All posts tagged Roman Empire

  • March 2, 2017

    The Sermon on the Mount and Caesar’s Sword

    Constantine

    The Sermon On the Mount and Caesar’s Sword
    Brian Zahnd

    As I call Christians to the practices of radical forgiveness and nonviolent peacemaking that Jesus embodied and most clearly sets forth in the Sermon on the Mount, I often encounter Christians using Romans 13:1–7 as a kind of rebuttal. (Though whom they’re rebutting — me or Jesus — isn’t always clear.) Their argument goes something like this:

    “God has ordained the government and has given it the sword to execute vengeance; therefore we cannot be opposed to war because Romans 13 sanctions ‘Just War.’”

    Usually this argument is given to me in the context of advocating that the United States government should wage total war on ISIS and other enemies of America, and that the church should celebrate this.

    But this is an egregious misinterpretation and misapplication of what Paul is talking about. Let me explain.
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    No Comments / America, Christianity, Jesus, Theology, Violence /

  • December 29, 2016

    Vive la Révolution!

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    Vive la Révolution!
    Brian Zahnd

    Pagan astrologers read it in the stars — a new king of the Jews had been born. And so the magi came from the Orient bearing their gifts and accidentally got tangled up with the current King of the Jews — a debauched and murderous megalomaniac named Herod who decades earlier had been made an imperial client king by the Roman Senate.

    Not long after that the death squads were breaking down doors and killing baby boys in Bethlehem.

    An angel got Mary and Joseph and the baby king out of town in the nick of time. And so the Holy Family became refugees seeking asylum in a foreign country in order to escape a violent regime in their homeland.

    All this was happening while Augustus Caesar was the Roman Emperor. The coinage of the Roman economy bore the image of the “august” Caesar with imperial titles like, Son of God, Savior of the World, King of Kings, Prince of Peace. Sitting in his palace on Palatine Hill, Augustus could never have imagined that in less than forty years these titles would be re-appropriated for a Galilean peasant who had suffered a state sponsored execution under the jurisdiction of a Roman governor. Much less could Caesar Augustus have imagined that within a few centuries millions of people throughout the Roman Empire would pledge their allegiance to the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, calling him the risen King of all kings.

    But that’s what happened.

    If this all sounds very political, you’re right, it was…and it is.
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    No Comments / Christianity, Jesus, Kingdom /

  • September 5, 2015

    The Book of Revelation

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    This week Group Publishing released the Jesus-Centered Bible — a study Bible in the New Living Translation. I wrote the introductions for Jonah, Matthew, Titus, and Revelation. Here’s the introduction I wrote for the book of Revelation.

    The Book of Revelation
    Brian Zahnd

    As a child growing up in church I didn’t always feel engaged by the sermon. On those occasions I would pull out the pew Bible and begin to read. And I always went to the same place — to the end of the Bible, to the mysterious book of Revelation. I was fascinated with its monsters and battles, its angels and demons, and its visions of heaven and hell that parade across the pages in the final installment of Christian Scripture. Like many others, I assumed I was reading some kind of un-deciphered code about the end times. I thought Revelation was a veiled foretelling of the geopolitical events of the late twentieth century.

    But I was mistaken.
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    10 Comments / Bible, Eschatology, Jesus /