Caesar and the Sacrament: Baptism: A Rite of Resistance

by Walter Brueggemann; Alan R. Streett

Publisher:

Cascade Books

, 2018

Overview

When the earliest Christ-followers were baptized they participated in a politically subversive act. Rejecting the Empire’s claim that it had a divine right to rule the world, they pledged their allegiance to a kingdom other than Rome and a king other than Caesar (Acts 17:7).   Many books explore baptism from doctrinal or theological perspectives, and focus on issues such as the correct mode of baptism, the proper candidate for baptism, who has the authority to baptize, and whether or not baptism is a symbol or means of grace. By contrast, Caesar and the Sacrament investigates the political nature of baptism.   Very few contemporary Christians consider baptism’s original purpose or political significance. Only by studying baptism in its historical context, can we discover its impact on first-century believers and the adverse reaction it engendered among Roman and Jewish officials. Since baptism was initially a rite of non-violent resistance, what should its function be today?

Key Features

Contents

Top Highlights

“Caesar’ was the Latin ancestral name of an influential Roman political family, dating to 208 BCE” (source)

“Luke intended for his audience to understand it as an avian sign. Jesus was Yahweh’s choice to rule the world. Luke presented Jesus’ baptism as an inauguration of a different kind of king—one confirmed by a dove, not an eagle. As such, this text is extremely political in its content and context. Since the other gospel writers did not include this phrase in their narratives, possibly Luke used ‘in bodily form’ as a literary device to convey to his readers that Caesar had a challenger.¹⁵⁴ If so, Luke intended his account of Jesus’ baptism to have counter-imperial implications.” (source)

“Tertullian (160–225 CE), the famed apologist, was more specific and identified the act of baptism as the Christian sacramentum and contrasted it to a Roman soldier’s pledge of loyalty to the emperor and Empire.¹⁹ By analogy, he makes the case that just as a soldier, upon his oath of allegiance, was inducted into Caesar’s army, so a believer was initiated by the sacrament (oath) of baptism into God’s kingdom. Each vowed faithful service to his god and kingdom.” (source)

“When Jesus called God his ‘Father’ and admonished his disciples to ‘call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven’ (Matt 6:9; 23:9), he was saying that they were to look only to God for their welfare and not Caesar.” (source)

“The combination of Ps 2:7 and Isa 42:1–2 gives us a composite picture of God’s Messiah. He is an anointed king and a humble servant. To the Jewish and Roman minds of the first century, this idea was an oxymoron. Kings did not serve, they ruled. Others served them. Yet, this is how God describes his chosen monarch. Jesus was anointed to be a different kind of king than Caesar—a servant king. Likewise, Jesus declared of himself, ‘The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45).” (source)

Praise for Caesar and the Sacrament

In this wide-ranging discussion across New Testament texts, Alan Streett locates baptism in the context of and in relation to Roman power. He argues that baptism was a believer’s sacramentum, a pledge of allegiance that sets up complex interactions with allegiance to Caesar and the imperial system. This is a significant and much-needed contribution to understandings of baptism.

——Warren Carter, Professor, Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University

Centuries of comfortable Christendom have tended to domesticate baptism to a benign religious ritual entirely at home within the empire. But Caesar and the Sacrament awakens us to the true radical nature of Christian baptism. Alan Streett’s latest book is an important and timely work that calls Christians to live out their baptismal identity in fidelity to Christ and resistance to empire.

——Brian Zahnd, Pastor, Word of Life Church, St. Joseph, Missouri

Alan Streett’s fascinating Caesar and the Sacrament places the meaning and practice of baptism in early Christianity into a full and nuanced context . . . Streett’s carefully researched and well written book joins a number of other studies that have appeared in recent years rightly underscoring the importance of knowing well the Roman world in which Jesus and his movement emerged.

——Craig A. Evans, Professor of Christian Origins, Houston Baptist University

In this bold, comprehensive, and compelling study, Alan Streett makes a convincing case that the earliest Christians understood baptism as their pledge of allegiance to Christ and his kingdom, which involved renouncing all other allegiances . . . when most view baptism as nothing more than an innocuous ‘religious’ sacrament, it would be hard to overstate the importance of digesting this remarkable work.

——Gregory A. Boyd, Senior Pastor, Woodland Hills Church, St. Paul, Minnesota

Streett does nothing less than show that the understanding of baptism in Constantinian Christianity that privatized and spiritualized baptism was a gross misinterpretation that we, at the end of Christendom, may now unlearn. One may hope that Streett’s study will awaken the church to the wide and deep accents of baptism that is both a gift from God and mandate to an emancipated transformed public life.

——Walter Brueggemann, Professor Emeritus, Columbia Theological Seminary

Product Details

• Title : Caesar and the Sacrament: Baptism: A Rite of Resistance
• Authors:
  • Streett, R. Alan
  • Brueggemann, Walter
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Publication Date: 2018
• ISBN: 9781498228411

About the Authors

R. Alan Streett is Senior Research Professor of Biblical Theology at Criswell College, Dallas, Texas. He is author of Subversive Meals (Pickwick, 2013).