Jesus vs Rome
Key Differences Between Kingdom and Empire
I hear a lot of people referring to my ‘kingdom’ versus ‘empire’ language as simply a rebrand of ‘church’ versus ‘the world.’ I understand why people think this way, however today I would like to make some clarifications.
For the most part, when the New Testament writers were referring to ‘the world’, they were either referring to the entire created order (κόσμος / kosmos), or they were referring to the inhabited world (οἰκουμένη / oikoumenē), which in their context usually meant Rome.1
When Western Christians refer to ‘the world’, what we often mean is ‘the secular’, which carries a very different set of cultural values and assumptions than those in ancient times. For the most part, we like to assume that secularism somehow came out of a vacuum, and that its position is somehow ‘neutral’.
We also imagine the secular to be an equal opposing force to Christianity, and therefore it must be an enemy of some kind. This way of thinking often leads to combative language, hostility towards anyone who disagrees with us, and a disproportionate persecution complex.
Yet many historians and philosophers have studied the phenomena of secularism, and almost all of them agree that it came as a gradual evolution that branched out of Christianity. Secularism is not a neutral space; as it turns out, it came from us.2
Michael F. Bird has rightly pointed out that Christians (like me) who regularly bemoan the effects of ‘empire’ often speak as though all empires throughout human history are some kind of homogenised beast. I can almost hear him channelling his inner Inigo Montoya: ‘You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.’
While I agree with his sentiment (you can’t just call everything you don’t like ‘empire’), there is no denying that the Western world today is made up of the cultural and ethical values that were taught by Jesus and his early followers, intermingled with the cultural and ethical values that were passed down by Rome.
I have argued elsewhere that when Jesus entered the world stage and began preaching, he did so as a direct confrontation to the Roman empire. Historians such as Tom Holland argue that we are continuing to live in the reverberations of this disruption today.
This is why the ‘church’ versus ‘world’ paradigm gets so confusing. We all have secular friends who sometimes do a better job of upholding the moral and ethical values of Jesus than we do. We also all know of churches that do a pretty good job of emulating the moral and ethical values of Rome.
On a meta-ethical level, it’s hard to tease this out if we don’t first clarify what is meant by each category. So, for the purposes of simplicity, here is my working summary of what I mean by ‘empire culture’ and what I mean by ‘kingdom culture’:
Empire Culture ala Rome
Values and Assumptions
Bigger is always better; grandiosity must be celebrated
Strength is a sign of divine favour
Weakness must always be hidden or exiled
Vulnerability will inevitably be exploited or humiliated
The ‘strong’ deserve higher social status over the ‘weak’
Some people are better than others: outcasts are excluded or dispatched
The elite are exempt from accountability
Meritocracy is assumed: people are rich/poor/healthy/sick because they deserve to be
Some people are objects for consumption (slavery is assumed)
Vision of Maturity: to be rich, strong, and self-sufficient.
End Goals: control, dominance and uniformity
Kingdom Culture, According to Jesus
Values and Assumptions
The first will be last and the last shall be first (Matt 20:16)
God can do more with the small (Matt 17:20)
True strength is in humility (1 Peter 5:6)
The weak have a purchase over the strong (1 Cor 1:27)
The poor deserve justice (Psalm 82:3; Luke 4:18)
Society’s outcasts bear the face of the King (Matt 25:31-45)
Virtue must be practised in secret (Matt 6:1-4)
All are sinners and therefore all must be held accountable (Rom 3:23)
I get to rest because I know God is in control (Deut 5:14)
People bear the image of the divine (Gen 1:27)
Vision of Maturity: to love the Lord your God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and to love your neighbour as yourself (Mark 12:30-31).
End Goals: healthy relationships (1 John 2:9-11), diversity in unity (Rev 7:9), genuine love (John 13:34-35).
As I have mentioned, the confusion in our modern era often rests in the fact that sometimes there are secular spaces that do a better job of exhibiting Kingdom culture than the church! Any charity or advocacy group who works on behalf of the poor is doing the work of Jesus, whether they know it or not. The problem for those who do so from a secular mindset is that they are trying to build the Kingdom without the king. In fact, they often do so while mocking Jesus and the Bible! As Tom Holland puts it, they are ‘sawing off the branch they are sitting on.’
Likewise, the church has done a pretty good job of establishing dominance, building a brand, and colonising nations through the use of violent rhetoric and actions. In doing so, she is claiming to be building the Kingdom, but in actual fact she is doing so using Empire methods. This cannot lead to Kingdom goals - violence (in word or deed) cannot lead to love.
I am acutely aware that neither of these problems are likely to be solved by yet another Christian on the internet writing another essay. Howevever, language informs culture, and I think if we clarify what we mean, this can at least get us somewhere.
Until next time,
S
There is a third Greek word that is also sometimes translated into ‘world’ in the NIV, which is αἰών / aiōn. It literally means ‘an age’, and is referring more to time than space. (E.g. ‘In this world you will have many troubles’ is better translated as, ‘in this current age you will have many troubles.’)
See Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and Brad S. Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation for more details on this. James KA Smith has also written on this extensively.