Thanks for your response, Peter. Against all probability, we again find ourselves in general agreement.

"Despite your protests in a previous post, I still think that one of
your central preoccupations is the issue of ‘inside/outside’ or ‘them
versus us’ in ‘the new creation’."

True. As I recall, you previously suggested that I wanted to read Paul’s texts as a message of universal salvation, where everyone is in and no one is out. I attempted to sidestep that issue, but I don’t think I denied my interest in understanding the in/out criteria in Paul’s texts about the new creation. Most importantly, I wanted to see whether Paul said that the pathway into the new creation passes through Israel, and whether he emphasized the "peculiar people" idea for separating the chosen people collectively and structurally from the macrocosm. I think it’s fair to say that he does not.

That Jesus was a Jew isn’t a mere matter of happenstance, inasmuch
as he did play a pivotal role in Israel’s national project. However, in the
aftermath of his death and resurrection Jesus’ Jewishness is
irrelevant: in the new creation there is neither Jew nor Gentile, as
Paul is repeatedly at pains to emphasize.

For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law.
Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also?
Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the
circumcised on the grounds of their faith and the uncircumcised through
faith. (Romans 3:28-30)

So now we have to think about a different way of characterizing the in/out distinction (again, presuming there is one). I agree fully with your contention that for Paul the way in passes through the person of Christ, and in particular through his death and resurrection. Jesus experienced these events personally, and it’s through personal identification with these events that the individual enters into the resurrection life of the new creation. In your succinct phraseology,

"It is ‘in Christ’ that barriers of race, gender, oppression, are overcome."

As you point out, the "Christ event" isn’t universal, happening to all nations through a multicultural array of different saviors. Rather, the specific event attains its universality by opening up a personal subjective possibility for everyone, a possibility that’s actualized by faith. On these matters I think we agree.

One can of course draw the inference that the subjective possibility is nullified by lack of faith, thereby establishing the in/out criteria of traditional evangelicalism. But Paul seems to emphasize the observation that even the people of faith often act in ways that are indistinguishable from those who have no faith. At the same time he emphasizes the idea that Christ died for all, that all might be saved. It seems that Paul wanted to exercise caution in erecting a new set of criteria for separating sheep from goats. As you say,

"Breaking down divisions was at the heart of this project, in a God whose very essence was love for the entire world."

"However," you continue,

"the generous intentions of this particular way of bringing
things about are evident in the whole story of the people of God."

I think that I’ll always have difficulty with the ungenerous elements in the Old Testament story. Retaining a generally high view of Scripture seems to demand that the reader accept the editorial stance of the Biblical writers when they assert that Israel perpetrated mass genocides and enslavements on God’s explicit order. In the early days of Christianity the Marcionites, appalled by Yahweh’s vengeful bloodthirstiness, concluded that Jesus represented a different God altogether and that his mission was to save the world from Yahweh. (Marcion was condemned as a heretic and excommunicated by the elders in Rome, but his particular Christian variant enjoyed considerable popularity for a couple of centuries at least.) Even McLaren waffles on the issue, acknowledging his own revulsion at the Deut. 7 genocide without explicitly endorsing or disavowing it. I wonder whether your personal in/out criteria would accept believers who reject the ungenerous genocidal Scriptural passages as tragic misrepresentations of God’s intentions, or perhaps even as an ill-chosen strategy in God’s historic dealings with Israel. At least it should be clear that, following the "Christ event," this sort of divisive policy has no place in the new creation.

"It is with that generous intention that I find myself standing on
common ground with yourself, in contrast with any who would seek to
preserve the purity of what they believe by focusing on their
separation from those who do not dot the same i’s or cross the same t’s
as themselves."

Thanks, brother.