Wright’s ‘profile of the prophet’ has so far examined i) Jesus’ characteristic actions; ii) the stories he told; and iii) the ways in which he organized his symbolic world. To these must be added a consideration of the key worldview questions: ‘who are we, where are we, what’s wrong, what’s the solution – and what time is it?’

1. Who are we? ‘Jesus regarded his followers as, in some sense, the eschatological people promised in the scriptures, through whom, in a manner yet to be explicated, the glory of YHWH would be revealed to the world’ (444).

2. Where are we? Jesus ‘had not come to rehabilitate the symbol of the holy land, but to subsume it within a different fulfilment of the kingdom, which would embrace the whole creation’ (446).

3. What’s wrong? Jesus foresaw a battle for the kingdom, but as with the other traditions and symbols of Judaism, he redefined the notion of a zealous holy war.

Jesus used the language of cosmic warfare to denote the specific struggles in which he himself engaged, and to connote his belief that the inner dimension of these struggles was a battle, indeed ultimately the battle, against the powers of darkness. I suggest, in other words, that Jesus believed that he, himself, had to fight the true battle of the people of YHWH, through opposing, not just the pagans (though no doubt he, like most first-century Jews, disapproved of their beliefs and behaviour), not just some renegade Jews, but the whole movement in Jewish life which had embraced exactly this tradition of holy war, and was seeking vigorously to promote it - and which, perhaps, was hoping to recruit him in the cause. (449)

Jesus was offering a different way of liberation, a way which affirmed the humanness of the national enemy as well as the destiny of Israel, and hence also affirmed the destiny of Israel as the bringer of light to the world, not as the one who would crush the world with military zeal. (450)

The real enemy was not Rome but the satan, the accuser. Wright explores this theme by looking at three passages from the gospels: the Beelzebul controversy; the warning to fear the one who has the power to cast into Gehenna, understood as a reference to satan; and the story about the seven demons who take up residence in a man along with the unclean spirit that had been cast out, which Wright interprets as a parable about Israel. For Jesus, however, the battle began at the outset of his career when he was ‘tempted’ by satan (457-459). This is the struggle presupposed by his assertion during the Beelzebul controversy that he was able to cast out demons because the ‘master-demon’ had already been overcome.

4. What’s the solution? Essentially the answer to Israel’s plight is Jesus himself: ‘His own work – his kingdom-announcement, his prophetic praxis, his celebrations, his warnings, his symbolic activity – all of these were part of the movement through which Israel would be renewed, evil would be defeated, and YHWH would return to Zion at last’ (464). But the next question is: How did Jesus expect things to end? How would the battle with evil take place? Wright’s argument is that Jesus’ retelling of Israel’s story belongs with a number of narratives that make suffering the precursor to, and prerequisite for, national salvation. This leads to an inevitable, and predictable, conclusion:

He took a stand which brought him into inevitable conflict with the authorities, but he construed that conflict as being not merely with them but with the dark power that, he believed, stood behind them. The climax of the story, of the battle for the kingdom, was therefore, inescapably, that Jesus would die, not as an accident, nor as a bizarre quasi-suicide, a manipulated martyrdom, but as the inevitable result of his kingdom-inaugurating career. But this death, as he conceived it, would be the actual victory of the king­dom, by which the enemy of the people would finally be defeated. Jesus would act out the role of the revolutionary, at the point at which it could no longer be misunderstood. It is therefore not surprising, but entirely natural, to suggest that Jesus, in telling the story of Israel reshaped around himself, predicted his own death. It did not take much insight to see that it was very likely from the beginning. From within Jesus’ retelling of the Jewish stories, such a death would carry an obvious, though shocking, interpretation. (466)

5. What time is it? Wright’s resolution, or at least explanation, of the tension between the now and not yet of the kingdom can be quoted at length:

Jesus’ redefinition of YHWH’s kingdom, as we have studied it so far, indicates that in his view the kingdom was indeed present, but that it was not like Israel had thought it would be. Israel’s god was becoming king in and through the work of Jesus; this kingdom would reach its climax in the battle which he was going to Jerusalem to fight; within a generation there would be an event which would show that Jesus was right to claim all this. YHWH would be king, and the true Israel would at last be redeemed from her exile. Even before the great events that would inaugurate the kingdom on the public stage and in world history, that king­dom was already present where Jesus was. To deny its presence, indeed, would be to undermine the hoped-for future: if it was not, in this sense, already present, what guarantee had Jesus’ followers that the final victory was imminent? Jesus’ reading of the signs of the times, then, produced an answer to the fifth worldview question which, once we understand him his­torically, makes perfect sense. His public ministry was itself the true inauguration of the kingdom which would shortly be established.