Are Titles Important? Sometimes More Than You Think!



Ara Pacis - Altar of Peace

To celebrate retirement, I rationalized I needed a large flat screen, to better appreciate the intricacies of the line blocking when my grandson and I watch the Packers play the Bears.  Lenore, on the other hand, decided her retirement treat would be to see the glories of Rome.  Go figure!  So shortly we will be touring museums, and wandering through the Sistine Chapel.  (She decided to take me along.)  Now as luck would have it, the Vatican is just across the Tiber from the ruins of Caesar Augustus’ mausoleum, and his Altar of Peace.  And just a little farther on is the forum Augustus built, with the ruins of its temple of Mars Avenger.  So my plan for the trip is to soak up as much as I can of the spirit of Augustus.  Not because I am that interested in ancient history, but because in a very real sense Augustus was Paul’s sparring partner.

Temple of Mars Avenger

Augustus in Paul’s letters?  Yup.  We imagine Paul’s letters as abstract and eternal religious truths.  Rome would have understood them as high treason, an attack on the culture of empire.  So where in the letter does Paul mention Augustus?  Where is the political conflict?  Everywhere!  Our ears just aren’t attuned to it, since we are not Romans.  Basically Paul and the early Jesus movement stole all the titles of Caesar, and applied them to Jesus instead.  The obvious conclusion is they didn’t much like empire.  Consider just the first sentence of 1 Thessalonians, Paul’s version of a normal first century salutation.  'Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy to those in Thessalonica who are called together by God our Creator and Benefactor and our lord Jesus, God’s Anointed:  divine favor and peace to you.'

In an economic system dependent on patrons doling out favors to clients, Caesar was the greatest giver of benefactions.  Rome was Washington lobbyists writ large, and then even extoled as the virtuous way to run a kingdom.  To say, as Paul did, that God is our benefactor is to insult Caesar.  And insulting Caesar had consequences.  Consider that it was obligatory at a banquet for friends, to offer a wine toast to Caesar after the meal.  That puts ‘he took the wine cup after the meal and said, This cup means the new covenant. . .’  in a whole different light, doesn’t it?  Wouldn’t that make for a different kind of liturgical renewal! 

Paul called Jesus lord, when lord is a title of Caesar.  Jesus is singled out as God’s Anointed – the Christ, the chosen one.  But Caesar was the one chosen by the Gods to save the empire when it was about to crumble under the weight of a long bloody civil war.  If Jesus was anointed, chosen, then Caesar wasn’t?  Paul invokes God’s divine favor and peace.  But for Rome favor came from Caesar.  And Caesar was the prince of peace, because of his victories which ended the empire’s civil war.  Augustus built that exquisite Altar of Peace, now on display next to his mausoleum, specifically to impress upon Romans that he was the one who made Rome peaceful.  Peace through victory on land and sea was the Roman mantra.  And the Temple of Mars Avenger was Augustus’ nod to the God of War.  Of course, Augustus would say, empires are made peaceful by war.  How else?

And all that in just the opening sentence of formal greeting of 1 Thessalonians.  There is much more in the rest of the letter, if you are sensitive and looking for it.  Caesar was divine.  It was chiseled in stone billboards all over the empire.  Augustus was the ‘son’ of the divine Julius Caesar, whose assent to the heavens was proclaimed on Roman coins.  Paul and early Jesus followers stole the titles of Caesar, the one who ruled from the Palatine Hill in Rome, and bestowed those titles on the executed criminal from the Nazareth Ridge in Galilee.

So if you want to host a quiet social evening for a small group of friends, good heavens, don’t invite Paul.  That old religion and politics don’t mix line would never work with him.  Paul was a political animal, not an abstract philosopher of eternal truth. 

The other thing that jumps out in 1 Thessalonians is that Paul was more than just a talker.  He was a social activist.  Think about it.  He formed little communities of opposition, little groups who refused to toast Caesar when they met together, specifically in the capitals of Empire.  It wasn’t only that Paul was against empire.  He had a vision of an alternative empire, lived here and now in the communities he was forming.  The Thessalonians were singled out for lavish praise, specifically because they lived out that vision of alternative empire here and now.  'And so you became imitators of us and of the lord . . . Therefore, you have become, in turn, a model for all those in Macedonia and Greece  . . . your trust in God is so widely known that we don’t need to mention it.'  And the rest of the letter is basically Paul’s attempt to encourage the Thessalonians to even more fully model life together in the alternative empire.

So reforming churches Paul’s way has nothing to do with finding a wiz bang new minister.   It has more to do with modeling an alternative society, a society of justice and sharing, rather than of power and accumulation.  No raping of the earth now, and then escape to heaven later.  I really am looking forward to walking where Augustus walked, thinking quietly about the different kinds of empire people build.  That and the Packers/Bears game too.