Orthodoxy and Authority

Steve Scott http://fromthepew.blogspot.com/2006/02/re-thinking-romans-13-part-2.html has been deconstructing Romans 13, the one that authoritarians point to as a Biblical edict to kowtow to the state. This has always been a challenging passage for me, because it makes no sense at all in light of the teachings of Jesus. I am grateful that Steve is taking a whack at it.

I suppose that one might acquiesce in state action as an example of turning the other cheek and not resisting evil, but most Romans 13 spouters seem to go further and require cheerful devotion to civil authorities as the instruments of God. They see patriotism as a Christian virtue. Doesn’t the passage suggest that the authorities always reward good and punish evil?

That settles it for me. Paul can’t possibly be talking about states. Modern nation states didn’t even exist in Paul’s day, and they certainly don’t fit the description of the passage. Could you really argue that it would be Biblical to follow Hitler’s or any leader’s orders to commit atrocities? If you get to choose which orders of authority to follow, doesn’t this undermine the whole passage as a command to obedience? I reckon the state is as much the instrument of God as smallpox or lava flows, and there is nothing in the teachings of Jesus that obliges us to die of smallpox or stand in the path of a lava flow.

I have started reading Elaine Pagels on the history of Christianity, and it appears that what becomes known as orthodoxy has most often come down on the side of interpretations that support ecclesiastical authority over individual freedom. This should not be surprising, I suppose, since more liberal interpretations will necessarily have less institutional cohesiveness and will always be outgunned by the more organized orthodox schools of thought. In the case of Christianity, the orthodox variants enjoyed symbiotic relationships with the ruling orders and managed to wipe out most heterodoxy by force. Bishop and King, side by side, ruled Christendom. The heterodox lived on the margins if they were allowed to live at all. I would not be surprised to find that Romans 13 was added to Paul's epistle by some authoritarian bishop long after Paul's death.

In my view, the Reformation was made possible mainly by a falling out among thieves, i.e. the Bishops and the Kings. If Northern European states had not endorsed heterodoxy, how could it have ever taken hold? The ideas weren’t new, but the political environment was.

Even once heterodox movements tend to become institutionalized and more authoritarian as time passes after the manner of AFC Wallace’s “revitalization movements”. The once radical reformation movements become “reformed”, done, perfected for all time. Churches predicated on individual experience and spirituality may be considerably more ephemeral than churches with an authoritarian streak, and it would require special efforts to insure institutional continuity in a continually reforming church.

The church I belong to wants to be “reformed and ever reforming”, and this is probably going to take a lot of work just from an organizational standpoint. I hope it can be done and that it is not inevitable that a majority of members will one day decide that we as a congregation have finished reforming. They will be right, of course; the church will be finished from that moment.