Guest Scholar:

A Conversation with C. Kavin Rowe

Reigniting the Revolution: How Acts can help us revitalize our imaginations and way of living

If asked to name a world-changing political document, popular answers might include the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, or the Emancipation Proclamation. Few, if any, would think to name the New Testament book of Acts. But renowned New Testament scholar and theologian C. Kavin Rowe argues otherwise.

Often viewed as a text of political appeasement or harmlessness, Kavin suggests that Acts is actually a “highly charged and theologically sophisticated political document” that presents a radically counter-cultural and culture-forming way of life. In World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age, Kavin explores how early Christians embodied an entirely alternate way to live in and engage with the world. In Christianity’s Surprise, he further examines how these revolutionary early Christian communities redefined what it means to be human.

In a time when the world can feel disenchanted, Kavin observes that we “are hungry for a revitalization of our imaginations and practices that show the world who we are and why we exist.” In this conversation, we’ll rediscover the revolutionary nature of the earliest Christian communities and how that might reignite a transformative spark within us.

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C. Kavin Rowe; Vice Dean of Faculty and the George Washington Ivey Distinguished Professor of New Testament;  at
Duke Divinity School

C. Kavin Rowe is the vice dean of the faculty and the George Washington Ivey Distinguished Professor of New Testament. The third volume of his collected essays has recently been published as Studies in Luke, Acts, and Paul (Eerdmans, 2024). The second volume, Method, Context, and Meaning in New Testament Studies, was published early this year (Eerdmans, 2024), and the first volume, Leading Christian Communities, in 2023 (Eerdmans). Rowe is the author of four other books: Christianity’s Surprise: A Sure and Certain Hope (Abingdon, 2020), One True Life: the Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions (Yale University Press, 2016), World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (Oxford University Press, 2009, paperback 2010), and Early Narrative Christology (de Gruyter, 2006, repr. Baker Academic, 2009). He has published dozens of articles and essays, and co-edited The Word Leaps the Gap (Eerdmans, 2008) and Rethinking the Unity and Reception of Luke and Acts (University of South Carolina Press, 2010). He is on the editorial board of several international peer-review journals and has also frequently written articles for faithandleadership.com

Rowe has been a Fulbright Scholar, Regional Scholar for the Society of Biblical Literature, chair of the Society’s Southeastern Region New Testament section, president of the Society’s Southeastern Region, and was elected to the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. He was awarded a Lilly Faculty Fellowship, a Christian Faith and Life Grant from the Louisville Institute, the John Templeton Prize for Theological Promise, the Paul J. Achtemeier Award, and a Distinguished Scholars grant from the McDonald Agape Foundation.

This society seeks to gather Cornell faculty and graduate students to discuss major themes in biblical and theological studies. Discussion aims to satisfy what Simone Weil once described as the basic need of the soul to consider “every sort of opinion, without the least restriction or reserve.” To this end, we invite dialogue that explores and even challenges historic orthodox beliefs as well as those ideas that reign in the contemporary church, academy, and culture.

Our dialogue is collegial and cordial without shying away from the hard questions scholars face in their life and work. Members of the group seek to nurture discussion by listening attentively to one another, guarding the length of our responses, and avoiding diversions to pet issues unrelated to the subject at hand. In short, we seek to embody a uniquely Christian form of intellectual hospitality that we can pass on to future generations.