Revelation and Empire: Shane Wood | Faith & Politics #11

Shane J. Wood, professor of New Testament and its origins at Ozark Christian College and author of Thinning the Veil, returns for the eighth episode in the faith and politics series — this time on Revelation.

Wood argues that the question the series has been circling is the question Revelation opens with. Christians in Asia Minor were living under an emperor in decline, caught in a conflict they hadn't chosen, and the book was written to tell them how to stand.

Much of the conversation is about definitions. When the crucified king is at the center, what counts as victory changes — which is why Smyrna's reward for faithfulness is that things will get worse. Wood reads Pliny's letter to Trajan as a Roman governor's genuine confusion at a group whose stubbornness took the form of being better citizens than his citizens.

They also discuss why worship was a national security matter in Rome, the iconography of Washington, why obedience and subversion both have textual warrant, and Wood's closing claim: that the early church regarded the emperor as a figure to be pitied rather than feared.

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Thinking Christian is hosted by Dr. James Spencer, president of the D. L. Moody Center and author of Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Each conversation reads the Bible as the final authority for life and faith, questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don't settle for a narrower vision than God's word offers.

Unsettling convention. Cultivating conviction.

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