I have two items for my write-up today of N.T. Wright's The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology:
1. Wright talked about I Corinthians 8, in which Paul held that eating meat offered to idols is acceptable because the idol is nothing, even as he admonished Christians not to share a table with demons. So was Paul for or against Christians eating meat offered to idols? According to Wright, Paul did not want Christians to partake of meat offered to idols during pagan worship ceremonies, for demons used those services, but he did not mind Christians eating that meat after it hit the market because that was the only meat available.
2. A topic of interest to me is whether or not the Torah is for Jews only. What does Paul think? Wright's answer is that Paul believed the law was only for Israel and that the Gentiles were not under its authority. According to Wright, in Galatians 3, Paul is arguing that the law hindered Israel from being a light to the nations. The problem was not merely that individual Jews disobeyed it, for there were provisions in the Torah for atonement. Rather, the problem was the entire nation's transgression, which led to exile---defined by Wright as Israel's subjugation to a foreign power, even when she occupied the Promised Land. For Wright, Paul maintains that Christ endured exile on the cross, allowing Christ to assume the role that Israel had as the light to the nations. Wright states that Paul acknowledged that the law had a positive role for Israel, either because it identified sin or restrained sin until the coming of Christ. But Paul's point in Galatians 3 (according to Wright) is that the law could not effect God's dream to unite Jews and Gentiles into one people, for the law separated Jews from Gentile. Consequently, Christ was necessary to bring the Gentiles into God's covenant.
I am unclear about what role in this scenario Christ's death played for Gentiles. Did Christ die for the sins of the Gentiles? There are plenty of New Testament passages that indicate that he did. How does Wright's scenario on Paul's soteriology account for that? Moreover, on page 172, Wright cites Romans 11:32 to argue that, for Paul, the law shuts up the entire human race under sin, since humans are sinful. But how can the law shut up the entire human race under sin, when God gave it solely to the Jews? Wright says that the law was a barrier keeping the Gentiles out of the covenant, and that Paul was addressing the question of whether one had to become a Jew to be a part of God's people, a question that Paul answers in the negative. So is Wright's point that the Gentiles cannot keep the law to be a part of God's people because nobody can keep the law according to God's standard? But, as Wright has pointed out, the law already had provisions for atonement. Wright also does not (at least so far) adequately discuss the issue of conversion to Judaism, nor does he address the Jewish belief that the Gentiles could observe the seven Noachide commandments to be righteous. Wright does well to criticize evangelical interpretations of Paul that make Paul out to try to handle issues that Judaism had already addressed (i.e., disobedience of the law), but he does not go far enough in this, for why did Paul think that Christ was necessary for the inclusion of Gentiles, when Judaism already had a way to include Gentiles, or for Gentiles to please God?