The Hermeneutics of "Today"

Fr. Neuhaus dispatches a less than spectacular breakthrough made by N. T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham:

Closer to the gravamen of his new book, Wright debunks traditional ideas of heaven by noting that Jesus could not have been referring to heaven when he said that the good thief would be with him today in paradise because Jesus still had to descend to hell and be resurrected and therefore was not himself in heaven on that day. Gotcha. Now why didn’t Thomas Aquinas and all those other smart theologians think of that? Here and elsewhere, N.T. Wright is as literalistic as the staunchest of fundamentalists.

(Thanks to William Tighe.)