Paul as Imperial Administrator

A friend of mine put me onto Teresa Morgan’s book Being ‘in Christ’ in the Letters of Paul, which argues - among other things - that Paul understood himself as an “imperial administrator” on behalf of Christ.

Consider that Paul considers himself an “apostle” (= envoy) of Christ, a “slave” of Christ (slaves were common administrators in the imperial apparatus), elsewhere an “ambassador,” and possessing “citizenship” from heaven. Many commentators have been aware of how Paul mirrors imperial language when referring to his Lord, gospel, saviour, faith, grace, and describes co-workers as fellow-soldiers.

Morgan points out how Paul acts like a provincial governor by traveling around inspecting churches, organizing finances, writing letters, rendering verdicts, hearing petitions, etc.

According to Morgan:

For Paul in his ministry, life in Christ’s hands, in Christ’s power, and under his authority, means not least a life of founding and overseeing communities for God and Christ, very much as a Roman administrator might found or oversee communities for the emperor, and his letters are an integral part of that ministry.

To the wide range of language and imagery which Paul uses of his communities, we can therefore add that Paul constructs himself, by both the form and content of his letters, as something very like an imperial administrator at work. He travels around ‘his’ regions, representing the power and authority of God and Christ to his churches, regulating them, and solving problems. He builds his communities up, describing them to themselves like a new city, a renaissance of spiritual architecture growing up in the place of the Jewish law and amid the physical landscape of gentile cities to transfigure them. He can do all this because, as we have seen, he describes himself regularly as en Christo: in Christ’s hands, under his lordship and authority (p. 180).

The collective of primitive Christian ekklesia looks more like an empire than any other single socio-political or religious structure in its world, making Christianity perhaps the only cult, or community, in history to be born in the shape of an empire, or to have take that shape at an extremely early point in its existence. Paul, as a diaspora Jew who grew up in a Roman province, and quite likely a Roman citizen, contributed significantly to the imperial shape of early Christianity both by founding new communities by the way he seeks to shape their governance (p. 182).

We have noted that when Paul uses political or imperial language, most recent studies take for granted that he does so in a spirit of antipathy. God is the opposite of the emperor and all he stands for: God’s power is truly ultimate power, his justice real justice, his peace real peace. The sketch of Roman imperialism just offered, however, points in a different direction. Paul could well have seen in the Roman empire an analogy for the kingdom of God and the operation of God’s power. He and the people around him had direct and vivid experience of the meaning of Roman power. They knew how it could reshape the known world. They had seen it redefine the meaning and experience of grace, justice, trust, and peace for great numbers of people. They knew that it could, if it chose, reach into the lives of every subject and change almost everything about them: their material circumstances, status, relationships with one another, and standing with the powers above them; their worship and possibilities for practical and ethical action. Paul was also convinced that the power of God was beyond all comparison greater than any earthly power. He viewed with eagerness the prospect that the world would change dramatically as a result of God’s action through Christ (p. 192).

Interesting perspective I have to say!