Tag Archive - Kavin Rowe
Euangelion Interview with Kavin Rowe
A couple weeks ago I ran through C. Kavin Rowe‘s
World Upside Down (part 1, part 2).
A friend just pointed out to me that Kavin was interviewed on Euangelion blog back in August. It’s a good read!
World Upside Down (part 2)
Continuing our review of C. Kavin Rowe’s World Upside Down, we come to the synthetic chapter (chapter 4, where he works through a narrative in tension between the church being a catalyst for instability and its innocence in Roman court) followed by a final chapter that works out the theological implications of the study.
Chapter 4 bears the title of the book, “World Upside Down,” and uses the Jewish charges against the Pauline mission in Acts 17 as its springboard. He traces three interrelated characteristics of the early church: they proclaim Jesus as universal king; this, in turn, sets the church on a universal mission; and that mission is generative of communities that are, in some sense, set apart from their surrounding cultures.
Rowe argues that the charges brought against the Christians accurately reflect Luke’s theological assessment of the early Christian movement: “these men who have turned the world upside down have come here, too…. They are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, proclaiming that there is another King, Jesus.” He maintains that there are three points aimed at one overarching charge of sedition: “by proclaiming another king, the Christians act against the decrees of Caesar and thereby turn the world upside down” (95-96).
Rowe goes on to say that “Jesus is king” is a confession that sets up a rival to Caesar. Moreover, Jesus’ kingship is embodied in a this-worldly transformation: it impacts the world within which we live. The force of Jesus as rival to Caesar is underscored by Luke’s use of κύριος as a title for each (106). A rivalry is created: Christians must deny what Caesar claims for himself and hence his authority on earth. Jesus comes to establish a rival peace as a rival king by rival means (in particular, suffering and death, 115).
Finally, it must be remembered that it is Jesus’ resurrection that is the impetus for mission: Jesus as Lord of all is the reason that a mission that extends to all generates communities to the ends of the Roman empire. (Some of my readers will be surprised not at all by the fact that this portion of my book has lots of “Yes!” in the margin.)
The final chapter draws some theological conclusions. It is no accident, Rowe claims, that when a whole set of practices constitutive of pagan culture are called into question (such as sacrifice, magic, temple-based economics) that the culture is confronted with possible collapse (146). “To see the potential of the Christian mission for cultural demise is to read it rightly. Indeed, this is but the flip side of the reality that God’s identity receives new cultural explication in the formation of a community whose moral or metaphysical order requires and alternative way of life” (146).
In Luke’s telling of the story, the formation of alternative communities, with alternative cultures, is inseparable from the reality of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead to be lord over all. Moreover, the existence of such communities, with their alternative forms of life, become the context within which the truth can be spoken and known (161). Thus, the Christian claims are “madness”–but only to those without eyes to see (162).
But this inability of the outsider to see is one part of a story told for the purpose of demonstrating the inherent necessity of Christian mission. All, even Rome, need conversion so as to understand the true story of Jesus. This, though, is not a coercive narrative, for “Acts narrates the life of the Christian mission as the embodied pattern of Jesus’s own life… Put succinctly, according to Acts, the missio Dei has a christological norm” (173).
The final part of the final chapter, where the missional implications of the Christian message are explored, are worth their weight in gold. Rowe has written a bold piece of theology.
Of course, I do have a couple of quibbles, and since I don’t want you to think that either my free book or my friendship with an author has overmuch colored my opinion, I offer a disagreement for your consideration. I am not as persuaded as the author that “Lord” (κύριος) is a cipher for the God of Israel, such that calling Jesus lord equates him ontologically with God–Jesus is God of all if Lord of all. Rowe references some of his earlier work, in which he has argued that the use of κύριος language in Joel, quoted in Acts 2, identifies Jesus with the God of Israel.
To my reading of Acts 2, this imports too much into the text that stands in tension with the actual things Peter says about Jesus and God. Jesus was a man testified to by God through signs and wonders. The distinction is important. Moreover, I notice Rowe saying that the resurrection confirmed or affirmed Jesus as lord, but Peter in Acts 2 (like Matthew 28 and Romans 1, etc.) that at the resurrection God made (ἐποίησεν) Jesus Lord and Messiah. Something happened to Jesus at the resurrection, he became something he was not before–he was made Lord of all, his name became the name by which salvation is made known.
But this disagreement, I think, detracts little from the meat of the work, which offers a bold new thesis on the purpose of Acts and will surely provide fodder for considerable debate in the future. (For example: at an SBL book review session in Atlanta…)
What I like most about this book is how it moves from historical exegesis to theological imperative, angling itself against the idea that we read disinterestedly, and uncovering false visions of “inclusiveness” that have no room for the sorts of sweeping claims made by the early church. The theology, in particular, merits sustained attention.
Disclaimer: Like every academic who reviews a book for a journal or online venue, I received a complimentary copy of Word Upside Down from Oxford University Press.
World Upside Down (Part 1)
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.
World Upside Down by Kavin Rowe
What does narrative theology look like?
What might it look like to take rigorous historical critical scholarship (or believing criticism) and not stop with exegetical details but move into rich theological exposition?
It looks like this:
I just finished this book a few minutes ago, and the culminating chapter, with its theological reflections, is strewn with marginal comments such as “Yes!” “Yes!”, a bit of “*”, and lots of “YES!”
This book works through the Gentile mission, in particular, in the Book of Acts. It strives to come up with a paradigm for understanding both that the gospel generates social upheaval and that the early Christian movement is proclaimed not worthy of death by the Romans.
I’ll work my way through the book, maybe starting tomorrow, but wanted to give you a heads up and a chance to check it out of your library, try to swing a review copy, talk your librarian into buying it, or shell out 50 bucks for your own copy.
[As required by federal law I hereby inform you that mine is a gratis copy from OUP. Yet I consider it my academic responsibility to give honest reviews, even of books I receive for free.]
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