Paul and the Faithfulness of God, by N. T. Wright

Studies of Paul in the past five decades reflect the tumult of the decades themselves. While Paul has ever been “protean,” as Wayne Meeks memorably put it, in the past half-century he has been subject, like other cultural icons, to vast and violent swings in public opinion, to sweeping redefinition by critics in the academy, and to both redoubled allegiance and puzzled consternation in the church.

Recast and reimagined either to correct or to bear responsibility for the sins and sorrows of civilizations, especially Christian imperialism and the rise of Christian anti-Judaism, Paul has lately been at the center of debates about the supposed parting of the ways between Jews and Christians. These debates—which are urgent and showing no signs of resolution—focus on Paul for obvious reasons: he is our earliest witness to the Jesus movement, he was himself a devout Jew, and within a decade of the death of Jesus he articulated and disseminated widely what he called the gospel, or good news, of Jesus Christ while penning letters that are our earliest reflections on the meaning of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

This Paul, who had once set out to eradicate what he took to be an errant movement corrupting his own tradition, became the proclaimer of the “apocalypse of Jesus Christ.” About this there is no debate. But what was Paul’s relationship to his parent tradition once he was an apostle of Jesus Christ? Or more to the point of the present volumes, what did he think and preach about the relationship between Jesus Christ and the divine covenant with Israel? Did the Christian and Jewish ways part with Paul, or did he see his message as being in continuity with—indeed, in fulfillment of—the covenant of national vocation outlined in the Hebrew scriptures? In Paul’s view, did Christians—Jews and gentiles alike—join Israel, replace Israel, or form a second elect beside Israel? Or has God created in Christ a people utterly new, radically distinct from any prior identity?