the life of God’s people depended on it, depended on his doing it initially for them, then as soon as possible with them, and then on their being able to go on doing it for themselves. All Paul’s theology is thus pastoral theology.”

February 1, 2014

Wright (New Testament and Early Christianity, Univ. of St. Andrews; The Resurrection of the Son of God), one of the world's foremost New Testament scholars, argues that we can best understand the Apostle Paul through careful analysis of his worldview. To this end the former Anglican Bishop of Durham presents a massive scholarly treatise in four parts. Part 1 explores Paul in the context of first-century Judaism, Greek philosophy, religion and culture, and the Roman Empire. Part 2 develops Wright's view of how a second temple Pharisee such as Paul would have perceived this environment. The massive Part 3 elucidates the theology Paul invented out of core Jewish beliefs about God, beliefs that he revised to incorporate a Messiah who had been crucified and raised from the dead. Paul's new theology sustained a community of believers in a way that neither temple Judaism nor paganism had found necessary. With the tools properly in place, in Part 4 Wright returns to Paul now in the contexts of Rome. Ultimately, Wright's Paul is a Jewish thinker who believed God had fulfilled his promises (thus the "faithfulness" of the title) and that the new Jewish vocation was to bear salvation to the rest of the world. VERDICT Required reading for New Testament scholars and recommended for serious, diligent students armed with deep familiarity with the literature.--James R. Kuhlman, Kentucky Wesleyan Coll., Owensboro

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