A while back I posted a quotation that I said was from Tertullian: “You can’t serve God and the Emperor.” The more I’ve read of Tertullian the more suspicious I became about the authenticity of the quotation. I checked with David Ivan Rankin, author of a book on Tertullian and the church and of another ( From Clement to Origen ) on the “social and historical context of the church fathers.” Rankin is the kind of meticulous scholar who gets... Read more
Warren Carter (in Horsley, ed., In the Shadow of Empire ) writes, “Not only is the imperial world violent and exploitative, under rulers opposed to and condemned by God, but the Empire is also under the power of the devil and caught up in the continuing struggle between the devil and God.” His proof is that in Matthew’s account of the temptation, Satan claims that “all empires [ basileias ] of the world” belong to him. His evidence for this... Read more
University of Illinois history professor Paul Schroeder is worried about the sloppiness involved in calling America an “empire.” America is said to be an empire “simply by being the world’s only superpower, by virtue of its military supremacy, economic power, global influence, technological and scientific prowess, and world-wide alliances. The term ‘empire,’ in short, describes America’s current condition and world status, and is equivalent to phrases like ‘unipolar moment’ or ‘unchallenged hegemony.’” Schroeder finds this “a misleading, unhistorical understanding of... Read more
Jon L. Berquist (in Horsley, ed., In the Shadow of Empire ) claims that during the Persian period, Israel devleoped prayer and observance of Sabbath as anti-imperial practices. Daniel’s prayers “resist the law of the king and the rule of the empire.” Sabbath too is anti-imperial: “Sabbath was always construed as an anti-economic event, refusing the rhythms of imperial production and consumption. The Hebrew Bible grounds Sabbath firmly within a tradition of social justice that resists the imperial stratification of... Read more
INTRODUCTION Jesus’ lawsuit against the scribes and Pharisees focuses on their failures of leadership (vv. 13-15), their neglect of the important things in the law (vv. 16-24), and their concentration on external show rather than internal purity (vv. 25-28). Of course, these diseases of the soul are not confined to Pharisees. They are plenty common among Christians. THE TEXT “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither... Read more
Was Jesus condemning the use of all terms of address for religious leaders when He told His disciples not to call anyone Rabbi, Father, or Instructor? Several possible interpretations are absurd on the face of it. Jesus could not have been condemning the use of the specific terms, but leaving room for all others. As if: “Right Reverend Most Holy Doctor” is fine, but “Rabbi” is not. Nor could He be condemning all official titles. Paul insists on his right... Read more
In a recent article, Rikki Watts challenges the notion that Jesus’ “My God, my God” is a cry of despair, suggesting that it is instead an act of power: “given the . . . its immediate impact on the temple, that it too expresses Jesus’ power. Citing John’s use of the phrase “loud voice” in 11:43 at the grave of Lazarus, Watts argues that the phrase “in its most common NT use . . . expresses God’s sovereign authority over... Read more
Tertullian again, denying that the church is a “faction”: “But who has ever suffered harm from our assemblies? We are in our congregations just what we are when separated from each other; we are as a community what we areindividuals; we injure nobody, we trouble nobody. When the upright, when the virtuous meet together, when the pious, when the pure assemble in congregation, you ought not to call that a faction, but a curia .” Read more
Cambridge physicist David JC Mackay ( Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air , online at www.withouthotair.com) offers a sobering analysis of the practicality of wind power as an alternative energy source for the UK: “Let’s compare this estimate of British wind potential with current installed wind power worldwide. The windmills that would be required to provide the UK with 20 kWh/d per person amount to 50 times the entire wind hardware of Denmark; 7 times all the wind farms of... Read more
From the Apology (39): “We are a body knit together as such by a common religious profession, by unity of discipline, and by the bond of a common hope. We meet together as an assembly and congregation, that, offering up prayer to God as with united force, we may wrestle with Him in our supplications. This violence God delights in. We pray, too, for the emperors, for their ministers and for all in authority, for the welfare of the world,... Read more
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