Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire

by Brian J. Walsh, Sylvia C Keesmaat, Sylvia C. Keesmaat

Book Overview

Have we really heard the message of Colossians? Is this New Testament book just another religious text whose pretext is an ideological grab for dominating power? Reading Colossians in context, ancient and contemporary, can perhaps give us new ears to hear. In this innovative and refreshing book Brian J. Walsh and Sylvia C. Keesmaat explain our own sociocultural context to then help us get into the world of the New Testament and get a sense of the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0830827382
• ISBN13: 9780830827381
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Warning: deeply, deeply subversive

If you are comfortable in your Christianity, in your middle-class lifestyle, and in your place in modern American culture, you may want to consider carefully before reading this book. It is likely to upset you deeply. Approached with an open mind, it might even change your life. The basis thesis is that in the letter to the Colossians, Paul (or deutero Paul, although the authors sidestep this controversy) was transmitting a strong anti-imperial message. "He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God [and therefore you, Caesar aren't]." "Through him all things were made ... whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers [get it, Casear? You are not only subject to the true Lord of all, you are his creation]" "In him all things hold together [and so we don't need your Pax Romana]" "In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell [so no, Caesar, you are not divine]" They then apply the letter to the 21st Century. The parallels are striking. As in the time when the letter is written, one nation has acquired hegemony over the known world. As in that time, the world power is full of hubris. As in that time, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. As in that time, military might is being used to dominate the less fortunate. As in that time, our true god (the one we confess with our actions) is not the creator and covenant God of Israel, but rather the false god of economic security and unlimited growth (i.e., Mammon). "If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world?" Why indeed?

Joining the burgeoning library of great contextual NT books

Already being an admirer of Walsh and Keesmat's friend and teacher, NT (Tom) Wright, I picked up this book with great expectations and was not let down. They and their colleague Richard Middleton, whose equally excellent if more scholarly, "The Liberating Image" sets Genesis 1 clearly in its anti-imperial context, are opening up solid ground in which the seeds of authentic discipleship can grow. Their books are part of a wider movement, which, unfortunately so far, they seem not to have engaged fully, which includes the work of writers such as Ched Myers (Mark's Gospel), Warren Carter (Matthew's Gospel) and myself (John and Revelation). Serious and engaged scholarly research into the imperial context of the New Testament has beamed liked a searchlight on the otherwise obscure and baffling words of some NT texts. Foundational volumes such as "Paul and Empire" (ed, Richard Horsley) as well as source work such as SRF Price's "Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor" and P. Zanker's "The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus" have shown how NT exegesis that does not engage the imperial context--then and now--simply does not engage "the gospel," whether of Jesus or of Paul (which are, in the end, the same). If you like this approach, you might also like Neil Elliott's work on Paul, as well as any of Wright's or Horsley's excellent volumes.

What a delight! What a challenge!

J. Richard Middleton's endorsement of the book should have been written in flashing lights. If is taken seriously for its own message or as a model for the task of postmodern hermaneutics and "faithful improvisation" then it will be a "Molotov cocktail lobbed into the midst of contemporary biblical studies and the American Empire." The interactive dialog is a very helpful device to bring along many readers who are still working through their clarification of an internal clash of modern/postmodern worldviews. While it would have been distracting to have another character coming from a modern perspective that mifht have been another book. I guess we'll find that on the web pages that are sure to denounce the author's "naming of names." The empire is alive and too well. Let's hope we can find the courage to be the alternative community that Paul challenged the Colissians to be.