Reddit reviews Paul and the Faithfulness of God

I very strongly disagree. Basing my opinions on the work of New Testament scholars who are not Bart Ehrman, I maintain that the content of Paul's message coheres rather brilliantly with that of the synoptic gospels. You are perceiving a contradiction because (1) you are forgetting the Second-Temple context in which the Pauline epistles and synoptic gospels emerged and (2) you are reading Paul through a reductionist lens, insisting that the emphasis was principally on Jesus' death as having paid for our sins. While Paul certainly does reflect a great deal on Jesus' death and its consequences for sin, the apostle's theological vision is so much more broad than just that one issue: as N. T. Wright contends in the masterpiece of biblical scholarship Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Paul's primary concern was articulating how exactly Jesus, as Moshiach, fulfilled in his person the promises that God had made to the people Israel.

You say that Jesus can be characterized in the synoptics as an "apocalyptic prophet," a characterization that I take to be inseparable from the fact that, within those gospels, Jesus' primary focus is on the proclamation of the "Kingdom of God" (as you acknowledge here). This apocalyptic notion of the "Kingdom" did not simply emerge out of nowhere as a wholly Christian innovation, but rather was a response to the eschatological imagination of Second-Temple Judaism in which God was expected to return to dwell among his people as their king (having previously withdrawn his presence, his shekinah, at the Babylonian exile, plunging his people into a period of pain, foreign domination, and darkness). N. T. Wright summarizes the eschatological expectations thusly:

>Central to second-Temple monotheism was the belief... that Israel’s God, having abandoned Jerusalem and the Temple at the time of the Babylonian exile, would one day return. He would return in person. He would return in glory. He would return to judge and save. He would return to bring about the new exodus, overthrowing the enemies that had enslaved his people. He would return to establish his glorious, tabernacling presence in their midst. He would return to rule over the whole world. He would come back to be king

This is what Paul is concerned about. He wants to answer the question: How did Jesus fulfill these Jewish eschatological expectations? Or, phrased in a way that makes the connection with the synoptic gospels more obvious: How did Jesus institute the Kingdom of God? How has God, through Jesus, "delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (Colossians 1:13)?

Paul's answer is that God has kept his promises by returning to Israel in the person of Jesus of Nazareth (for "in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell" (Colossians 1:19)), the Messiah who himself is king and whose 'glory' is made manifest in his saving cross. Not only does Jesus defeat the greatest enemy, namely death, but his identification as the one true kyrios—Lord—directly contradicts Caesar's own claim to be the true ruler of the world. God's tabernacling presence has returned to his people, such that the Spirit of the one God can be said to dwell in the Messiah's followers (1 Corinthians 3:16). In other words, for Paul, Jesus has truly established the Kingdom of God, for which reason the message of his epistles and of the synoptics are entirely complementary.

> Paul is a Stoic through and through

I really hate to nitpick, and I know of at least one scholar who agrees with you, but I think Paul wasn't as much of a stoic as some think. N.T. Wright (in his latest gargantuan work on Paul) argues expertly against Troels Endberg-Pedersen, effectively demonstrating that Paul has some very important (almost irreconcilable) differences from stoicism.

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> Neoplatonism is an incredibly obvious influence, especially on the Gospel of John

Interesting... How so? Are you referring to the hellenistic idea of the λόγος? I didn't know that was neoplatonistic. I knew it was hellenistic, but I'm not all that familiar with neoplatonism.

Try this. Paul reworked the Shema so that Jesus received a place of mention beside the Father. Also note how Paul sometimes treats them as interchangeable.

For non-biblical sources, N. T. Wright has put out a couple books on the subject: Jesus and the Victor of God is perhaps the most relevant, but his recent monster of a book Paul and the Faithfulness of God dedicates a portion of the book to Monotheism in Paul's thought. If you're into academic stuff you could give PatFoG a try, as it goes over historical research in the time as well. It's 1700 pages though.

Not sure what sorts of perspectives you're looking for, but NT Wright is a top notch academic writing from a somewhat conservative Anglican perspective, and has written a ton on these two guys:

Jesus and the Victory of God

The Resurrection of the Son of God

Paul and the Faithfulness of God

And if ~3200 pages isn't quite enough to scare you out of attempting the project, you should also read the first volume in this series, The New Testament and the People of God.

I'm a big N.T. Wright fan for the perspective he gives on the context and world of 2nd Temple Judaism and Jews in the Grecko-Roman world.

For more academic and lengthy reading, Paul and the Faithfulness of God. For more casual and accessible reading, Paul: A Biography

Another potential good read for those interested:
Paul and the Faithfulness of God https://www.amazon.com/dp/0800626834/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_4-wJAbN6F1NS6

Here are a few of my favorite theologians, Bible scholars, and books

For Biblical exegesis

Inductive Bible Study by Robert Traina and David Bauer

For Systematic Theology

Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology by Thomas C. Oden (Almost anything by Oden is good really)

For Pauline Studies

Paul and the Faithfulness of God by NT Wright

The Theology of Paul by James D. G. Dunn


For Cultural Background in New Testament

Craig S. Keener (his commentary on John's Gospel is phenomenal, as is the IVP Background commentary by him)

Ben Witherington III (his commentaries are generally good)

For Christian ethics

Moral Vision of the New Testament by Richard B. Hays

For Old Testament

Walter Brueggeman (pretty much anything by this guy)

Terrence Fretheim (I especially like his commentary on Exodus)

Sandra Richter (Epic of Eden, a good primer on ancient Israelite and Canaanite culture and how it shaped the OT)

Philosophy of Religion

Soren Kierkegaard (my absolute favorite philosopher, I especially recommend Fear and Trembling)

Thomas Aquinas

St. Augustine

Alvin Plantiga (I personally dislike Plantiga's philosophy, but he's become a big name in philosophy of Religion so not someone to be ignorant of)

William Hasker

William Abraham

Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes by Charles Hartshorne (I'm not a process theologian, but this book in particular is highly important in modern theology, definitely worth a read)


Edit:
If you wanted a broad, general sweep of theology, I'd recommend The Modern Theologians by David F. Ford. It's a good overview of various theological movements since the start of the 20th century and covers theology from many different perspectives.

N.T. Wright is generally considered to be the current expert on Paul.

A really great and short book, adapted from a lecture series: Paul in Fresh Perspective.

An exhaustive 1700 page monster: Paul and the Faithfulness of God. I'm working through this one now. It's very informative and a good read, but it really does engage with pretty much every academic writer of any substance from the past hundred years, so sometimes it feels like you're listening in on the middle of a conversation. The earlier books in this series, particularly The New Testament and the People of God (which is volume 1, and has much of the background material) covers the political and religious situation during the Second Temple period. It has a lot of great discussion about the Pharisees (a very complex group of people) and their opponents, Roman and Greek stuff, and so on.

Many times in the NT 'pistis' can mean 'faith of' or 'faithfulness of'. The new perspective on Paul material that I have renders pistis Christou as the faithfulness of Christ.

See:

• The Theology of Paul the Apostle
  
  
• Paul and the Faithfulness of God