God and Israel

John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost consciously seeks to "justify the ways of God to men." The Apostle Paul's magisterial letter to the Romans does not so much intend to defend God's ways as to declare God's Word-a Word made public in the gospel. In Romans 9-11 this declaration occurs within the context of God's troubled relationship with Israel, both past and future.

God and Israel traces the ways in which providence and purpose are realized as God's Word to and about Israel in Romans 9-11. Written by gifted and tested Pauline interpreters, the volume offers a fresh reading of this vexed and vexing part of Paul in the context of Romans and the Pauline witness. God and Israel squarely tackles the questions of Paul's understanding of salvation-historical time (L. Ann Jervis); the faithfulness and sovereignty of the covenantal God (Michael Wolter); Paul's mythic rhetoric of "ingrafting" (Davina C. Lopez); the disputed relation between Israel and her "enemies," the Gentiles (J. Ross Wagner); the role of Christ in God's purposes and his relation to the nation of Israel (Simon Gathercole); and, finally, the unfailing eschatological hope for Israel's full inclusion (Jonathan A. Linebaugh).

If only simple solutions are sought for the challenges Paul's gospel and his letters pose, frustration will result. But if readers follow the Apostle to the Gentiles as he wrestles with ultimate questions of God's purposes in his own anguish over kith and kin, then wisdom will be found.