Counter-Imperial Reading

Definition

The New Testament’s central vocabulary was first the political vocabulary of the Roman empire. The key terms: euangelion (gospel), kyrios (lord), ekklesia (assembly), parousia (coming/arrival), soter (savior), politeuma (citizenship), huios theou (son of God). The early church’s use of these terms was a deliberate, sometimes life-costing counter-claim. To call Jesus kyrios was to claim for him the title Caesar claimed. To announce the euangelion was to use the empire’s word for an imperial proclamation. To gather as an ekklesia was to gather as a political assembly. To await the parousia of a different sovereign was to relativize Caesar’s claim on ultimate loyalty. The framework recovers a meaning the early Christians lived inside (and many died for) and that has often been domesticated by later Western Christianity into private religious vocabulary. It does not call for armed revolt; the cross-shaped pattern of the kingdom is non-coercive. But it does insist that the gospel is, from its first word, a political claim: that the world has a different rightful Lord than the one Rome (or any later empire) has installed.

Key proponents

Modern

N.T. Wright is the framework’s most influential contemporary voice. Paul: In Fresh Perspective (Fortress, 2005), Surprised by Hope (HarperOne, 2008), How God Became King (HarperOne, 2012), and the academic Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Fortress, 2013) all develop the kingdom-versus-empire reading systematically. Wright argues that the gospel cannot be heard rightly without hearing the imperial-vocabulary background.
Richard Horsley, Paul and Empire (Trinity Press, 1997) and Paul and the Roman Imperial Order (Trinity Press, 2004), the seminal academic anthologies that made the counter-imperial reading standard in Pauline scholarship.
Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed (IVP Academic, 2004), a counter-imperial reading of Colossians that has shaped how a generation of pastors read Paul.
Brian Zahnd, Postcards from Babylon (Spello Press, 2019) and A Farewell to Mars (David C. Cook, 2014), the kingdom-versus-empire reading in pastoral-devotional form.
Marty Solomon (Bema Discipleship), the Eastern-context reading consistently emphasizes the imperial-Roman background of the New Testament’s vocabulary, especially in the Matthew material on the euangelion and the Priene Inscription.
Mike Erre (Voxology Podcast), the cruciform-and-counter-imperial reading developed across many episodes, especially on the ekklesia as political assembly and the politeuma of Philippians 3.
Tim Mackie (BibleProject), the Reading the Bible’s Strange World and Apocalyptic Literature classroom courses develop the counter-imperial framework with deep biblical-theological literacy.
Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel (Zondervan, 2011), reframes the gospel as the kingdom-announcement of King Jesus rather than a private salvation message.
Matthew Bates, Salvation by Allegiance Alone (Baker Academic, 2017), the gospel-allegiance reading is the framework’s epistemological partner: the kyrios confession is, in its first-century context, an allegiance-claim.
Lynn Cohick, Philippians (Story of God Bible Commentary, 2013), the Roman colony context for reading Philippians through the lens of imperial-civic identity.
Warren Carter, Matthew and Empire (Trinity Press, 2001) and The Roman Empire and the New Testament (Abingdon, 2006), the academic application of the framework to the gospels.
Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ (Eerdmans, 2003), the historical study of the kyrios confession as the early church’s most distinctive devotional and political move.

Premodern witnesses

The early Christian martyrs (Polycarp of Smyrna, c. 155 AD; Perpetua and Felicitas of Carthage, 203 AD; the martyrs of Lyon, 177 AD; Cyprian of Carthage, 258 AD; the Diocletian-era martyrs, 303-311 AD). They died because they took the Kyrios Iesous confession as a counter-imperial claim. The Roman loyalty test was simple: say Caesar is Lord, offer incense to the imperial genius, walk free. They refused.
Pliny the Younger, the Roman governor of Bithynia, in his letter to Emperor Trajan (c. 112 AD), describes administering exactly this test to suspected Christians. His letter is one of the earliest external witnesses to the counter-imperial dimension of Christian confession.
Justin Martyr (c. 100 to 165), First Apology and Second Apology, defends Christians against the charge of treason against Rome by arguing that they swear allegiance to a true Lord whose kingdom does not threaten Rome’s legitimate civic authority.
Tertullian of Carthage (c. 155 to 220), Apology, To the Nations, and On Idolatry, develops the counter-imperial polemic at length. His famous line, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, names the framework’s confidence in the counter-imperial witness.
Augustine of Hippo (354 to 430), City of God (composed 413 to 426 AD in response to the Visigothic sack of Rome), the foundational Western Christian text on the two-cities framework: the civitas Dei and the civitas terrena are two ordered loves leading to two destinations. Every Christian lives at the intersection.
The Eastern Orthodox liturgical tradition has always preserved the political weight of Kyrios in its eucharistic confession. The Divine Liturgy opens with Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The kingdom-vocabulary is not metaphor; it is the church’s central political-theological claim.
The Anabaptist tradition (the Schleitheim Confession, 1527; Menno Simons; the Hutterite communities; the long Anabaptist refusal of military service) has consistently lived the counter-imperial framework in concrete form. The kingdom does not ride in tanks.
John Wycliffe and the Lollards (14th century England), the early counter-imperial English reading of Scripture against the ecclesial-political establishment of the medieval church-state synthesis.
The African American spiritual and prophetic tradition, from the slave-era spirituals through Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to Martin Luther King Jr. and James H. Cone, has consistently named the gospel’s counter-imperial weight against the imperial complicity of much of American Christianity.

See How We Read for the longer lineage of this and the other frameworks on this site.

Core insights

The vocabulary is political first. Almost every key term of New Testament Christological-ecclesiological vocabulary was imperial vocabulary before it was Christian vocabulary. Euangelion (good news) was the standard imperial proclamation, especially of a new emperor’s birth or accession. Kyrios (lord) was Caesar’s title. Soter (savior) was an imperial honorific. Parousia named the official visit of the emperor or his representative to a city. Ekklesia was a Greek-Roman political assembly of citizens. Politeuma was the legal civic status of a colony. Huios theou (son of God) was Caesar Augustus’s official title (the son of the deified Julius Caesar). When the New Testament writers used these words for Jesus and the church, the political weight was unmistakable.

The Priene Inscription is the smoking gun. Discovered in the ruins of a small temple in modern-day Turkey and dated to roughly 9 BCE, the Priene Inscription declares that the euangelion (good news) of the world began with the birth of Caesar Augustus, the soter (savior) of all humanity, whose parousia surpassed every prior expectation. When Mark opens his gospel as the beginning of the euangelion of Jesus Christ, son of God (Mark 1:1), every term is a counter-imperial claim. The reader who knew the imperial vocabulary heard the announcement immediately: another gospel, another son of God, another savior.

Kyrios Iesous was the early Christian loyalty test. The earliest Christian baptismal confession, Iesous Kyrios, Jesus is Lord, was a deliberate counter-claim to Kaisar Kyrios, Caesar is Lord, the standard Roman loyalty oath. Pliny the Younger’s letter to Trajan describes the Roman administrative practice: the test for suspected Christians was to require them to curse Christ and offer incense to the emperor’s genius. Those who refused were executed. The Kyrios confession in Romans 10:9, 1 Corinthians 12:3, Philippians 2:11 is the same confession that cost Polycarp, Perpetua, and the martyrs of Lyon their lives. The political weight was not a Roman misunderstanding; it was the confession’s actual content.

The kingdom is not the kingdoms of the world. Matthew 4:8-10 stages the contrast at the moment of Christ’s testing: the devil offers all the kingdoms of the world, and Jesus refuses. My kingdom is not of this world; if it were, my servants would fight, Jesus tells Pilate in John 18:36. The framework holds these texts together: the kingdom is real, the kingdom is now, the kingdom is political. But its political shape is structurally not Caesar’s. The kingdom does not advance through the methods empire advances through.

Counter-imperial does not equal armed revolt. The framework explicitly rejects the temptation to turn the kingdom-versus-empire reading into a call for violent resistance. Jesus refuses the sword in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:52). The early Christians did not arm themselves against Rome. The counter-imperial witness is cross-shaped: suffering, often hidden, sometimes martyred, but never deployed in armed resistance against the powers it relativizes. The Anabaptist tradition has carried this insight most consistently in Christian history.

The framework reshapes Pauline ethics. Romans 13’s submission-to-the-governing-authorities sits inside Romans 12 and 13’s broader kingdom-citizenship frame. The disciple submits to the governing authorities not because the governing authorities are ultimate, but because Romans 12:21 (overcome evil with good) and Romans 13:8-10 (love is the fulfilling of the law) describe the cross-shaped posture inside which submission and resistance both make sense. The disciple submits and refuses the loyalty oath. Paul models the dual posture in his own life (claiming Roman citizenship to escape Jewish persecution in Acts 22; refusing to confess Caesar as Lord under any circumstances).

Romans is a counter-imperial letter from start to finish. Romans is Paul’s letter to the imperial capital, addressed to a community living in the shadow of Nero (the letter is typically dated to 56-57 CE, in Nero’s reign). The letter’s opening (1:1-7) layers counter-imperial vocabulary into a single dense sentence: gospel (euangelion), Son of God (huios theou), Lord (kyrios), peace (eirēnē). Every term competed with an imperial counterpart. The letter’s body sustains the polemic in muted tones (1:16 not ashamed of the gospel; 5:1 peace with God; 8:38-39 neither principalities nor powers; 10:9 Jesus is Lord; 14:17 the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit). The letter’s closing (16:20: the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet) names the cosmic powers behind imperial structures and announces their defeat. Reading Romans through the counter-imperial lens reframes the whole letter as a sustained reordering of allegiance, not just an isolated note at Romans 13. The Romans 13 submission text is the most reluctant submission in the New Testament: do good and you will receive his approval (13:3) is heavy with irony when read with Nero’s regime in view. Paul submits to legitimate authority for limited civic purposes while refusing the imperial loyalty oath at every other point in the letter.

The framework explains the apocalyptic literature. Revelation’s imagery (the beast from the sea, the great whore Babylon, the throne of the Lamb) is, on the counter-imperial reading, the inspired-prophetic re-imagining of Rome from heaven’s vantage point. Babylon is Rome (and any later empire that operates on the same logic). The Lamb at the center of heaven’s throne (Revelation 5) is the deliberate counter-image to the emperor in the imperial throne room. The book’s central claim, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ (Revelation 11:15), is the framework in summary form.

Implications. This framework reshapes how we read the New Testament’s political vocabulary, how we engage with state power, how we evaluate Christendom and post-Christendom, how we read missionary Christianity, and how we hear the gospel as a political claim that relativizes (without abolishing) every other political loyalty.

Where it shows up in Scripture

Mark 1:1, the beginning of the gospel (euangelion) of Jesus Christ, son of God: every term is counter-imperial vocabulary
Matthew 1:1, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham: opening counter-genealogy to the imperial dynasty
Matthew 2, Herod as Pharaoh / Caesar parodied; the magi seeking the king of the Jews in deliberate provocation of Herod
Matthew 4:8-10, the third temptation: the kingdoms of the world refused
Matthew 22:15-22, render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s: the question of dual loyalty
Matthew 28:18, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me: the imperial-authority counter-claim
Luke 2:1-14, the imperial census meets the euangelion sung to shepherds
John 18:36, my kingdom is not of this world; if it were, my servants would fight
John 19:15, we have no king but Caesar: the chief priests’ tragic false confession
Acts 17:7, they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus: the charge against Paul in Thessalonica
Romans 1:1-4, the gospel proclamation written to the imperial capital
Romans 10:9, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord
Romans 12-13, the kingdom-citizenship frame inside which submission to authorities makes sense
1 Corinthians 8:5-6, many so-called gods… and many lords… but for us there is one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ
2 Corinthians 10:3-5, we destroy strongholds and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God
Philippians 1:27, politeuesthe: be citizens worthily of the gospel
Philippians 2:9-11, every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Iesous Christos kyrios: counter to Kaisar kyrios
Philippians 3:20, our citizenship (politeuma) is in heaven
Philippians 4:22, the saints in Caesar’s household greet you
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 5:1-3, the parousia language and the peace and security slogan turned against Rome
1 Peter 2:13-17, the dual-posture ethics of submission and ultimate loyalty
Revelation 13, the beast from the sea (the Roman emperor and the imperial cult)
Revelation 17-18, Babylon = Rome falling
Revelation 11:15, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord

Common misreadings to avoid

Reading the framework as a call to political activism in any narrow modern sense. The framework is not first about voting, party affiliation, or partisan strategy. It is about ultimate loyalty. How that loyalty informs particular political decisions is a separate, downstream question that the framework does not by itself settle.
Reading it as anti-government in principle. Romans 13 stands. The framework relativizes the state’s claim on ultimate loyalty without abolishing the state’s legitimate authority for limited civic purposes.
Reading it as a license for armed revolt. The framework’s own logic (the cross-shape of the kingdom) excludes this. The Anabaptist tradition has carried this insight; counter-imperial witness is cruciform, not violent.
Confusing counter-imperial with anti-Christendom in a flat way. The Constantinian church-state synthesis was its own significant problem, but treating all Christian engagement with state power as Christendom-style co-optation flattens a complex history. The framework’s task is to remember the gospel’s political weight without resolving every concrete question about Christian engagement with the state.
Romanticizing martyrdom or persecution. Suffering is not, in itself, the proof that the witness is faithful. Faithful witness sometimes produces suffering; suffering does not by itself certify the witness.
Anachronistic application to modern nation-states. The framework applies. The application requires care. America is not the new Rome in any flat one-to-one sense, and neither is any other modern state. The framework asks for analogical, not identical, application.
Privatizing the gospel to escape the framework. The opposite error: hearing the framework’s challenge and retreating into a gospel of personal salvation only that re-domesticates the political vocabulary back into private religious experience. The gospel is personal, but it is not only personal. The framework refuses both the over-politicization and the de-politicization.

Definition

Key proponents

Core insights

Where it shows up in Scripture

Common misreadings to avoid

Further reading