The question of Luke’s political perspective has been debated with increasing vigour in recent years. Now, in this short study, Professor Walaskay aims to turn the whole debate upside down. Where generations of exegetes have claimed that Luke is concerned to commend the church to the Roman state, he is convinced that Luke’s work can better be understood as aiming to commend the empire to the church.
After helpfully surveying previous work on Luke as political apologist, Walaskay (ch. 2) turns to the text aiming to demonstrate three things: firstly, that Luke includes a good deal of material that could be politically dangerous if read by a Roman official; secondly, that even in passages which have been read as anti-Roman, Luke is in fact glossing over the more negative aspects of Roman rule found in his sources; and thirdly, that in a string of passages in the Gospel Luke presents a wholly positive view of Roman authority best understood as conscious apologia pro imperio.
In chapters 3 and 4 this perspective is applied specifically to the treatment received by Jesus and Paul respectively at the hands of Roman justice. Luke is concerned to shift all blame for Jesus’ death from Roman to Jewish shoulders. Throughout, Roman judicial institutions are presented as tolerant and just. Jesus is crucified according to God’s will notwithstanding the excellence of Roman law; Paul is enabled to accomplish the divine plan for the furtherance of the gospel through the process of Roman justice.
A final chapter sums up and attempts to place Luke’s work in historical perspective. Luke’s optimistic outlook on the empire reflects the ‘tranquillity and tolerance’ of Flavian rule ad 70–90. Luke is responding to a complex series of problems: apocalyptically oriented anti-Roman sentiment; anxiety over a delayed parousia; confusion over Christian loyalties following the fall of Jerusalem; potential conflict over the notion of authority. He aims to reassure Christians that the state as much as the church has a divine calling and divine authority.
Professor Walaskay’s claims for his own work are disarmingly modest: ‘I hope’, he says, ‘that at the very least this work has raised the possibility that Luke had … a positive view of the empire … which he imparted to his reading public.’ What we have here is a self-confessedly exploratory essay airing publicly a fascinating hypothesis. Read in that way, the book offers new lines on a host of passages and a salutary warning against unquestioned assumptions.
I have two particular problems. Firstly, I’m left constantly wondering at the subtlety of Luke’s supposed readers. After all, by the author’s own admission a great many thoughtful readers have missed this apologia pro imperio. At point after point we are asked to see political concerns where it seems far more natural to see theology. Does Luke stress Jewish involvement in the death of Jesus because he is defending Rome or because he is exploring the theme of Israel’s rejection of Messiah? Again, would readers really have thought of Luke 2:4 as a reminder to pay their taxes? Secondly, I wonder whether Walaskay’s comment on Cassidy’s work could not be redirected against himself: ‘Cassidy’s presentation of 1st century Christian history is not sufficiently careful … and placement of Luke in the broader Hellenistic (or even New Testament) literary context is lacking’ (p. 86 n. 124). I am not convinced that his picture of the Flavian empire is accurate. Nor am I persuaded that his approach to Luke-Acts as political apology can be sustained in a Hellenistic (or New Testament) context.
This is a book to be read by anyone interested in Luke’s political perspective. Perhaps though, its greatest value will prove to be negative. If the writer fails to establish his case, he does drive one more nail into the coffin of the dogma that Luke is writing apologia pro ecclesia.
