Description
Book SynopsisHow did the early Christian movement grow so quickly, and did the idea of resurrection have anything to do with its growth? Patrick G. Stefan offers an answer to both of these questions by searching at the intersection of the investigation of Christian origins and Continental philosophy. He documents the rise of the disciplined subject with the emergence of Christianity and argues that the early success of the Christian movement was due, in part, to the activation and deployment of what Michel Foucault calls disciplinary mechanisms of power. This activation took place through the instantiation of the idea of resurrection in early Christian material and textual existence. The activation of these mechanisms created a sub-class of disciplined individuals with the ability to envision life outside of the sovereign power of Caesar. By building on Foucault’s methodology of examining how material conditions shape and create individual subjects, this book takes as its point of departure Foucault’s unexplored observation that “[Christianity] proposed and spread new power relations throughout the ancient world.” From this departure point, Stefan seeks to demonstrate that these new power relations were connected to an idea (resurrection) and formed the early history of disciplinary power.
Trade ReviewPatrick Stefan shows how the early Christians ordered their lives around the stories and symbols of the risen Jesus rather than the Roman emperor. By deploying the hermeneutics of political power, Stefan illustrates the ways that Christians in the first three centuries challenged resident notions of power and hierarchy in deeply subversive ways. He shows in effect how belief in the resurrection generated a theology of counter-imperial resistance to Roman rule. -- Michael F. Bird, Ridley College
In this thoroughly readable volume, Patrick Stefan draws theoretically on the work of Michel Foucault to explain how the subversive message of the resurrection spread, not through preaching the word but by disciplining bodies and thus shaping imaginations. Stefan shows how a wide array of practices—from the spectacle of the gladiatorial arena to the routine regulation of the calendar—shaped Christian subjects, thus threatening the structure of sovereign power in the Roman Empire. -- Jennifer A. Glancy, Le Moyne College
Jesus said, ’No one takes my life; I have the freedom to lay it down and take it back up again.’ Ever since, those who have been united to Christ have deprived the temporal sovereigns of what they prize most: the power over life and death. Why and how did the resurrection of the body transform Western civilization? Patrick Stefan explores this theme with the aid of Foucault’s analysis and offers an illuminating account of early Christianity and Empire. This is a fascinating and very important book. -- Michael S. Horton, Westminster Seminary California
Both judicious and original, Stefan's work demonstrates that resurrection was an idea that "worked" in ordering time, space, and ritual, steadily subverting the power of empire. -- Claudia Setzer, Manhattan College
Table of ContentsChapter One: Introduction Chapter Two: Resurrection as Subversion—A Pauline Trajectory Chapter Three: Foucault and the Power of Resurrection Chapter Four: The Body and the Theological Imagination Chapter Five: The Shape of Ritual Behavior Chapter Six: Movement in the Empire Chapter Seven: Resurrection in a Hostile Environment Chapter Eight: Summary and Conclusions
