I’ve been reading some stuff from N.T. Wright and started a book of his called “What Saint Paul Really Said.” That sounds like a pompous title but it is partly a response to a book by A.N. Wilson that claims that Paul was the founder of Christianity and Jesus was just a Jewish Rabbi. Mr. Wright’s views by themselves have caused some controversy in the theological world so I have decided to read a bunch of his stuff in order to see for myself.

The first chapter of this book was a summary of the last 100 years of Pauline theology and outlined the theology of four theologians (Schweitzer, Bultmann, Davies, Kasemann, Sanders) who have challenged the Reformed views of Paul. E.P. Sanders was the most recent of these men and he claimed that “Judaism in Paul’s day was not, as has regularly been supposed, a religion of legalistic works-righteousness” (p. 19). Instead, Jews were keeping the Law in response to God’s election of them by grace. They were keeping the Law in order to say in the covenant people, not to get in.

In chapter 2, “Saul the Persecutor, Paul the Convert,” Wright looks at Paul’s life before his conversion and what was he converted into. The Jewish “zeal” that Paul refers to (Rom. 10:2) was not a zeal for the Law or for works, but it was something that was done with a knife. In other words, Paul was a terrorist (a Shammai Pharisee) who took the promises of God literally and was uncompromising upon them. He saw the Roman occupation of Israel as against God and it was upon him to take care of it. The zeal “is all about acting as God’s agent, to rid Israel of corruption, and so to further the agenda of bringing the kingdom, of freeing Israel from the pagan yoke” (p. 29).

This idea came from Daniel 2, 7 and 9, and he saw it as the people’s role to bring the kingdom and fulfill the promises of God for the land, people, and temple. Wright relates how he used to see Paul in his pre-Christian days as living his life in a moral fashion in order to get to heaven. But he sees that this idea is wrong because he was actually looking for the establishment of heaven on earth, or, the salvation of Israel.

There were two key ideas that Saul (or Paul) held onto as a Pharisee: justification and eschatology. Justification was a law-court term and eschatology was the salvation of Israel. Justification has to do with God judging nations hostile to Israel and rescuing His people. He writes, it is “the coming great act of redemption and salvation, seen from the point of view of the covenant (Israel is God’s people) on the one hand and the law court on the other (God’s final judgment will be like a great law-court scene, with Israel winning the case)” (p. 33). This was seen in Daniel 7. Eschatology had to do with the climatic event that would sort all things out for Israel in the salvation of Israel and the defeat of their enemies. The two ideas come together in that their justification would happen in an eschatological context. It was their hope.

So what did Paul realize on the road to Damascus? “The one true God had done for Jesus of Nazareth, in the middle of time, what Saul had thought he was going to do for Israel at the end of time” (p. 36). What could this mean?

• the resurrection (Ezek. 37) had happened to one man;
• it validated Him as the true Messiah (Rom. 1:4);
• it meant that the end of the age had begun while sin, death and rebellion was still present. In this way, two ages were overlapping;
• the age to come meant that Gentiles were to be saved;
• the cross itself was eschatological.