Interesting thoughts in an article by Kavin Rowe, in Interpretation. He examines several NT incidents where Paul and others are accused of 'sedition' (stasis) or treason against Caesar (Thessalonica/Acts 17, Ephesus/Acts 19, Judea/Acts 25-25)... "these people have turned the world upside down... saying there is another king - Jesus."
Yes, the resurrection of Jesus threatens the stability of Roman life; no, the Christians are not guilty of stasis...
The kingdom of which Jesus is king is not simply spiritual, but also material and social, which is to say that it takes up space in public... because public space is not neutral but contested space -- the arena in which various readings of the world make their bid for adoption -- the Christian mission's challenge to basic aspects and patterns of Greco-Roman culture is simultaneously a challenge to the world of Caesar, and thus in a crucial or fundamental sense to his claim to be the lord of all.
It is possible to imagine a future in which the Christian way of being is a minority whose life-pattern is at odds with much of what the wider Western world will consider normal. Looking at Acts allows us to learn or relearn things about the form of life in the world that earned the name "Christian"...
Acts helps us to see that the church did not exist in a discrete sphere of life or thought with a particular, limited set of ideas or practices... but was a total way of life ('habit of being") that was noticeably different from the larger practices and assumptions that shaped the daily life of the Greco-Roman world; public and private, all-encompassing.
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