Andrew - just selecting a few extracts from your account:

"The day of God’s wrath in the Old Testament is not an abstract, metaphysical, supra-historical concept. It is typically a prophetic image for war and material devastation."

I don’t really understand you when you speak of what the day of God’s wrath is not. My reading of the OT and NT is that there will only be one "day of the Lord" - but that there are many precursors to it. The final "day" will be all that the OT expected it to be - a putting of wrongs to right, a vindication of the people of God, a separation of the righteous from the unrighteous. This will happen in history (for it hasn’t happened yet) - it is not "abstract, metaphysical or supra-historical".

What did Paul have in mind when he spoke of "the day of God’s wrath when his righteous judgement will be revealed" - Romans 2:5? There was certainly a sense of imminence - but God’s judgements were expressed throughout history, and are warned about in these terms in the gospels, as well as there being an ultimate consummating judgement to come. Was there anything in the 1st century, or even up to the fourth century, which corresponded to a final settling of accounts, the "day of the Lord" envisaged by the prophets as the turning point of history for all time, and possibly beyond? Clearly not. That day is still to come.

"The Law condemns sinful Israel to destruction. But this creates a fundamental theological problem – perhaps the fundamental theological problem in the New Testament: How does God remain faithful to his promise to Abraham if the historical vehicle of that promise is about to be smashed like a worthless clay vessel?"

Maybe there is an even more fundamental question: what exactly was the promise to Abraham? You take it to mean something like this:

"Abraham was declared ‘righteous’ not because he kept the Law but because he trusted in the promise that God would give his family a future as God’s new creation. Likewise, those who now demonstrate this same concrete trust that the God who raised Jesus from the dead will safeguard the future of his people are declared righteous and will inherit the world"

In other words, it is all about the survival of the people of God through judgement on Israel (and Rome) in the 1st century and whenever. Further, the people of God will "inherit the world".

Paul gives an explanation of righteousness outside the Law through Abraham in Romans 4. This actually always was the means of righteousness, he makes clear. But for Israel, there was an added problem of an accumulation of sin, which needed to be cleared before the principle of faith could be fully appropriated.

Which leads back to the question of what the promise to Abraham actually consisted. Romans 4:13 speaks of his being "heir of the world". It is expressed in another way as being "the father of many nations" - Romans 4:17, 18. This reminds us of promises that Abraham’s descendants would be as many as the dust of the earth, stars in the sky, sand on the seashore. But the word for descendants is seed - which as Paul points out in Galatians, is singular, not plural - Galatians 3:16.

This singular definition of seed is not playing with words: Paul meant what he said, and for a reason which had become obvious to him. The promise made to Abraham pointed to Christ, and could not be envisaged as in any way or at any time separate from Christ, the messiah, the seed. In other words, Jesus was not simply a means to an end - the survival of the people of God, and therefore in himself frozen in history. The promise could only be understood in Jesus, and to this day can only be understood in Jesus. Only by participating currently and actively in what Jesus has done and who he is now can the people of God not only survive, but be who they are supposed to be. There is therefore a direct link between who the people of God are now, anywhere in the world, and what Jesus did then, and who he continues to be now. The people of God do not have in any remotest shape or form an identity or purpose which is separate from Christ, and in that sense, the promise to Abraham points, not primarily to the survival of the people of God, but to Christ himself, and the people of God in him.

This observation provides a perspective on the following extract:

"So he (Paul) urges them to put on Christ, to behave in a Christ-like manner, because it is only by following Jesus on the path of faithful suffering that the communities of his disciples will overcome the opposition of Rome and arrive at vindication and life"

"Putting on Christ" of course included behaving "in a Christ-like manner" - but it is far more than that. It involves being drawn into intimate relationship with Christ, and participating in his life now, and to an extent, in advance, participating in his resurrection (Colossians 3:1), his ascension (Ephesians 2:6), and through the eschatological Spirit, being living representatives of the new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), just as Christ literally emerged from death by his resurrection, embodying in himself the new creation, which also spelt death to the old creation.

Any definition of salvation which does not include these realities as being true of the people of God falls short of the mark. As such, salvation cannot be limited to physical rescue from 1st century historical judgement. The life of the age likewise cannot be limited in meaning to survival into an age beyond an age prior to certain 1st century judgements. If it were so restricted, then it would be a life of the age enjoyed by everybody alive at that time, not simply the people of God, and its meaning would have little value. That is why it is interpreted as eternal life, since it includes all the aspects of life which Jesus obtained on our behalf, as described above.

It is in this broader sense that "Christ became a servant to the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the gentiles may glorify God for his mercy" - Romans 15:8-9. That mercy was to be found in Christ himself. But how did Paul "ensure that the offering of the Gentiles in response to what God has done for Israel is acceptable (to God?)"? I imagine there can only be one answer: that the only way the Gentiles could find acceptability to God, whether in response to Israel, or more pressingly in response to themselves, was likewise in Christ - a provision of an offering outside the Law, and therefore available to those outside the Law, for a universal problem which the Law itself had highlighted, as far as the Law spoke to the whole world and not just to Israel:

"Now we know that whatever the Law says, it says to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God." - Romans 3:19