"WALKING IN LIGHT THROUGH A WORLD UPSIDE DOWN": a book review of C. Kavin Rowe's "World Upside Down"

Rowe challenges a key assertion of majority scholarship in Acts: Acts has been read as an apologia to Roman authorities assuring them of Christians' legal innocence and political harmlessness. Conversely, Acts has also been read as a call to Christians for social action against Rome. For Rowe, the key to understanding Acts is to acknowledge and hold the tension in the text, to explore the interrelation between repeated Roman declarations of Christian innocence and the rioting and trouble that follows Paul and the early church. Christians participate in God's "apocalypse," His revelation. "The Way" will not "fit" into ancient Graeco-Roman polytheistic culture. The challenge is to understand the nature of that discomfiture.