True humility

To become an apostle to the Gentiles, he had to turn away from his rarefied existence as a leader among the religious elite to a life of almost unimaginable danger and affliction as he traveled the world over, preaching Christ crucified to people of every sort, including slaves and those at the bottom of the socioeconomic heap.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 15

But the grammar doesn't allow it!

I suggest that a better solution to the πίστις Χριστοῦ debate lies somewhere in the middle between “faith in Christ” and the “faithfulness of Christ.” I find the traditional “faith in Christ” position, though rich in heritage and safeguarding the call for a human response to the gospel, ultimately dissatisfying because it does not capture the participationist themes that Paul weaves into his theological discourse. However, the “faithfulness of Christ” option, overflowing with a vat of theological new wine, doesn’t work for those of us damned with too much knowledge of Greek grammar, and it seems like a theological overread.—Michael Bird, An Anomalous Jew: Paul among Jews, Greeks, and Romans, 143

On trial—again!

Though modern interpreters have long considered the scene in Athens to be a placid philosopher’s dialogue, the ancients would have read it differently. In antiquity it was known not only that Athens grew its own philosophers but also that it could try and kill them. Socrates was the best remembered, but he was not the only thinker who met his doom in Greece’s most famous city. In fact, Paul’s appearance before the court of the Areopagus is a trial. Luke’s Paul is enough of a rhetor to combine a skillful avoidance of the capital charge—bringing in strange deities, as did Socrates—with a comprehensive critique of pagan “piety” as “superstitious” idolatry. Turning to the God who is now newly known in Athens would in fact expose the city as a place “full of idols” rather than of wisdom (Acts 17:16-34).—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 136–37

Stasis!

Paul rescues a “prophetic” slave girl by exorcising the spirit that made her fortune telling possible. In so doing he simultaneously destroys the economically exploitative work of her owners. Seeing the destruction of their business, the girl’s savvy masters carefully rephrase their worries in dangerous political terms. Going before the Philippian magistrates, they accuse Paul and Silas: “These men are Jews and are disrupting the city, and they advocate practices that are unlawful for us Romans to accept or to do” (Acts 16:21). Given the gravity of the accusations against the Christian missionaries, it is no great wonder that the magistrates “tore their clothes off, gave orders to beat them with rods," and “after they had inflicted many blows upon them," threw them into prison (16:22-23). Of course the two men are freed from prison, but the businessmen and magistrates have rightly intuited the potential for cultural wreckage in Philippi.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 135–36

<idle musing>
He develops these ideas of the accusation of stasis ("rebellion, sedition") much more in his previous book, World Upside Down, which is definitely worth your time reading. I excerpted from it a few years back; you can search for it to see them.
</idle musing>

Not a self-help/self-improvement program

Paul is, however, hardly an optimist. Indeed, in his view our natural capacities to seek God and do the good—or to quench our thirst for truth and beauty—inevitably lead us away from that which we seek. Sin overpowers us, enslaves us, and makes us sick unto death. And no amount of spiritual exercise or striving against our illness can make us well. Recovery and repair come to us from the outside, from God’s side of the human predicament. Paul’s letters, therefore, are not lessons in self-cultivation or community organizing or social criticism or any such things in themselves. They are rather more like passionate summonses to receive and undergo the disciplines of the free life that only God can grant. Faith, not available knowledge of the immanent world, is the gift—and, subsequently, the virtue—that imparts true vision (Gal 3:15). And church is the name for faith’s “meantime,” reparative pattern of life in the world.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 111

Caesar, a god? Not so much

He does not explicitly contest Caesar’s rule—indeed, he can even see the authorities as allowed by God (Rom 13:1—7). Nor does he overtly criticize the imperial cult or judicial miscarriages or any other obviously problematical political practices. But he does, simply by placing all things under the dominion of Christ, help to create the political conditions under which Christian communities can live out the demotion of Caesar from “a god” to a servant of God. Implicitly, that is, Paul’s way of conceiving of Caesar’s authority is finally an uncompromising challenge to Rome’s construal of the emperor. For Rome, precisely because the emperor founds the political order and is the fulcrum on which it all turns, he requires ultimate and unchallenged allegiance. Caesar not only is “the Lord of the whole world," as an inscription in Greece once said of Nero, he can also be nothing less than what his politics require: a god, the extrinsic founder of the political reality called the Roman Empire. For Paul, however, such claims would smack of idolatry: for him, as for other Jews, only the true God can found a political order. All other political players are but actors on this more fundamental, God-given stage. As Paul tells the Corinthians, the Gentiles may well think there are “many lords and many gods” in the world—with Caesar among them—but “for us there is only one God … and one Lord” (1 Cor 8:6). At bottom, therefore, while Paul may remind the Romans to “pay taxes to whom taxes are due and give honor to whom honor is due," he does so only because he can judge such realities momentarily to cohere with the divine economy. When push later came to shove, congregants schooled in Pauline logic would have no difficulty discerning the Christian difference from Dea Roma, her emperor, and the wider religiopolitical practices that held them necessarily together. Final allegiance belongs only to Christ.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 107

<idle musing>
He develops this idea a good bit more in his earlier book, World Upside Down, which I read and excerpted from a few years ago (do a search on "World Upside Down" to find them). That book is also definitely worth your time—or as one of my theology profs used to say, "You owe it to yourself to read this book." Love that line!
</idle musing>

Separate? Nope!

The Pauline language for human reality in the interval between our death and the consummation of all things derives from his sense of our participation in and union with Christ. Prepositions are theologically strong words for Paul. The human being cannot be divided from Christ because we are in him; when we die we are therefore with him. Nowhere in his letters does Paul explain how this can be so, that is, what part of the human being it is that can exist with Christ without its transformed body, how God relates to this part without a body, how this requires us to think differently about time, and so on. What Paul does express quite clearly, however, is the belief that Cod’s act of love in raising Christ from the dead defies the power of death to separate us from him in any way.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 101

Death, the great equalizer?

Death is ours due not simply to the way the world runs but to the curse. Death conquers and swallows up all perishable life. Rulers may harm, demons may torment, but to have to die is to perish and to be cursed. “When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the dying puts on the undying, then the word that is written will come to pass: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory'” (1 Cor 15:54). For Paul death is a deep enough threat to the human creature that its defeat cannot come simply by existential posturing. Even the well—adjusted, authentically alive creatures are in the end defeated by death. Defeating death requires a great deal more than a well—adjusted soul; it requires, in fact, nothing less than the transformation of death to life.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 100

<idle musing>
Quite a bit different from the Stoic view. They were more interested in accomodating life to the fact of death than overcoming it.
</idle musing>

Sophia? Not so much

Contrary to the reductive way sin is often spoken of in regular discourse, the Pauline epistles evidence not one but three complexly intertwined ways of speaking about what sin is. It is, first, a cosmic condition, an inescapable fact about the (broken) structure of the world in which humans emerge and out of which they cannot extract themselves (see Rom 8:18-26). It is, second, a description of certain behaviors, dispositions, or acts that contravene the moral order of Gods law—“sins” (see Rom 7:5), “trespasses” (see Rom 5:14; Gal 3:19), or “transgressions" (see Rom 5:16–18; 11:11–12). And it is, third, a power (see Rom 7:7–25), something that can, it seems, act within the world, seizing even the best that life can offer to its own destructive purposes.

Precisely because of its multifaceted reality, sin’s reach is broad and its damage deep. What normally appears as wisdom, for example—the quintessence of the philosophical quest—turns out to be nothing of the kind. Foolishness, says Paul, is the real name for human Sophia in the sight of God. Standing the truth on its head, he tells the struggling church in Corinth that genuine wisdom is what looks like foolishness. “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe … [and] we preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor 1:20–21). In short, Paul argues, sin blinds us, and our quest for the wise life leads us to reject as foolishness that which is really wise, the crucifixion of Christ (1 Cor 1–3).—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 97

What is freedom, anyway?

Had he lived to taste the modem flavor of such questions [What is freedom? What about the self?], Paul’s answer would prove profoundly unsatisfying to the champions of innate individual freedom and the exaltation of the “I" in the projects of self-determination. Anthropology is participatory at its core. Our humanity is determined on the one hand by our participation in Adam's sin and, on the other, by our participation in the new life in Jesus Christ. To go even farther, freedom as moderns conceive it is an abstract property of the human being in isolation from heaven or hell, something that supposedly exists entirely within the “immanent frame.” But in point of fact freedom is not entirely immanent and is not abstract: it exists only in participation in Christ. “Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Rom 6:16). We are slaves either to the one Adam or to the other. Freedom is, quite simply, becoming a slave of Christ. As Paul went on to tell the Roman Christians, “Thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching to which you were delivered, and, having been freed from sin, have become slaves of righteousness” (Rom 6:17-18). Left to ourselves, we are not “ourselves” but rather agents of sin.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 96–97

<idle musing>
Or, as Bob Dylan put it, "You gotta serve somebody." God lays the choice before us: Either we accept the redemptive offer in Christ and become adopted sons and daughters, participants in the redeemed. Or, we reject it and serve sin and death.

Pretty start contrast, but I believe it is true.
</idle musing>

D-E-A-D

Throughout his letters, then, Paul’s logic is clear enough: when Jesus died, he was dead—not partly dead, as if he possessed a soul that escaped death, but really, truly, and fully dead. Paul consistently speaks, in fact, of Jesus’ resurrection in the passive voice, as something that can only be attributed to the act of God (see Rom 4:25 et passim). Because he was dead, Jesus could not raise himself; it was God who raised Jesus from the dead. And when he was then alive again, he was alive with the body by which he lived his earthly life. This body, however, was not flesh and blood simpliciter, a resuscitation like Lazarus’s in John’s Gospel or a revivified corpse; it was, rather, transformed flesh, transformed blood, a body that required the word spirit to describe it.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 94–95 (emphasis original)

But, who is this god?

In the end, putting the question “who is God?” to the Pauline letters elicits an answer that entirely resists simplicity. It requires instead a nimble movement between three distinct but inseparably related terms, with a willingness to hold onto the oneness of Israel’s God all the while. To tell the story that names who God is according to Paul, therefore, we have to speak distinctly and concurrently of God the Father, Jesus of Nazareth, and the Holy Spirit that is their Spirit. To leave out one of these would reduce Paul’s theological language to the point of destroying it; or, to say it another way, refusing the Pauline complexity results in the telling of another story and thus in the naming of someone other than the God about whom Paul writes. The fillip for the complexity, of course, is Paul's reflection on Jesus.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 91

Not so the biblical God!

In short, Paul’s reply would affirm that neither Jesus nor the Spirit contradicts the oneness of God. Indeed, they express it, or articulate it historically, concretely, humanly. Conversely, God’s oneness articulates the final significance of Jesus the Messiah (1 Thess 3:2 and 2:8, 9). There is no competition between God and Jesus. The one God is for us and with us as the Lord Jesus. Had Paul lived after Kant, therefore, and learned about “monotheism" as a philosophical principle, he might have said his opponents thought of oneness or monotheism as abstractions, properties or attributes that match the highest form of speculative reason or even religious thought. Not so the biblical God. That God is one in exactly the way the Bible depicts his oneness: a dynamic, living oneness that culminates historically in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, who is made currently present by the power of the Holy Spirit.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 91

A radical claim—even now

But surely not, a skeptical reader might say. I can agree that God ought to mean the one from whom all things come (1 Cor 8:6). But, Paul, certainly you don’t mean that the God who creates all things and is over all things acts most fully in the life of a singular human being, just one man? The meaning of “God” is that particular, that restricted in scope? The high point of the story that names who God is comes through a fleshly Jew? That can’t be the claim.

Au contraire, Paul might reply, God’s eternal majesty and glory as Creator leads precisely to this: “In the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman” (Gal 4:4). Indeed, Paul would continue, the glory of the God who made “the light shine in the darkness” is seen most fully “in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). To see God’s glory, says Paul, one must believe in the life, death, and resurrection of his Son—that is, after all, what it is to look on the face of Jesus.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 88 (emphasis original)

And we come to Paul

As influential as the Stoics treated in this book have been, even their cumulative weight is virtually insignificant compared with St. Paul’s. Already within the New Testament itself, Paul is acknowledged as a foundation upon which the Christian tradition has begun to rest, and he has been both hero and foe in turns to almost everyone concerned with the rise of Christianity and its enduring impact. This is not to say he was always well and clearly understood. Indeed, the author of the little New Testament letter 2 Peter admits as much. In Paul’s letters, he says, there are some things “that are hard to understand, which the unlearned and unstable distort” (2 Pet 3:16). But it is to say that Paul’s legacy has been enormous. Down through the centuries from his time to ours no less than theology, philosophy, politics, law, literature, architecture, and visual and material art—in short, the whole field of human life we call a culture—experienced the gravitas of Paul.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 85

Wrong focus

Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 569, puts it summarily: “The priority of the gift is everywhere presupposed, but Paul rarely draws out predestinarian conclusions, as in the Hodayot [of the Dead Sea Scrolls] or in the theologies of Augustine and Calvin.” That is, Paul himself is not nearly as interested in perfecting the volitional priority of God’s personal electing grace (God’s choosing specific individuals before their birth for final salvation) as some of Paul’s interpreters have been. While God’s all—encompassing knowledge of the past, present, and future is everywhere presupposed (e. g., Rom. 11:33-36; 1 Cor. 2:7; Eph. 3:9), and Paul frequently speaks of specific events that God has arranged in advance (Rom. 8:28-30; 1 Cor. 15:51-55; Gal. 3:8; Eph. 1:3—14; 2:10; 1 Thess. 4:16; 2 Tim. 1:9), Paul’s emphasis is consistently on God’s choosing of the Christ and the corporate people of God in the Christ, not on individual predestination unto eternal life or damnation.—Matthew Bates in Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 106 n. 5

By grace, through faith, yes. But what does that entail?

In short, we cannot say in an unqualified fashion that final salvation is by grace and by faith apart from embodied obedience, for this misunderstands the nature of both charis (“grace”) and pistis (“faith”) in antiquity and in Paul’s Letters. We must recognize the bankruptcy of our current selves, especially our self—centered indulgences and ambitions. Through participation in the Christ’s death and resurrection, we must die to our old selves with the Messiah and become new selves, and in so doing follow the road of obedient service that our Lord commands by enacting allegiance. For Paul “faith” recognizes we are utterly dead and totally undeserving of God’s grace, but the grasping of God’s life-from-the—dead grace demands a trajectory of loyal obedience.—Matthew Bates in Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 105

If you confess with your mouth…

[N]otice that in the other portion of the verses under discussion, Romans 10:9—10, Paul states that for a person to be saved, he or she must “confess” with the mouth that “Jesus is Lord.” It is important to recognize that Paul does not say “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus fulfills the Davidic promise” or “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus died for your sins.” With regard to confessing, the focus lands squarely on one specific stage of the gospel—Jesus as Lord. Why? This is not mere happenstance.

Confession of Jesus as Lord is an expression of allegiance to him as the ruling king. Paul is pointing at our need to swear allegiance to Jesus as the Lord, the ruling sovereign, precisely because this lordship stage of Jesus’s career expressly summarizes a key aspect of the gospel, describes Jesus’s current role in earthly and heavenly affairs, and is the essential reality that must be affirmed to become part of God’s family. Public acknowledgement of the acceptance of Jesus’s rule is the premier culminating act of pistis. The verb that Paul selects to describe what is necessary, homologeo, refers in this sort of context to a public declaration, as is made clear by the “with your mouth.” Paul does not envision raising your hand in church or silently praying a prayer in your heart as a sufficient “confession” (nor does Paul say that such an action couldn’t initiate salvation, but he clearly intends something more substantive). Paul is talking about something public and verbal, like what might happen at an ancient baptism.—Matthew Bates in Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 97–98 (emphasis original)

Why foreground "Christ"?

I would argue that the probability that Paul specifically intends to foreground the allegiance aspect of pistis in passages such as these is moved from possible to highly probable when we consider that, for Paul, Jesus above all is the Christ or the Lord. “Jesus is Lord” is in fact where the gospel above all reaches a climax. When Paul speaks of Jesus Christ—and note that he does speak in this way every time Jesus is mentioned in all of the passages quoted above—Christ is not a last name or a meaningless addition; it is an honorific designation. It means Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the long-anticipated but now-ruling Jewish-style universal king. I cannot overstate the importance of this. In other words, Paul everywhere presupposes that the most basic identity of Jesus is that of the enthroned divine—human king, the actively ruling Son of God. So contextually the most obvious and natural way to speak about the proper relationship between the king and his people is allegiance or loyalty.—Matthew Bates in Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 82–83

But what about the ascension?

Scripture attests that Jesus appeared to a great variety of witnesses in diverse geographical locales over the course of some forty days, These appearances are a core constituent of the good news. Last of all Jesus appeared to Paul, as he so memorably puts it, “as if unto a miscarried fetus” (1 Cor. 15:8). Paul means that he saw Jesus when he was in a state of utter spiritual death. And as the last in the chain of witnesses, his viewing was fundamentally different than the rest of the apostles, all of whom had seen Jesus prior to his ascension. It is this ascension, however, together with the events surrounding it, that is the most critical yet most neglected component of the gospel today.—Matthew W. Bates, Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 66