Wright in PFG on Paul's TheologyA recent work that deserves much interaction for those interested in Paul or the New Testament in general is N. T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Below is an excerpt from chapter six which provides Wright's summary of Paul's theological thinking in light of his :
In the world of Saul of Tarsus, 'theology' as a task, that is, fresh exploration of what 'the divine' might be or might mean, was something undertaken by pagan philosophers and manipulated by empires. 'Theology' as a set of beliefs was, at least by implication, already clear for someone like Saul: monotheism, election, eschatology, with their various sub-categories. Part of the genius of Paul was to bring together 'theology as a task' with this implicit Jewish 'theology as a set of beliefs', transforming (baptizing?) the task itself in the process while unpacking and explaining the beliefs in a radically new direction - though claiming, and trying to demonstrate, that this new direction was in fact a thoroughly Jewish, scripturally based exploration of the one God, his people and his plans. For Paul, the method and the means by which the task and beliefs alike were transformed was Jesus himself, the crucified and risen Messiah, son of God and lord, and the 'spirit of the son' which the one God had poured out on his renewed people. Thus not only the subject-matter of theology but also the discipline itself, if we can call it that, was remoulded by Paul, at one level in terms of a creative fusion of the worlds we have studied in Part I [Wright interacts here with Jewish, Greek, and Roman worldviews] but at another level in terms of the fresh action, as he saw it, of the one God.
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