Joseph Serwach

“For Saul, with the vision of Genesis, the Psalms, and Isaiah close to his heart, there would be no question of retreat from the world. If the Stoics had a big integrated vision of a united world, so did he. If the Roman Empire was hoping to create a single society in which everyone would give allegiance to a single Lord, so was he. Paul believed that this had already been accomplished through Israel’s Messiah. If the Platonists were speaking of possible commerce between “heaven” and “earth,” so was he—though his vision was of heaven coming to earth, not of souls escaping earth and going to heaven. As a Jew, he believed that the whole created order was the work of the One God; as a “Messiah man,” he believed that the crucified and risen Jesus had dealt with the evil that corrupts the world and the human race and that he had begun the long-awaited project of new creation, of which the communities of baptized and believing Jesus-followers were the pilot project.”
― N.T. Wright, Paul: A Biography

“In the Bible, the term “apocalyptic” (apokalypsis) encompasses a worldview in which the truly significant battle is the ongoing one between the Lord God of Sabaoth2 (Hebrew, meaning armies) and the Enemy, who deploys the principalities and Powers (Eph. 2: 2). This contest on the heavenly level is enacted on the earthly level by struggles large and small in the realm of human affairs —battles waged not with worldly weapons but with the spiritual armor of God (Eph. 6: 11-17). 3”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Our philosophies have tended to split the world in two: “science” deals only with “hard facts,” while the “arts” are imagined to deal in nebulous questions of inner meanings. Equally, in popular culture, inner feelings and motivations (“ discovering who you really are” or “going with your heart”) are regularly invoked as the true personal reality over against mere outward “identities.”
― N.T. Wright, Paul: A Biography

“BIOGRAPHY, AS WE said before, involves thinking into the minds of people who did not think the same way we do. And history often involves trying to think into the minds of various individuals and groups who, though living at the same time, thought in very different ways from one another as well as from ourselves. Trying to keep track of the swirling currents of thought and action in Paul’s world is that kind of exercise.”
― N.T. Wright, Paul: A Biography