Defending the Wright

Well, I couldn't resist responding to the second half of Caleb's comment, mostly out of a fiercely territorial love for the good Bishop. I think Caleb's concern over the "new perspective on Paul," lead by Wright, comes from a recent article on the subject in Christianity Today (in either case, I read the article, so I can address his concerns best through it).
As Caleb said, the article carried a tone of apprehension; the author definitely worried that Wright's emphasis on Paul's redefinition of Israel's key symbols came at the exclusion of any kind of emphasis on a spiritual renewal, or justification by faith.
As I read, I kept shaking my head, thinking, "This guy has it all backwards." It's absolutely true that Wright tries to fit the early church within the world of first-century Judaism; this does not mean that he abandons the concerns of contemporary theology.
(I should note here that I have not read any complete works of Wright's on Paul, but I have read several shorter papers, and a large tome he authored on the life of Jesus.)
Wright's "new perspective" begins not so much by redefining the gospel, as by redefining the Judaism it opposed. My own adolesence left me believing that Jesus came to found a new religion of grace and an inner spirituality, in opposition to Jewish legalism. This, Wright insists, simply was not the case. Jews have a deep appreciation for the grace of God--even the Sinai Covenant, called the "Covenant of Works" by the Reformers, comes in the context of grace. Just before he gives Israel the Decalogue, God reminds them how he "bore them on eagles' wings" out of Egypt (Ex. 19:4). From its conception, Israel was "blessed to be a blessing," redeemed by grace to showcase an alternative society, to remind the world of the true way to be human. Yet, Israel drastically failed in this vocation. "How can a city on a hill [unquestionably Jerusalem] be hidden?" Jesus asks. God gave Israel the Law, which essentially consisted of covenant boundaries: the complex interaction of moral and cultic precepts set Israel apart for a different kind of life. The Temple, Torah, sabbath, circumcision, and food laws all cried with the thunderous voice of symbol: "We are different! We are God's!"
Sadly, over time Israel came to believe that the symbols themselves represented an absolute guarantee of God's favor. In other words, the Jews focused on the "blessed" bit, to the exclusion of "to be a blessing." Wright summarizes this mindset in his exegesis of Jesus' action in the Temple in Luke 19. As he overturns stalls, Jesus quotes two passages from the Tanakh. One, from Jeremiah 7, contains a crucial episode in the life of Israel.
Jeremiah goes to the Temple, and there announces, "...Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal,...and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, 'We are delievered!'--only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?"
Jesus also quotes Isaiah 56:7, which reads, "For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples."
So, Jesus storms into the Temple, and quotes these two passages. One represents the true vocation of Israel--to be the light of the world, the vehicle by which God will draw all men into covenant with himself. The other represents Israel's failure, her determination to go her own way, and to trust in her nationalist symbols as guarantees of a political protection she does not deserve. In fact, the word Jesus uses, generally translated "robbers," is the Greek lestai. In the first century, lestai almost always referred to brigands, highwaymen, particularly the Jewish Zealots who hid in the hills and attacked Roman caravans, seeking a military overthrow of the oppressor.
When Jesus stormed through the Temple, he was not aimed at reform--he was acting out the destruction God promised in Jeremiah 7 for Israel's waywardness. In fact, Jesus whole ministry focused on subverting Israel's symbols, and redefining them around himself. He, Immanuel, was the true Temple. He was the true Passover Lamb, the true Water and Bread (both important symbols of God's provision in the wilderness wanderings). His teachings constituted the new Torah (this is the best way to read the Sermon on the Mount). At the heart of these redefined symbols is the belief that the true Israel would use her covenant boundaries as symbols of God's loving inclusiveness--thus, the redefined covenant included all the wrong sorts of people: the sick, the poor (both often believed as suffering due to sin), the Roman, the Samaritan, the women, the children.
Another, more complicated strand of thought is Jesus' belief about his death and resurrection, which developed out of passages like Isaiah 53, Zechariah 13, and Daniel 9, but encompasses far more even than those. Jesus firmly believed that his vocation as Israel's true representative was to fight her decisive battle against the true oppressor (Paul's "powers and principalities"). The global mindset I outlined earlier made this battle a fight for the world, rather than for Israel as a political entity. On the Cross, Jesus broke the powers of darkness; in his Resurrection, he "swallowed up death forever" (Is. 25, 1 Cor. 15).
Wright does redefine the traditional understanding of justification by faith. "Faith" to Jesus and Paul meant one's faith in the power of the resurrection to redeem him from bondage, and to lead him out into a new kind of life, the life detailed in Jesus' redefined covenant.
Thus, the distinction the CT article makes between a cultural argument between Paul and Judaism, and our traditional understanding of justification, does not exist. Wright is every bit as concerned as Luther about grace and redemption; he just speaks about them a bit differently.