Jesus Is Lord, Caesar Is Not: Evaluating Empire in New Testament Studies

by Scot McKnight (Editor), Joseph B. Modica (Editor)

The New Testament is immersed in the often hostile world of the Roman Empire, but its relationship to that world is complex. What is meant by Jesus' call to "render unto Caesar" his due, when Luke subversively heralds the arrival of a Savior and Lord who is not Caesar, but Christ? Is there tension between Peter's command to "honor the emperor" and John's apocalyptic denouncement of Rome as "Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots"? Under the direction of editors Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica, respected biblical scholars have come together to investigate an increasingly popular approach in New Testament scholarship of interpreting the text through the lens of empire . The contributors praise recent insights into the New Testament's exposé of Roman statecraft, ideology and emperor worship. But they conclude that rhetoric of anti-imperialism is often given too much sway. More than simply hearing the biblical authors in their context, it tends to govern what they must be saying about their context. The result of this collaboration, Jesus Is Lord, Caesar Is Not , is a groundbreaking yet accessible critical evaluation of empire criticism. Contributors

Genres: Theology, Biblical Studies, Politics, New Testament, History, Religion, Christianity

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 2012

About the author

Scot McKnight is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. McKnight, author or editor of forty books, is the Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lombard, IL. Dr. McKnight has given interviews on radios across the nation, has appeared on television, and is regularly speaks at local churches, conferences, colleges, and seminaries in the USA and abroad. Dr. McKnight obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham (1986).

Reviews

[Josiah DeGraaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book on a topic I've never really thought of before. The basic premise of the book is that the postcolonial reading of the New Testament is pretty flawed, and my presuppositions tend to incline me toward that position. That being said, I did find myself chafing a bit at some of the authors' hard anti-postcolonial readings at points. While the purpose of the New Testament, as they pointed out, certainly is focused on the Gospel and not sociopolitical upheaval, the Gospel does have something to say about certain sociopolitical realities. The ethic of the faithful Christian often faces him against the ungodly governments of his time, and as long as the kings of earth take counsel together against the Messiah, the New Testament will always have something to say about such Caesars and kings.

Given this, while I agree with the basic premise of these authors' remarks, I thought they at times threw the baby out with the bathwater.

Rating: 3.5-4 Stars (Good).

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

The influence of post-colonial approaches to biblical hermeneutics and other recent scholarship has meant that the New Testament has been read with an eye towards its sociopolitical implications. Modern authors as diverse as Warren Carter, John Dominic Crossan, Richard Horsley, and N.T. Wright have observed that declaring that Jesus was the Son of God and Lord in a first century Roman context, offered an implicit critique of the emperor. If Jesus is Lord then Caesar is not.


Jesus is Lord Caesar is Not: Evaluating Empire in New Testament Studies edited by Scot McKnight and Joseph B Modica
While these readings have been insightful and instructive, Scot McKnight and Joseph Modica have gathered a team of scholars who offer a chastened view of the empire-critical approach. All of the essays in Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not acknowledge that the Lordship of Christ would cause some degree of enmity with Imperial Rome. So nowhere do the authors of this book suggest that there are not political implications to believing the gospel; yet they do point out where the contemporary case against the emperor, waged in the academy, goes beyond the bounds of the New Testament witness. An exclusively political reading of the Bible obscures other dimensions of the gospel proclamation.

Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not divides into ten chapters. The forward, introduction and first couple of chapters look at the broad theme of empire and the New Testament. The remaining chapters examine various New Testament books assessing what they say (and do not say) about empire and recent literature. Andy Crouch‘s forward teases out some of the implications of this study and sums up its insights. After a brief introduction by McKnight and Modica, David Nystrom opens the book with a look at the Roman imperial cult and ideology. Nystrom is a specialist in Roman History and examines how the Emperor used the imperial cult to consolidate his power and re-enforced the ‘entire compass of Roman civilization (36). Nystorm’s chapter illuminates the first century context, reveals some scholarly missteps (i.e. reading a contemporary context back into the text), and shows us where the gospel does challenge imperial authority. Judith Diehl‘s essay examines the Anti-imperial rhetoric of the New Testament and surveys recent discussions and approaches. Social scientific, post colonial and literary approaches reveals an imperial critique which until recently remained obscure.

Joel Willitts examines Matthew’s gospel. Willitts suggests that Matthew was not anti-imperial as such but describes how Jesus is the Messiah. Willitts writes:

Matthew was hailing the coming of Israel’s Davidic Messiah and announcing the concomitant restoration of the kingdom of Israel. To the extent that Israel’s restoration would be an assault on any earthly kingdom, Matthew’s gospel opposed Rome. But, and this is a significant point, Matthew was neither critiquing “empire” per se nor singling out Rome uniquely. To take this view would be to inappropriately diminish Matthew’s message. Jesus is not only or primarily God’s answer to Rome. Jesus is God’s answer to Israel’s unfulfilled story. A story, as it turns out, not only about Israel. It is a story that encompasses all the kingdoms and nations of the world (Mt. 4:8; 28:19-20)(97).

Dean Pinter‘s examination of Luke and recent scholarly literature reveals that the gospel is not simply a ‘pro-empire’ text. However he cautions that “questions of empire should not set the primary agenda for reading the Gospel of Luke either” (112). There are points where Luke is critical of Imperial policy but he does not write ‘against Rome’ either. Pinter writes,

Luke is a political thinker but the question is whether his primary polarity is between Jesus as Lord and Caesar as Lord. A more appropriate polarity would be construed this way: Luke is interested in social inequalities and how they are intertwined with demonic powers and their challenge against God’s sovereignty in the larger cosmic battles (113).

This allows for a much more nuanced view of Luke’s critique of Roman culture.

Similarly Christopher Skinner‘s exploration of John shows that its author is primarily concerned with the incarnate Logos. Nevertheless he goes to great pains to suggest that John does speak to the realm of Empire and contains an implicit critique of Rome. This is interesting because John’s gospel is not typically a ‘anti-imperial’ go-to text.

Drew Strait discusses Acts. Of particular interest is his discussion of the political implications of the Ascension. In the Greco-Roman world ascension into heaven accompanied the process of becoming a god (134). Caesar Augustus himself took advantage of the political ramifications f Julius Caesar’s ascent (proclaimed by Augustus at games held in Julius Caesar’s honor). While Strait cautions that you cannot separate the ascension from its Judaic roots, he acknowledges that for Luke’s audience to make the association between Christ’s ascension and Caesar’s was thoroughly plausible (135). Throughout Acts, Strait wants us to hear the implications of Jesus lordship, but he suggests this is more a theological than revolutionary claim and in the first century and would be more offensive to Jewish listeners than Caesar’s agents (144).

Michael Bird‘s chapter is the standout essay of the volume. In discussion Romans, he demonstrates that while Paul wrote his book more as a ‘pastoral theology’ than a ‘political manifesto,’ Paul was thoroughly cognizant of the sociopolitical realities of the Roman Empire (161). Paul’s gospel was the antithesis of all Rome stood for. Bird’s essay appears to give the most credence to empire criticism :

Paul’s euangelion is the Royal announcement that God’s dikaiosyne avails for believing Jews and Greeks, but bad news for the powers because of the concurrent revelation of God’s wrath against idolatry and wickedness (Romans 1:8). Paul’s letter to the Romans is delivered to the heart of the empire with a bold thesis that there is only one true Lord, Jesus Christ. The violence of Roman military power and the foolishness of Roman religion will all collapse under the weight of the kingdom of Christ. Should a Roman official have read Romans, the letter would have appeared to be the ravings of a fanatical Eastern superstition, politically malicious at best and seditious at worst.

Two other chapters discuss the Pauline epistles relationship to Empire. Lynn Cohick examines Philippians and empire while Allan Bevere discusses Colossians (and Philemon). Cohick gives some great information on the imperial cult (the practice included the worship of Caesar’s ancestors not simply the living Caesar) but like other authors in this volume, she questions the assumption that the political reading (i.e. Empire criticism) does full justice to the eschatological dimensions to the text. Bevere offers a stinging critique of Walsh and Keesmaat’s Colossians Remixed. Certainly there are aspects of Colossians that call the Empire into question, but Walsh and Keesmaat also gloss over aspects of Colossians which do not cohere with their empire-critical reading (i.e. Jewish elements in the Colossian philosophy). I have read and enjoyed Walsh and Keesmaat’s text several times, but I think that Bevere’s critique carries some freight.

Dwight Sheet discusses Revelation, an apocalyptic book which has been read for its explicit critique of the Roman Empire (likely during the time of Domitian). Sheet argues that the language of Revelation indicates an expectation of Christ’s imminent return.

Mcknight and Modica sum up the insights of this book with three observations:

The reality of the Roman Empire needs to be reckoned with in New Testament studies.
The Kingdom of God is not in opposition to the Roman Empire but the Kingdom of Satan.
The New Testament writers show readers how to live in the ‘already but not yet’ daily realities of empire (212-3).
This is a worthwhile read and I found it challenging and insightful. I am personally sympathetic and enamored with many of the empire-critical approaches to New Testament studies. I think the gospel does call into question the Emperor and the ruling hegemony, both in the first century and in the twenty-first. However reading the Bible with an agenda obscures its message. The New Testament is not uniformly critical of Empire and the authors have other concerns besides the imperial cult.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the sociopolitical implications of the Bible. These authors are even-handed in their presentation and demonstrate that Jesus’ Lordship does indeed call into question the Lordship of Caesar, at least in the ultimate sense. However the Kingdom of God is far richer and more interesting than a critique of earthly political regimes. This book will enrich your study of the New Testament and help you evaluate current academic trends. I give this book ★★★★.

Thank you to InterVarsity Academic for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

[Shane Williamson · Rating 3 out of 5]

2025 reads: 24

Rating: 3.5 stars

The contributors to this volume were mostly skeptical and critical of empire-criticism/Greco-Roman backgrounds for reading the NT. Some of the pushback was helpful, though, I fear, a little too reductionistic. Otherwise, this is a decent (and sort of partial) intro to empire studies in the NT for those wanting to get a feel for the debates.

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thorough, thoughtful. Offers a good deal of reason to be cautious about the prevalence of "Empire Criticism", but would have liked to see a clearer vision more positively explained and explored.

[T.C. Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was first introduced to “Empire in the New Testament” through my reading of N.T. Wright, “For the New Testament writers to say that ‘Jesus is Lord’ is to also say that Caesar is not,” then Wright would begin to flesh this out.

An Overview

According to its subtitle, this work is an evaluation of Empire in New Testament studies. The work is edited by Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica and features ten essays by ten different contributors. The first two essays are introductory, orienting the reader to “Roman Imperial Ideology and Imperial Cult” and “Anti-imperial Rhetoric in the New Testament” of the New Testament world, while the remaining eight essays evaluate the writings of the leading ant-imperial scholars on various New Testament documents.

For the ant-imperial critics, they believe the New Testament writers employed subversively ant-imperial rhetoric, often in hidden codes. For example, in his “Matthew” essay Joel Willitts cites Warren Carter, one of the leading ant-imperial critics: “My argument is that the Roman Empire comprises not the New Testament background but its foreground. Matthew and Mark are works of imperial negotiation. They tell the story of Jesus crucified by the Empire because he challenges its power, yet he is raised by God thereby revealing the limits of Roman power and the sovereign power of God.” This same rhetoric by Carter is seen applied the the rest of the New Testament documents in innovative ways. But what Christopher Skinner says in his essay “John’s Gospel and the Roman Imperial Context” may be said of Carter and other ant-imperial critics: “To give Rome too much attention, though, is to major on minor issue. It is too reductionistic to focus on John’s meager presentation of Rome, while neglecting more implicit and seemingly more important points of emphasis.”

Dwight D. Sheets essay on “Revelation and Empire” is something of a treat. According to Sheets, “Most also agree that the clearest anti-empire themes in the New Testament writings are found in Revelation. This idea is not new. From the earliest era of church history commentators have recognized Rome as the referent behind Revelation’s visions.” But rather than viewing Revelation as a paradigm for subversive anti-imperialism, which according to Sheets, “must be seen as an issue that reflects more the modern reader’s concerns than the author of the apocalypse. One may be more true to the message of Revelation by seeking to understand the ways in which the concerns of accommodation and spiritual apostasy are part of the church’s contemporary experience.”

In summary, both the editors and contributors seem to agree that “The New Testament conviction that Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not, is not a direct assault on the Roman Empire or even a veiled attempt to usurp it.” And the reader must wonder, according to Michael Bird in his essay “Paul’s Letter to the Romans and the Roman Empire,” if “these so-called anti-imperial readings coming at a time when anti-American sentiment (and anti-conservative American politics) is experiencing a cultural spike in the academy… is really a veiled critique of American foreign policy by left-leaning academics.”

Conclusion

If you’re New Testament leaning in your studies like I am, you will find this collection of evaluating essays on Empire in New Testament studies, in the words of McKnight and Modica, “convincing if not also compelling.” The contributors interaction with primary literature is quite evident. And if the reader wishes to explore the subject further, a bibliography is found at the end of each essay.

[Drick · Rating 3 out of 5]

In recent years "empire studies" has been a new perspective that has been employed in biblical studies. Modica and McKnight have pulled together a group of scholars to engage empire studies as it relates to specific books of the New Testament. In the end they summarize what essentially all their authors contend: that the writers of the New Testament - particularly the gospels, Paul and John from Revelation, were not primarily concerned with presenting a confrontation between the Kingdom of God and the Roman Empire but rather the Kingdom of God in confrontation with the Kingdom of Satan ( or "this world"). Concerns about the empire are apparent but not front and center.

The book shows the strength of the evangelical approach to Scripture (faithfulness to the text) and its weakness (total focus on the text). They follow Hooker's warning that scholars ought not read their own perspective in the text (this is what empire studies scholars do), but seem to overlook the insights of postmodernism, which is that there is no neutral or objective reading of a text; we all read into it, but the dominant culture has the luxury of defining what is normative and so can claim objectivity. Thus the more honest approach to the question of empire and the bible is to start with our experience today with neoliberal global capitalism and ask how does our experience connect with the world of the bible; when we do that we see a connection between our situation and the first followers of Christ and the Roman Empire. Like them our world view is limited by corporate hegemony - we accept our world as it is. What the concept of empire brings to the discussion of biblical studies is not specific teachings but rather the implications that those teachings take on in our social and political situation. In the world of the New Testament there was no separation of the sacred and secular realms, they were infused in each other. How might that view inform how we address the global capitalistic empire of today. That is what I had hoped from this book and found lacking.

[Michael Philliber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scot McKnight and Joseph Modica have pulled together New Testament Scholars to examine a trend flowing through New Testament studies these days: (1) Empire criticism and (2) postcolonial critique. The first chapter surveys Roman imperial ideology and the development of the imperial cult. Nystrom shows that early on, the imperial cult was loose and not as "in-your-face" as has sometimes been presented, because it was often a footnote of the normal religious fabric in the Empire. The following chapters, written respectively by Diehl, Willitts, Pinter, Skinner, Strait, Bird, Cohick, Bevere and Sheets, take on specific New Testament writings showing how empire criticism and postcolonial critique view the Scriptures. They each then show the holes and cracks in these two streams of hermeneutics.

To summarize the end result of these short articles, McKnight and Modica observe in the concluding chapter, "We believe that the New Testament writers do indeed address the concerns highlighted by empire criticism. But we also strongly suggest that this is not their primary modus operandi" (212). That summary statement pretty well encapsulates the thinking of the whole book, and each individual chapter.

Though "Jesus Is Lord, Caesar Is Not" is a fairly technical manual, it is accessible to most any attentive reader. It is a corrective volume that will help to broaden and deepen New Testament studies, without going over the waterfall of empire criticism and postcolonial critique. If you don't have a copy, you ought to pick one up, it'll be worth the cost and the time it takes to read it.

[Matt Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've read enough Christian books blogs and articles as I have, you probably have a lot of the same questions needling you as I do. Is it really fair to compare the U.S. to the "Evil Empire" of Rome, and cite Scripture as being blatantly opposed to it? And is there even criticism of the empire of Rome in the Bible, coded or otherwise? Scott McKnight and Joseph B. Modica, along with other respected biblical scholars put the central questions of empire criticism to the test. The authors of these essays examine history behind the Gospels and New Testament Letters assumed to be anti empire and treat the ideas with fairness but honesty. Some of the authors don't agree with each other, but they show the reader how they reached their conclusions, allowing the reader to reach his or her own. I was disappointed the famous "render to Caesar" passage wasn't dealt with, but the sections on the primary purpose of Revelation and whether Luke needed to use coded language in his books, just to name two, more than make up for this. Empire criticism isn't just a fad, and it does Christians on either side of the argument well to be familiar with the ideas behind it and to give it the fair examination it deserves. I highly recommend this to anyone who wishes to do that.

[Adam Shields · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short Review: I admit I gave up on this one. I probably should not have. There wasn't anything wrong with it. But I am the wrong audience (and/or picked it up at the wrong time.) The basic point of the book, that there is some value in looking at the role of Empire in the writing of the New Testament and the early church, but that it is easy to over play the role of empire, is good. The chapter on the background of the Emperror Cult was useful. The look at how empire influenced the writing of the individual books of the New Testament were worthwhile (but definately more than what I was looking for). So eventually I just got bored and I have moved onto other things.

If you really are interested in the role of Empire in the New Testament, this is a good place to start.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/jesus-is-lord/

A very good review of the book (by someone that actually read the whole thing and was interested in the book) is at http://thoughtsprayersandsongs.com/20...

[Timothy Hoiland · Rating 3 out of 5]

If like me you’re a Christian layperson and an armchair theologian at best, you’d be forgiven for not knowing that “empire criticism” in New Testament studies is actually a thing, much less why a substantial number of extremely smart people in the halls of academia are devoting their time and mental energies to it. I’m with you. The term was new to me when I picked up Jesus Is Lord, Caesar Is Not: Evaluating Empire in New Testament Studies (IVP Academic), edited by Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica. But I had a hunch it was a consequential topic, nonetheless, and after reading it I’m even more convinced...

- See more at: http://tjhoiland.com/wordpress/2013/0...

[Joel Wentz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essentially a survey of current scholarship regarding the presence (or lack of presence) of empire-critique throughout various New Testament documents, this book is an enjoyable read. The writing seems extremely balanced, and the authors are willing to level both sharp critique and general praise for the field they discuss. Personally, I was once again reminded of how easy it is to read the New Testament with an agenda. As someone who could easily get "sucked" into combing every book for a hidden critique of Rome, this nuanced book was very refreshing. Recommended, but only for people with an interest in the culture behind the New Testament!

[Nicholas Quient · Rating 4 out of 5]

A helpful survey of the broader debate over 'empire' in the New Testament. Lynn Cohick's essay is particularly helpful. Worthwhile.

[Kevin Gasser]

Empire Criticism from some of the leading scholars in the field. Paraphrasing McKinght, Empire Criticism is not the Gospel, but it is definitely a part of the Gospel.

[Walker Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

***1/2