Joseph Serwach

“The world he had known was full of dark powers. Or, to be more precise, the created order was good, as Genesis had said, but humans had worshipped nongods, pseudogods, “forces” within the natural order, and had thereby handed over to those shadowy beings a power not rightfully theirs. The “forces” had usurped the proper human authority over the world. Evidence was all around. Tarsus, like every ancient non-Jewish city, was full of shrines, full of strange worship, full of human lives misshapen by dehumanizing practices. And Paul believed that on the cross Jesus of Nazareth had defeated the ultimate force of evil. The resurrection proved it. If he had overcome death, it could only be because he had overcome the forces that lead to death, the corrosive power of idolatry and human wickedness.”
― N.T. Wright, Paul: A Study of the Apostle Paul's Life and Legacy

“These parallel lines are central to his mature thinking and foundational for what would later become Christian theology. First, there was Israel’s own story. According to the prophets, Israel’s story (from Abraham all the way through to exile and beyond) would narrow down to a remnant, but would also focus on a coming king, so that the king himself would be Israel personified. But second, there was God’s story—the story of what the One God had done, was doing, and had promised to do. (The idea of God having a story, making plans, and putting them into operation seems to be part of what Jews and early Christians meant by speaking of this God as being “alive.”) And this story too would likewise narrow down to one point. Israel’s God would return, visibly and powerfully, to rescue his people from their ultimate enemies and to set up a kingdom that could not be shaken. “All God’s promises,” Paul would later write, “find their yes in him.” 14 Saul came to see that these two stories, Israel’s story and God’s story, had, shockingly, merged together. I think this conviction must date to the silent decade in Tarsus, if not earlier. Both narratives were fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus was Israel personified; but he was also Israel’s God in person. The great biblical stories of creation and new creation, Exodus and new Exodus, Temple and new Temple all came rushing together at the same point. This was not a new religion. This was a new world—and it was the new world that the One God had always promised, the new world for which Israel had prayed night and day.”
― N.T. Wright, Paul: A Study of the Apostle Paul's Life and Legacy

“Theologian Bruce L. McCormack puts it well: God will not allow anything to stand in the way of his love. The holiness of the divine love is its irresistibility. God’s will to love the creature will not be stopped by the will of the creature to resist that love. God’s love will reach its goal, even if the path to that end lies through condemning, excluding, and annihilating all resistance to it. God’s love turns to wrath when it is resisted, but not for a minute does it cease to be love even when it expresses itself as wrath.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Saul grew up within a world of story and symbol: a single story, awaiting its divinely ordered fulfillment, and a set of symbols that brought that story into focus and enabled Jews to inhabit it. If we are going to understand him, to see who he really was, we have to grasp this and to realize that for him it wasn’t just a set of ideas. It was as basic to his whole existence as the great musical story from Bach to Beethoven to Brahms is to a classically trained musician today. Only more so.”
― N.T. Wright, Paul: A Study of the Apostle Paul's Life and Legacy