Paul, being trained as a Pharisee, had a worldview that was shaped by the hebrew bible. Paul was a transcendent monotheist. Paul viewed the world through what he believed to be true about Israel and her patron deity as the single, and sovereign Creator of the cosmos whose existence was entirely independent from the cosmos. This also means that for Paul everything that happened in history hinges on God’s great plan to redeem humanity as articulated in the Jewish scriptures. When Jesus came along Paul didn’t just see a God-Man ultimately performing the act of substitutionary atonement thereby paving a highway to heaven. Rather, when Paul looked upon the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, he saw a story unfolding against the backdrop of the greater salvation narrative that began in the Old Testament. This means that the work of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah was something much more than substitutionary atonement for Paul. This means that the culmination of God’s World Renewal Plan was Jesus and his work, his mission to redeem the world that began in the garden.
This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book.