I Wish Paul's Dog Had Eaten Romans 13:1-7

Steve Scott could tell the authoritarian preachers that I read about in a post by Steve at Iasconius was a fish a thing or two about Romans 13. These preachers participate in a government program to encourage obedience to authority during crises. They’ll use Romans 13 to persuade the faithful to march peaceably and cheerfully to the detainment camps.

The passage definitely does not constitute a command to obey blindly any governmental decree, no matter how stupid or evil, and to do so gladly. Interpreting it that way just plain contradicts the core principles of Christianity. Imagine that you are a Christian in Germany in the 1940s, and you are conscripted into working at one of the Nazi death camps. Would Romans 13 give you license to whistle a happy tune while you gas Jews to death? After all, the Nazi regime is ordained by God and does God’s will. Obviously God wills that those Jews be gassed, and they are not going to gas themselves, are they?

I’m not even sure that the passage refers to civil government at all or that it pertains in any context except that of the church at Rome at the time the letter was written. Paul would not want the fledgling church to invite extirpation by pissing off the Emperor on the eve of his big mission trip there. He’d want them to play it cool. In any event, such resistance by the few Christians would have been utterly futile. Clearly, the martyrs that Rome made of the saints in the next few centuries did not read Romans 13 as requiring blind obedience. They died rather than recant or worship the Emperor which they were obliged to do by duly enacted laws and decrees.

I also suspect that Paul was being ironic and that his readers in Rome would have had a little chuckle at the part about the Emperor’s doing justice and rewarding good. (Caligula the Just. That’s what we call him. Defender of goodness and punisher of evil. That’s our Nero.) Had the letter been intercepted by the authorities, there would be nothing in it to offend the state, and under the circumstances the advice was pretty good, nudge nudge wink wink. Keep a low profile. Don’t make waves.

It is my suspicion, in the end, that this part was added later as part of the authoritarian stance the “orthodox” bishops would take when they became partners of the state. It doesn’t make a lot of sense in the flow of the rest of the letter and seems way out of context. I’m going to assume for now that Paul didn’t write it and I’m going to ignore it henceforth.

The government is an act of God in the same sense that a plague or a hurricane is an act of God. There are evil bastards in the world who aim to rob you and enslave you, and most of them will do so under color of law. It pleased God to subject us to these challenges, and we are obliged to endure them as best we can. I pay taxes to which I object because I know that resistance is futile and that my imprisonment or death won’t advance the Kingdom a bit. If I am asked to gas a bunch of Jews or murder some brown people, however, I pray that I will have the courage to resist and that any consequences I suffer will be a testimony of my faith and a light shone on the evil of the government. Then again, I have never been so tested and I might very well reconsider Romans 13 rather than face martyrdom.