Leithart
Andrew Perriman’s The Future of the People of God: Reading Romans Before and After Western Christendom 
This tight historical framework requires a rethinking of virtually everything in Romans. For instance: “Paul’s ‘gospel’ in Romans . . . is the announcement to the oikoumene that the God of Israel is about to vindicate himself in the eyes of the world by judging the dominant culture of Greco-Roman paganism through the one to whom he has given the nations as an inheritance. This is not a final judgment . . . . Because the behavior of the Jew . . . is not better than the behavior of the pagan, he will find himself – much to his shame – subject to the same condemnation.”
When Paul warns that circumcision will not save the Jew in the day of judgment, his focus is not on the role of good works in the final judgment (which Perriman believes in) but on Jerusalem’s day of wrath. At that time, circumcision will not be a protective device: “It will not halt the Roman armies; it will not prevent the destruction and slaughter; it will not forestall the pillaging of Israel’s wealth and the very public humiliation of captive Jews led in procession through the streets of Rome. Nor will it safeguard the Jews of the diaspora.” This because the Jews failed in their calling within the oikoumene :
“If the scattered communities of diaspora Judaism had actually lived up to the standards of the Law that was taught with such chauvinistic fervor in their synagogues, they might indeed have been a blessing to the nations, and the oikoumene might have been a very different place. Idolatry might have been curtailed, immorality and injustice might have been mitigated, and the wrath of God might have been adverted. Then their circumcision would have been something to boast about.” By Paul’s account, this is not what Israel did; instead, they are caught doing the very things they denounce.
The role of Jesus’ resurrection in Paul’s argument is also specific: “Paul’s gospel . . . is that Jesus has been appointed Son of God in power through his resurrection from the dead. This is not a supra-historical affirmation: it has in view the historical narrative that will culminate in a judgment of the oikoumene and the subjection of the political-religious enemies of the people of God to Christ.” At the same time, if “the marginal God of Israel” is going to take on the pagan world and “overturn the status quo” He has to deal first with “idolatrous and unrighteous Israel.”
Jesus’ expiating/propitiating death also fits into this context. By His faithful death, Jesus opens up a new way, a way of “radical trust under conditions of eschatological turmoil.” And, of course, justification is re-defined in terms of vindication in the day of wrath: “justification is in the first place an eschatological category, in this specific sense: a pronouncement is made with regard to a historical community in anticipation of a day of wrath that threatens is very existence. When national Israel stands condemned by the Law to destruction because of persistent disobedience, to be declared righteous or to be justified is to have the hope of escaping that verdict and attaining to the life of the age of come.” Those who believe in God’s promises for the future of the people of God, and trust in God alone during the coming woes, will be vindicated.
Since I started reading New Perspective writers, I have been frustrated by the implicit, unargued bifurcation of Jesus and Paul. For Wright, Jesus is all about the imminent coming of wrath, but when Wright turns to Paul he seems to forget what he said about Jesus. Perriman’s book begins to heal the breach, and points helpfully toward a necessary post-NPP re-reading of Paul.
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