In Romans 13 Paul depicts relations with the state within a particular kind of situation. What happens, however, when a state, far from avenging wrongdoing, is itself the persecutor? Paul wrote early in Nero’s reign, before he began persecuting Christians. Nevertheless, as a Jew who had faced Roman rods (2 Cor 11:25) and lived in Judea, Paul was well aware that the empire already oppressed peoples and that injustices often occurred under its auspices. Injustice notwithstanding, he does not side with the Judean nationalist ethos already building when he was writing (ct. Rom 15:31), which would soon climax in open war with Rome.
Many historically used this passage (among others) to support the divine right of kings. But if Paul follows Jesus’s teaching on giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s (13:6-7; Mark 12:17), he presumably also agreed with his caveat that some things belonged only to God (Mark 12:17). For example, Paul surely would not, out of allegiance to the state, sanction participation in the popular imperial cult (ct. 1 Cor 10:20-21). Further, submission was a temporary expedient; Paul did not expect Rome or other worldly empires to continue for long (ct. Rom 2:5; 8:21-23; 9:22; 11:26-27; 12:19; 13:12).
Nor did Paul have reason to envision modern democracies, in which Christians as citizens would in a sense constitute part of the government, and hence need to evaluate and critique government activities. Finally, Paul lacked reason to envision this minority movement ending up in a situation of significant influence over the political process and so being able to address large-scale injustices like slavery (despite Paul’s personal concerns, ct. Phlm 16-21). Opposed to ideologies behind the Judean revolt, Paul was likely in practice a pacifist. But what do personal pacifists do in extreme cases, when their influence affects whether genocide may be forcibly stopped? German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pacifist, ultimately participated in a plot against Hitler because of the magnitude of evil involved.
While few would support the divine right of kings today, the subservience of the leaders of the German state church to Hitler’s Third Reich, based on this passage, raised anew the issue of its application, and Christian cooperation with the apartheid government in South Africa had the same effect. Abolitionists and liberation theologians have long grappled with these issues. Most likely, Paul would have applied 13:1-7 as the norm where possible, living in a respectable manner in society but allowing dissent where necessary and political participation for justice when possible.
For example, he would presumably urge Christians in China (given the normal situation there at the time I am writing this) to be model Chinese citizens, yet without imbibing atheism. In cases of wholesale massacres of Christians or their neighbors, such as have happened at various times in northern Nigeria, the Indian state of Orissa, parts of Indonesia, and so forth, conclusions are harder to come by (though these were not sponsored by national governments, a situation closer to, e.g., the Turkish genocide of Armenians in 1915). I am inclined to think that Paul would not endorse armed resistance in such cases, but it is admittedly easy for me to pontificate from a currently safe location. I know of other settings where suppression and the killings of individuals led to armed uprisings, which most often led to more suffering without decisive liberation; but other solutions seemed hard to come by. Once we recognize that Paul’s words addressed a particular historical situation, translating the message into new situations becomes more problematic.
Respect for one’s government and the expected obligations of citizenship have limits (though as a modern Western reader I am probably overly inclined to emphasize this qualification). Paul cooperated with the Jerusalem church’s identification with their culture (which was also his culture, Acts 21:20-26), but not to the extent of honoring such nationalism above his commitment to the Gentile mission (Acts 22:21-22). When Christians are more loyal to our ethnicity or nation than to Christ’s body, when nationalism or racism corrupts our love for fellow believers, we have gone beyond giving Caesar what is Caesar’s to giving Caesar what is God’s. On many other points, however, Christian ethicists debate the boundaries between those two spheres.
(Adapted from Romans: A New Covenant Commentary, published by Cascade Books. Buy the book here.)
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