To Understand Jesus and Paul You Need to Understand Politics

The Canterbury Tales is one my favorite Catholic bloggers partly because of his background. He comes from a Presbyterian background, Became a Anglican Priest and is now Catholic. Needless to say he picks up on a lot of things that Catholics should be paying attention too.

He has a interesting entry on N. T. Wright today at N.T. Wright on Christ and Caesar. He states:
In N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God, Wright shows how politically minded St Paul's (and therefore Christ's) Gospel was at the time. This is something missed by commentators since the Enlightenment because we've come to believe that politics and religion are distinct.

Time again, Wright says that Christ is the true sovereign of creation while Caesar is a blasphemous parody. This "blasphemous parody" extends back to at least Alexander the Great who portrayed himself as divine.I must admit that I am more and more concerned with the interplay between Christ and the polis. The fact that the Messiah came preaching good news about the "Kingdom of God" should make this obvious, but it is something I've missed in the past.

N T Wright is the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England. His writing and those especially on the writings of Paul have caused quite a sensation and no small controversy in the American Evangelical and reformed world. Many Catholics seem oblivious to this even though he often touching on the justification debate and saying some new things to say the least. I really so need to sit now and engage his work. I often follow him through the net and what people are saying about his writings.

This Bishop was actually in my area not too many years ago at the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe Louisiana. That Church and their pastor is a story in itself. I really would like to seat down with the Pastor at that Church and ask him some questions on his strange political leanings. That will be reserved for another post. Here is the transcript of the talk Bishop Wright gave. I had to chuckle when I read his opening words:
Thank you for your warm welcome and generous hospitality. It is an enormous pleasure for Maggie and myself to be here in Monroe for the first time. I am particularly grateful to those who have worked very hard to set this conference up and make it all happen.
I want in this opening session to set some parameters for our subsequent discussion, and in particular to put some cards firmly and clearly on the table about my starting points, my fixed points in reading Paul, and my aims in expounding his theology. I am aware – and it is a matter of some irony in my mind – that my own views on Paul have been the subject of far more interest and debate in America, and within churches other than my own, than they have in England, or within worldwide Anglicanism. I do sometimes catch myself wondering, ‘Why should I worry if one branch of American Presbyterianism wants to fight another branch about whether I’m a good thing or a bad thing?’

Good stuff and true. I might try to tackle him more later and why he is important for Catholics to take note of.