Paul and the Faithfulness of God

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.