Storied Theology

Last week I read C. Kavin Rowe’s World Upside Down and wanted to say a few things about it here. As I indicated in my brief mention of the book last week, the book is a great “fit” for the Storied Theology theme that I hope somehow will (loosely) hold my blog together.

Rowe declares that it’s high time to reassess the notion that Acts is written, in large part, as political apologia, storying the compatablity between Rome and the church. And yet, he does not want us to fall off the horse on the other side, either, and turn Acts into a tract for political liberation through resistance movements.

Instead, Acts is “a highly charged and theologically sophisticated political document that aims at nothing less than the construction of an alternative total way of life–a comprehensive pattern of being–one that runs counter to the life-patterns of the Graeco-Roman world.” It is thus “a culture-forming narrative” (4).

The book is structured so as to, first, give attention to the collisions between Acts and pagan culture. In chapter 2, “Collision,” Rowe highlights the ways in which the narrative of Acts serves to undermine the reading which assumes that the church is not a threat to the Roman culture. The “new cultural reality” established by the church means that the sorts of uprisings we see in Lystra, Philipi, Athens, and Ephesus are not narrated simply to be dismissed, but are indicative of the impact of an alternative reality bumping up against “business as usual” in the pagan world. In this chapter, the exposition of Paul’s encounter with the philosphers on Mars Hill and the uprising in Ephesus are particularly instructive.

The next chapter gives attention to the passages that play well for the traditional reading of Acts. In particular, this chapter, “Dikaios,” chronicles Paul’s trials and vindication before the Roman authorities. This chapter is particularly instructive in the ways that it leads us through the story of Acts as a developing narrative. The trial scenes are not only to be read one by one, but in order, with an eye toward a development in Rome’s response to Paul. Ultimately, Paul’s vindication at the hands of the Romans becomes a tacit confirmation of the “otherness” of the church and its mission–the Romans do not have the epistemological tools to understand the gospel. The resurrection inaugurates a new reality that they cannot grasp.

One of the strengths of Rowe’s approach is that it enables us to step back and see yet another way that Acts depicts the early church as embodying the ministry of Jesus: as he was one in whom the Romans found no guilt, and even at the end pronounced dikaios, just, at his moment of death, and yet was opposed by those who would not accept the transformation of their vision of the kingdom of God, so also goes the church. Yes, Jesus does something new and subversive, but it’s not directly oppositional or antagonistic or seen to be a threat by the Romans (who don’t understand it at all).

In running through some of Rowe’s arguments with a friend who’s working on Acts, he’s wondered if looking to Rome isn’t looking too far afield. Is the purpose of Acts to be found more close to home, in the tensions between the early church and non-Christian Judaism (or even all types of Judaism including the conservative Torah-keeping Judaism with which the non-Jewish church struggles so much)? That’s a question worth pressing further.

Next time I’ll talk about the chapter where Kavin presents his suggestion for reading in light of the tension between collision and innocence and where he goes with the theological implications of his work.

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