In the posts on this blog I have taken the position, that I have learned primarily from John Dominic Crossan, that in its origins in Jesus and Paul Christianity is fundamentally anti-imperial and that nonviolence must be the way of the Christian. Yet there is one passage in Romans that has caused me, and others, to pause some in that conviction. It is Romans 13:1-7. That passage reads
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God's servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them--taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.
I recently heard this passage cited as proof that Christians don’t have to follow Jesus’ teaching of nonviolence. It was on the Bill Maher show, and the speaker was Robert Jeffress, the conservative Baptist pastor who called Mormonism a cult when he was introducing Texas Governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry. I don’t much like Bill Maher. He’s one of those atheists who rejects religion because the only religion he knows is bad religion. Be that as it may, he asked Jeffress a really good question. He cited some of the passages on nonviolence from the Gospels and asked Jeffress something like how could a Christian support a candidate who approves of the use of violence. Jeffress answered by citing Romans 13:1-7.
I once asked Crossan about that passage in a question and answer session after a public lecture he gave. Crossan began his answer by saying that we have to remember that Paul was capable of saying a lot of nonsense. True, but that statement doesn’t really address the problem. My analysis of the passage that follows is at least consistent with the rest of what Crossan said or very close to it.
We cannot deny that this passage appears in Romans as we presently have it, but when we look closely it is perfectly obvious that Paul did not write these lines. There are two factors that support this contention, one in the text of Romans itself and one in a larger view of Paul’s life and work. We begin with the text, where it is pretty clear that these lines are a later insertion into Paul’s letter. In following this analysis remember that the biblical texts were not written with the chapter and verse numbers that we now use, so the fact that our verses appear as the first verses of a chapter has no significance.
We have to start with Chapter 12. Romans 12, the short chapter that immediately precedes the verses in question, has Paul giving instruction on the Christian life. Chapter 12 is the one place in Paul’s writings that suggests he may have been familiar with Jesus’ teachings rather than just with his death and resurrection. The last verses of Chapter 12, verses 14 to 21, will show us what Paul is doing in that part of the letter. They are the verses that immediately precede 13:1-7. They read:
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Next come the verses about established authority in Romans 13:1-7. But now look at the verses that immediately follow Romans 13:1-7, verses 8 to 10:
Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
The verses of 13:8-10 flow directly from the verses 12:7-21. Read without the intrusion of 13:1-7, Romans 12:7-21 and 13:8-10 are clearly one piece. Those verses all deal with the Christian life. They reflect Jesus’ ethic of love. Take out 13:1-7 and we read “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” It’s coherent. It flows well. Verses 13:1-7 interrupt that flow. They destroy that coherence. Clearly someone has inserted them into Paul’s letter and not done a very good job of it at that.
The consideration that comes from an examination of the larger scope of Paul’s life and work is that the idea advanced in Romans 13:1-7 is radically inconsistent with everything else we know about Paul. Paul was anything but submissive to the authorities in the cities in which he established churches. He was frequently arrested as a threat to public order. In urging people to worship God in and through Jesus Christ he was urging them to commit sedition, for worshiping the Greco-roman gods and making sacrifice to them was considered essential to the maintenance of public order. The last we hear of Paul in the New Testament, in the Book of Acts, he is under arrest and being taken to Rome for trial. The Christian tradition says that he was executed there as a martyr to the faith. Paul quite clearly did not think that being a Christian meant you had to be “subject to the governing authorities,” at least not in the sense of meekly obeying every law those authorities enacted.
So what are we left with here? On the one hand we have the clear and unequivocal teaching of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that nonviolence is the way of God and must be the way of the Christian. We have Jesus living that teaching even as it led to his unjust execution. We have the life of St. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, the man more responsible than anyone else for the spread of the faith of Jesus Christ throughout the Roman Empire, in which he was frequently arrested precisely for not being properly subject to the ruling authorities. On the other hand we have a few pseudo-Pauline verses that counsel something different.
So which hand are we to choose? And how are we to choose? We have before us here a good example of what a Christian is to do whenever presented with contradictory teachings in the Bible. We are Christians, and our standard for choosing must be Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was so not subject to the governing authorities that those authorities executed him as a threat to public order. As he was going to that miserable and unjust death he refused to let his followers use violence to defend him. Romans 13:1-7 simply are not authoritative for us. They can in no way legitimately be used to counsel Christians to disregard the teaching and the life of Jesus Christ. They can in no way legitimately be used to contradict Jesus’ teaching of nonviolence. They are powerless to overcome the much larger anti-imperial thrust of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the teachings and life of the Apostle Paul.
We might ask: Why then are these verses in Romans as we have it? I suspect that the answer lies in the political dynamics of the early Christian movement in a time later than the life of Paul. As Christianity grew, and as it separated from its parent religion Judaism, the Roman authorities, on occasion at least, came to see Christianity as a threat. There were persecutions. Sporadic and local persecutions perhaps, but persecutions nonetheless. Many passages in the New Testament seem to be intended to say to the Romans: You have nothing to fear from us. We are no threat to you. Perhaps the best example other than Romans 13:1-7 itself is the way the Gospels try to shift the responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus from the Romans to the Jews. Obviously it was the Romans not the Jews who crucified Jesus. Yes, some of the Jewish authorities, who collaborated with the occupying Romans, probably supported the decision to execute Jesus; but it was the Romans who did it, and they had plenty of reason to do so quite apart from any Jewish religious considerations. The Gospels pretty clearly are intended to say to the Roman authorities of the last third of the first century “you have nothing to fear from us.” Romans 13:1-7 fit this dynamic perfectly. I don’t know for sure, but it seems likely to me that these verses come from the time after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE and are part of a larger effort by early Christian communities to fend off Roman persecution.
So what do we make of Romans 13:1-7? Nothing. We have taken them seriously as we must. They are in the Bible after all, but we have concluded that they are not binding on us. They are not authoritative for us. They are no authority for us rejecting Jesus’ teaching of nonviolence. In the Bill Maher show I saw Maher the atheist was right and Jeffress the Christian was wrong. So let’s, at long last, be done with Romans 13:1-7.
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