Endorsements
What scholars are saying about Paul and the Faithfulness of God:
"N. T. Wright’s long-awaited full-length study of St. Paul will not in any way disappoint. From the very first sentence, it holds the attention, arguing a strong, persuasive, coherent, and fresh case supported by immense scholarship and comprehensive theological intelligence. It is a worthy successor to his earlier magisterial studies, laying out again very plainly the ways in which the faith of the New Testament is focused on God’s purpose to re-create, through the fact of Jesus crucified and risen, our entire understanding of authority and social identity."
—Rowan Williams
Magdalene College, Cambridge
“Only once in every other generation or so does a project approaching the size, scope, and significance of Paul and the Faithfulness of God appear. Paul’s world, worldview, controlling stories, and theology spring to life through N. T. Wright’s brilliant scholarship and spirited writing. Arguing for narrative and theological coherence in Paul’s thought, Wright seeks to overcome numerous dichotomies that have characterized recent Pauline scholarship. Readers will be richly rewarded and challenged at every turn—even when they do not fully agree. Each chapter reveals something profound about the surprising faithfulness of the God freshly revealed in Jesus the Messiah and conveyed to Paul’s communities, and to us, by the Spirit.”
—Michael J. Gorman
St. Mary’s Seminary & University, Baltimore, Maryland
"Breath-taking, mind-expanding, ground-breaking, and more—it is easy to run out of adjectives to describe what N. T. Wright has already accomplished in his multi-volume account of New Testament history and theology. This fourth volume in the series is likewise a game-changer, above all for its adventurous presentation of Paul's ‘mindset’ and theology, so thoroughly contextualized at the confluence of the apostle's Jewish, Roman, and Greek worlds. This is Wright at his best—part historian, part exegete, part theologian, part pedagogue."
—Joel B. Green
Fuller Theological Seminary, California
"With magisterial vision, energetic scholarship, and lucid illustration, N. T. Wright unveils the mysteries of Paul's theological imagination. This compellingly argued and absorbing study takes us beyond the bifurcation of salvation and participation that has long pervaded Pauline studies. Combining the passion of Augustine with the ambition of Barth, Wright's Christian Origins series has inscribed itself into the canon of scripturally soaked theology, where it will remain for generations to come."
—Sam Wells
Vicar, Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, London
"Paul and the Faithfulness of God is the summa (but surely not the final work) of a great mind and indefatigable scholar who has devoted decades to understanding the New Testament and particularly, as here, the Letters of Paul in their fullest historical and theological contexts. This book will surely be the defining standard, the Bultmann for our age, the text from which everyone will work and argue and revise their (and his) thinking about Paul for the next decade at least."
—Daniel Boyarin
University of California, Berkeley
“A wonderful book! It has all the marks of a classic. Wright tackles the most interesting and difficult issues surrounding Paul, integrating historical, literary, philosophical and theological approaches superbly, and drawing us deep into the complex world of the first urban Christians. He explores Paul’s extraordinary achievement in reworking his Judaism around Jesus the crucified and risen Messiah, uniting theology, prayer, politics, community building and inspired improvisation. Wright’s language is as fresh, intense and at times combative as Paul’s, conveying its ‘messianic newness’. He bridges the gap between Paul and today in a way that does justice to the strangeness of the first-century world while also enabling Paul to speak powerfully and relevantly now. Above all, he illuminates the multi-dimensional reconciliation—with God, each other, and all creation—at the heart of Paul’s thought and practice, and opens up the most radical, embracing mystery of all: the love of God in Jesus.”
—David F. Ford
University of Cambridge
“This long-awaited book is the fruit of more than thirty years of N. T. Wright’s intense, loving and imaginative engagement with the apostle Paul. In a magisterial reading of Paul’s letters, Wright integrates sustained, fine grained exegesis into a sweeping interpretation that places Paul on the map of Mediterranean antiquity in fresh and sometimes surprising ways. The apostle that he portrays is deeply grounded in Israel’s faith and, at the same time, passionately concerned to carry the gospel of Israel’s Messiah Jesus to the pagan world of his day. Everyone who reads these pages will be drawn into deep and provocative reflection on the historical figure of Paul. But there is more: no one can grapple seriously with Wright’s readings without also being brought face to face with the world-transforming message that Paul proclaimed.”
—Richard B. Hays
Duke University
“N. T. Wright’s big book on Paul has long been eagerly awaited. And here it is! Massive in every sense of the word, this is a synthetic, scholarly and comprehensive analysis of Paul, worked out using the key categories outlined in The New Testament and the People of God, showing how Paul, as a Jew in the Roman Empire, reworked the framework of monotheism, election, and eschatology around Jesus and the Spirit. Written with elegance and humour, full of detailed exegesis and engaging with a wide range of contemporary scholarship, this major achievement will be a landmark in the field of Pauline studies for many years to come.”
—David G. Horrell
University of Exeter
“Endorsing this book would be an exercise in superfluity. Even saying that Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God is without peers is simply to state the obvious.”
—Bruce W. Longenecker
Baylor University
“Breathtaking! The integrated theological imagination of both the apostle and his twenty-first century interpreter is amazing.”
—Brian Walsh
Wycliffe College, University of Toronto
What scholars are saying about Pauline Perspectives:
"Pauline Perspectives gathers into one convenient place the multitudinous essays and lectures on Paul and his thought world that have come forth from the prolific pen of N. T. Wright during the course of the last 35 years. Here you can see the development of seminal ideas, major themes, and the relentless pursuit of understanding important trajectories in Paul's thought, ranging from justification to the righteousness of God to atonement to much more. Reading a book like this is like going to a great feast put on by a master chef and discovering there were no ephemeral starters but all meat, and none of it half-baked either, but well worth chewing over and always nourishing. Bon appetit!"
—Ben Witherington III
Asbury Theological Seminary