Ascensiontide with N.T. Wright - "Jesus is Lord and Caesar isn't"

I've been listening to a lot of N.T. Wright on my nifty new lime green iPod shuffle as I walk into the Faculty from home. One 35-minute journey = 1/2 of a Wright lecture. Turns out, many of Wright's crucial themes are perfect for Ascensiontide: Creation and Covenant, Messiah and Apocalyptic, Jesus is Lord and Caesar isn't, etc., all in light of what he calls (appropriately so, in my mind) an inaugurated eschatology. To catch a flavor of what I've been listening to, see his short article, "Paul's Gospel and Caesar's Empire", and here's a smattering of his conclusion there:

...if Paul's answer to Caesar's empire is the empire of Jesus, what does that say about this new empire, living under the rule of its new lord? It implies a high and strong ecclesiology, in which the scattered and often muddled cells of women, men and children loyal to Jesus as Lord form colonial outposts of the empire that is to be: subversive little groups when seen from Caesar's point of view, but when seen Jewishly an advance foretaste of the time when the earth shall be filled with the glory of the God of Abraham and the nations will join Israel in singing God's praises. From this point of view, therefore, this counter-empire can never be merely critical, never merely subversive. It claims to be the reality of which Caesar's empire is the parody; it claims to be modelling the genuine humanness, not least the justice and peace, and the unity across traditional racial and cultural barriers, of which Caesar's empire boasted. If this claim is not to collapse once more into dualism, into a rejection of every human aspiration and value, it will be apparent that there will be a large degree of overlap. "Shun what is evil; cling to what is good." There will be affirmation as well as critique, collaboration as well as critique. To collaborate without compromise, to criticise without dualism—this is the delicate path that Jesus' counter-empire had to learn to tread.

If you don't know of Wright's work, see this helpful biography and this interesting article on the challenges he posed to evangelicalism. I really really like his methodology, his commitment to being both priest and scholar and to thinking hard about how to bring those two worlds together, and his humility. He proffers many challenges to entrenched ways of thinking, but does so without claiming to have superceded the teachings of the past. The theme of his more controversial work is to build upon, not to replace traditional Christian teaching even as it adopts a questioning stance to habits of thought we bring to our hermeneutics often unthinkingly (like Paul isn't really Jewish anymore, Jesus isn't either, Pharisees are supposed to be seen as evil evil evil all the time, Jesus wasn't interested in politics, religion and politics are two separate spheres). Wright's message often is something like, 'take this, and you get all the glories and truths of traditional orthodoxy along with it but embued with an even deeper significance.' Listening to him doesn't always result in immediate affirmation, but does prompt a lot of "hm!" and "wow, that really works well in the context and makes sense of a lot more besides!"

So yeah, I dig him. Drumstick keeps admonishing me to read more criticism of his work (esp. on justification) to get a balanced perspective (particularly the criticism of Don Carson, whom I admire for similar reasons). I'll get to that eventually, but for now, I'm happy to think with him about proclaiming "Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not!" We'll see what I do after Pentecost.

In other news: turns out that Wright's prose style -- clear, thoughtful, engaging -- is beginning to influence my own. After all, I've been listing to about an hour of it a day on my way in and out of work, so when I take the headphones off and settle down to writing my own work (lately, on late-medieval English inquisition into heresy), I find myself writing with more clarity in my syntax, and even more of my own style even as I am inspired by his. So now I'm on the hunt for mp3's and podcasts of great prose stylists (like C.S. Lewis and Annie Dillard) to load up onto the lime green prose-improving machine and accompany me to and from work every day. Links would be appreciated...