Joerg Rieger

“God in Christ is a different kind of lord who is not in solidarity with the powerful but in solidarity with the lowly. ... This position—at the heart of the new world proclaimed by Paul—directly contradicts the logic of the Roman Empire.”

“When Christians in a context of empire are unaware of the political implications of their faith, their Christ is likely to be co-opted by empire by default.”

“The Emperor cult provided an alternative way of producing order and of ordering social relationships and thus an alternative to traditional politics. Without awareness of this context, Paul's writings might indeed be seen as nonpolitical. Paul is political in a different way, however, not by challenging the administration and official politics but by resisting three of the most powerful mechanisms of control of the Roman Empire: The emperor cult, the system of patronage, and the prominent themes of the empire's rhetoric.”