The days of the kings of Israel and Judah were long gone, with the last monarch of Judah blinded and carted off by Babylonian conquerors in BC. Many of the Jews were taken into exile in Babylon. Some returned under an edict of King Cyrus of Persia in BC that allowed them to rebuild Jerusalem, but Israel would remain under the rule of Persia, then Greece, then the Seleucids, with a brief period of relative freedom under the Maccabees before they were conquered by Rome in 63 BC.
Caesar Augustus was the self-chosen title of a man by the name of Octavian or Gaius Octavius. He was born in 63 BC and was adopted by his great uncle, Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, famously attempted to set himself up as the supreme leader of the Roman Republic but was stabbed to death by the senators.
Octavian was a brilliant statesman and military leader. Augustus nearly doubled the size of Rome. Rome dominated everywhere that bordered on the Mediterranean and beyond. By the time of Jesus, Israel was generally considered a backwater Roman province full of cantankerous people with strange religious beliefs.
The Jews had very little autonomy, though they clung to their religion and customs. Some Jews were Roman citizens like the Apostle Paul and thus had certain rights and privileges, but most were not. The Jewish people paid taxes to Rome and followed Roman laws.
Local authorities, like Herod and Pontius Pilate, were put in place by Rome. As might be expected, another kooky, wandering religious teacher meant little to the Romans. Rome was more focused on stamping out rebel factions that kept cropping up in Palestine. However, Jesus was seen as a major threat to the Jewish religious leaders.
His seeming disregard for their religious laws was threatening enough, but this man went far beyond breaking social norms; He seemed to believe Himself to be God.
Actions like offering the forgiveness of sins Matthew , claiming salvation came only from Him John and calling God His Father made the strictly monotheistic Jewish leaders livid.
Perhaps worst of all, people listened to Him. Thousands upon thousands came to be healed and hear Him teach. No matter how the religious leaders tried to trap Him with His own words, they failed. The emperors Diocletian from to and Constantine from to were forced to completely reorganize the empire into a society based on impoverished serfs, bound to the land, producing food for powerful landlords.
Christianity represented one of the few challenges to the status quo--it had to be crushed or co-opted. Diocletian tried repression. When this failed, Constantine tried the other tack, converting to Christianity and subordinating the Church to imperial rule.
Some Christians revolted against ideas of alliance with empire, but many saw advantages to the Church in the new situation. Augustine formulated the ideology of a new alliance between Church and state that shaped the next thousand years of Western history. The cosmology he developed, of an eternal, infinite, perfect God, separated from a finite, degenerate earth, reflected the social realities of the late empire--an Emperor with godlike powers and subjects with no autonomy.
Augustine believed that God has subjected humanity to an ever-increasing burden of evil and misery as punishment for Adam's original sin. He held that God's justice is shown "in the agonies of tiny babies. The only hope lay in faith in salvation in the next world. But there was also opposition to Augustine's views, and the arguments were not mere theological debating points. In Egypt and North Africa, the Donatist movement among Christians led opposition to the empire and the alliance of Church and state.
Donatist peasants and agricultural workers attacked landlords, tax collectors and creditors, freed slaves, and destroyed rent rolls and land titles.
The Donatists controlled many churches in North Africa, and Rome's imperial legions were unable to defeat them on their own. Augustine--"the hammer of the Donatists"--played a crucial role in crushing the revolt. He used the Church's resources to attack the leaders of the Donatist "heresy. But the Roman victory was to be short-lived. They took over the vast landed estates and forced much of the empire's population into serfdom.
According to one historian:. With the collapse of the empire in the west, Augustine's cosmology was adopted by Christians in the following millennium. This view of a world created out of nothing, steeped in sin and misery, and rightly ruled by the harsh authority of Church and State, was perfectly fitted to the petrified society of the self-sufficient landholders, who needed neither merchants nor philosophers nor scientists.
They required only a religion that would encourage serfs to accept their lot. Augustine's world, like that of the paganism the peasant previously knew, was a world with a yawning gap between heaven and earth, an earth peopled by demons and spirits, witches and devils. As Roman society retreated toward the level of primitive and impoverished agrarianism, so Augustine's cosmology retreated toward the magical, irrational world of myth.
As the Church grew in wealth and influence, it ceased to be democratic in its internal structure. The power of bishops increased, and the Bishop of Rome became dominant over the other bishops. Church property was no longer the common property of the Christian community, but belonged to the priesthood. The Church even opposed the abolition of slavery--every parish priest had the right to have one male and one female slave. Monasteries also had great numbers of slaves, and the Church continued to own slaves into the Middle Ages.
ALL THIS was a far cry from the description of Jesus in the gospels: "He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away with empty hands. These movements range from the peasant rebellion in Germany in the early 16th century, led by Thomas Munzer; to the radical sects of the English Revolution in the following century; to the role of Black churches in the civil rights movement and liberation theology in the recent past.
Socialists identify with all these radical movements, but we do not do so uncritically. The history of Christianity, including the periodic revival of radical currents within it, actually illustrates very well what Marx argued about religion. Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of the spiritless situation.
It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness.
The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up the condition which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion. Religious beliefs have social causes. Their appeal lies partly in the fact that they offer a solution--albeit an imaginary one--to the suffering and exploitation of class society. It follows that religious beliefs will likely exist as long as class society exists and will only disappear if class society--"the condition which needs illusions"--is abolished by socialist revolution.
But the elimination of religion certainly does not mean its suppression by the state. Your revolution took radically distinct forms. It involved the way of love, service, and sacrifice. Ultimately, you defeated your enemy, not with political might, but with the power of your sacrifice on the cross.
Help me, Lord, to live according to the values of your kingdom. Help me to seek first your kingdom and your righteousness in every part of life, in my work and my play, in my church and my neighborhood, in my purchases and in my voting. Dear Lord, I look forward to the day when your kingdom will come in all of its fullness, when every knee will bow before you.
With this Advent hope, I seek to live for you today. This year, it features Advent Doodles by my wife, Linda. If you've been to retreats at Laity Lodge, you may be familiar with Linda's doodles, which she often shares in devotions. They combine sketches, Bible verses, thoughts, and questions for pondering. You can find the newest one each day at the top of my blog.
Click here for an example. A business manager wants to live a radical Christian life for Jesus, but he is inundated with everyday decisions that The book of Acts begins with a post-resurrection interaction between Jesus and his disciples. Jesus teaches his Every resource on our site was made possible through the financial support of people like you.
The demands, pressures and stress of work can put a huge strain on relationships with our coworkers.
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