"Jesus Is Lord, Caesar Is Not" edited by Scot McKnight and Joseph Modica. A Review

Jesus Is Lord, Caesar Is Not: Evaluating Empire in New Testament StudiesJesus Is Lord, Caesar Is Not: Evaluating Empire in New Testament Studies by Scot McKnight
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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.


View all my reviews

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?" (Rev. Ed.) by John Fea. A Review

Image
  John Fea is a professor of history at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, PA. A university founded in 1909 by the Brethren in Christ Church. He originally published "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction" in 2011, and it was revised in 2016. This 328-page paperback is packed full with Colonial and American history, drawing from original sources to answer that question. It is a book written "for the historically minded and thoughtful reader who is looking for help in sorting" out this question, avoiding polemics (xix). Since we live in a sound-bite culture, Fea recognizes that it is difficult to have a sustained dialogue on this topic, but he makes a valiant effort toward having that sustained dialogue. The book reads fairly straightforward, and doesn't seem to get bogged down in the contentious mudpuddles or bogs. In the end, Fea seems to get his point across. To answer the reigning question if America was founded as a Christian...
Read more

Union with Christ - An Application

Image
  (This was my weekly letter to my congregation on Wednesday, 21 February 2024) This morning in my devotional reading, I was working through 1 Corinthians 8. Though I’ve read these words a huge number of times over the years, today one verse caused me to stop and take stock.  Paul wrote, “ Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ ” (1 Corinthians 8:12). What struck me is a couple of things. First, in God’s saving work, we are – by grace alone – united (hitched, bonded, ingrafted) to Christ so much so, that what happens to us happens to him, and what is his becomes ours (think of Galatians 2:20, for example). As Sinclair Ferguson put it, “through union with Christ all that is his by incarnation becomes ours through faith” (“The Christian Life,” 110). Let that percolate in your heart for a while. Your fear, anxiety, tears, and so forth, he feels. And his “ Peace, be still ” is yours. Second, the way we treat one an...
Read more

"Ah, Lord! We are Animated by Anger and Anxiety, Fear and Fury..."

Image
I hesitate to put this out there because of the combative environment we are in at present. But I think some souls will take courage from this, and some will also join with me as we get to the end of this little composition. I am struck by the words of God in Zechariah 8. As he rehearses the waywardness and faithlessness of his people in the past, he clearly declares that he " set every man against his neighbor " (8:10). That got me thinking long ago. I started putting the pieces together and realized that one of God's acts of judgment is division, setting a man against his neighbor. That's what happened when he divided his people into the northern tribes and southern tribes (see 1 Kings 11:26-40). Because of Solomon's turning aside, allowing his wives to turn his heart away from the God of his father, David, the Lord brings about a rift in God's people. And this pattern of divisive judgment runs throughout Scripture. On the other hand, truthful unity is the g...
Read more