I finished N. T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God! Part 2

Chapters 3-5 of the book are all about the Greco-Roman world in which Paul worked. It’s history — and I love it. I’m a history buff.

The significance for Paul’s writings is not as obvious as the Jewish background covered in chapter 2. Wright will explain the significance of these chapters much later in the book.

This is actually quite a lengthy section, and my only complaint is that Wright waits so long to tie the history to Paul’s theology. On the other hand, it’s incredibly interesting and helpful to understand First Century Rome this well.

Part II

In chapters 6, 7, and 8, Wright takes the preceding material and attempts to recreate Paul’s worldview — the understandings and assumptions that were so obvious in Paul’s world that they didn’t need to be stated.

In today’s world, in the US, it is assumed that individual freedom is of very nearly the  highest value. In other cultures, freedom has much less value; rather, family and honor drive everyone. Thus, we Americans have trouble understanding why, for example, the Iraqis aren’t thrilled to have their freedom when what many really want is honor — a concept few of us Americans could even define.

Just so, in Paul’s world, the fact that the Jews considered themselves to still be in exile was too obvious to mention. Similarly, the contrast between Jewish monotheism and pagan polytheism shaped Jewish thought — but not the way we Westerners assume. The claim that Jesus was co-equal with God as Son of God did not give rise to accusations of polytheism, for example, because Christianity did not claim that there were multiple deities with separate and even competing spheres of influence.

Wright explains,

It was then a matter of Jesus’ followers coming to believe that in him, and supremely in his death and resurrection – the resurrection, of course, revealing that the death was itself to be radically re-evaluated – Israel’s God had done what he had long promised. He had returned to be king. He had ‘visited’ his people and ‘redeemed’ them. He had returned to dwell in the midst of his people. Jesus had done what God had said he and he alone would do. … The most important thing was that in his life, death and resurrection Jesus had accomplished the new Exodus, had done in person what Israel’s God had said he would do in person. He had inaugurated God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven.

In short, the early church called Jesus “God” and “Lord” because Jesus had done exactly those things that God said he would do at the end of the exile. Thus, Jesus did not supplant God or seek to reign in a realm separate from God. Rather, he was God on earth honoring God’s promises.

In fact, God had said that he would return to his Temple, and yet it was Jesus who returned in God’s place. Indeed, over and over, we see in the Gospels Jesus taking on the role of God himself in forgiving sins, in accepting worship, and so on.

Part III

And this brings us to Part III, Paul’s theology. And it’s here that, I admit, I began to struggle reading the books. So much of the discussion dealt with debates within the academy over issues that the Churches of Christ rejected long ago that the exegesis became hard to follow. As beautiful as the exegesis is at times, it is targeted to issues that I and my readers just don’t care about.

But as he wrestles with these issues, he lays out profound statements, such as —

The source from which all these streams flow is Paul’s belief that with the resurrection of Jesus the hope of Israel had been split into two. Jesus had been raised first, demonstrating him to be Israel’s Messiah; all his people would be raised later, at the moment Paul calls ‘the end’. The future had burst into the present, close up and personal; at the same time, the future remained future, glimpsed as in a darkened mirror. This sudden irruption of future into present, Paul concluded, was not simply a strange accident, as though a cog had slipped in the providential clock, leading it to strike the hour too soon. Paul was not just freewheeling pragmatically into an unexpected situation, making up inaugurated eschatology on the hoof. When he reflected on what was already the case and how that related to what was not yet the case, but would become so through Messiah and spirit, he advanced arguments which sought to explain that this interval, however unexpected, had itself a specific purpose within the divine economy. To repeat and amplify what was said above: within eschatological ethics, this purpose has to do with the present development of character. The present time is the time of the formation of truly human beings; this cannot be achieved at a stroke, precisely because of what a human being is. Within the eschatology of Israel’s election, it is the need to bring all, Jew and gentile alike, ‘under sin’, in order that all who are saved may be saved by mercy alone.

(Kindle Locations 29340-29351). This bears serious reflection. Spiritual formation, which is quickly becoming a dead cliché in the American churches, is the reason the saved remained on earth after they’re saved rather than taken straight to the arms of Jesus.

But the center of Paul’s theology is his confidence that Jesus is God’s Messiah —

Here and in several other passages Paul declares loud and clear that Jesus is already the world’s true lord and king; that he is already reigning. What did he mean?

Paul knew as well as we do that this claim seemed absurd. Not only did he believe that a once thoroughly dead man was now thoroughly and bodily alive again, but he believed that this same man was already in charge of the world, despite the fact that murder and mayhem continued and that he, Paul, a key representative of this dead-but-now-alive man, was suffering imprisonment and persecution! The claims for Jesus’ sovereignty are made, though, right across the Pauline letters, and we cannot wish them away as a slip of the pen. … When Paul said that Jesus was now in charge, he meant something much more dangerous and subversive. He meant, in some sense or other, that Caesar was not the world’s ultimate ruler.

(Kindle Locations 29746-29757).

The cross is the victory through which the powers of the old age are brought low, enabling the new age to be ushered in at last. Here, once again, we see what was foundational for Paul: that which Jewish eschatology looked for in the future, the overthrow of the enslaving evil powers and the establishment of YHWH’s reign instead, had truly been inaugurated in and through the messianic events of Jesus’ death and resurrection. As a result, the ‘rulers of the present age’ are now ‘being done away with’. Their power is at an end, and they unwittingly brought that result upon themselves by crucifying the one who always was ‘the lord of glory’ and who is now revealed as such through his resurrection.

(Kindle Locations 29822-29828).

And there is so much more.