Paul spent chapter 12 of his letter to the Romans advocating a new kind of community, built on the foundation of mercy and grace. This was a counter-cultural ethic that was the antithesis of the Roman Empire and its values. It’s particularly surprising then, when he starts the next chapter with what seems to be a thoroughgoing authoritarian understanding of governance. Let’s look at the text and see what might be happening.
[Note: While I’ve added in more recent study, the bulk of this post will be build off of a previous post on the text, “A Tyrant’s Dream?” from my series Empire and Spirit from 2020.]
Text
[13.1] Let every living person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been established by God. [2] So then, whoever rebels against authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will incur judgment. [3] For rulers are not a terror to good behaviour, but to bad. Do you want not to fear the authorities? Then do what is good, and you will have their approval, [4] for it is God’s agent there for your good. But if you do what is bad, be afraid: for it does take up the sword without reason. It is God’s agent executing wrath upon one who does what is wrong. [5] Therefore, it is necessary to submit, not only on account of wrath, but also on account of conscience. [6] Likewise, pay your taxes, for for the authorities are God’s officiants and devote themselves to this office. [7] Give them all that is owed: taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, fear to whom fear is due, honour to whom honour is due.
Experience
Reading Romans 13.1-7 on the heels of chapter 12 is absolutely jarring. I resonate strongly with commentator Neil Elliot’s claim that the passage is “the reef that threatens to capsize every Christian liberative project.”*
The passage reads like a tyrant’s dream and has been used throughout history time and time again — from Nazi Germany to Guatemala to the United States today — by the powerful to justify authoritarian actions, consolidate power, and silence and discredit opposition. In these seven verses, Paul apparently:
- gives all secular government divine authority (13.1, 4)
- marks all political rebels as working against God (13.2)
- voices the common — and untrue — refrain that you only have to fear the authorities if you’re doing something wrong (13.3); and
- commands Christians to submit to authorities (13.5).
What on Earth are we to make of this?
Encounter
In this text we encounter benevolent civil authorities who are only doing their divinely-appointed job and would never attack someone for doing good, or even just minding their own business. It’s a lovely idea, but even as someone who carries a lot of social privilege and who has never had much to fear from my government, it seems a stretch!
Explore
In order to tackle this passage, which seems to need ‘disarming’ as much as interpretation and application, I’d like to look at a few different questions:
- How does it fit into Paul’s larger argument?
- Are there precedents in Second Temple literature for how Jews related theologically to government?
- What’s Paul really saying, and not saying here?
Romans 13.1-7 within Paul’s Argument
Before we do anything else, we must remind ourselves of the passage’s context within Romans as a whole. For no matter what these seven verses may mean, they can’t contradict Paul’s purpose in writing. This purpose was most likely to get the Roman churches’ Gentile leaders to welcome back with greater enthusiasm and understanding those Jewish Christians who had been expelled from the city by the Emperor Claudius — an exile spurred, if Suetonius is to be believed, by violence within the city’s Jewish population, likely on account of the divisive ‘Jesus Issue.’
Paul spent eight chapters laying his theological foundations for unity in Christ. Then, in chapter 12 he casts a vision for what a community built on the principles of the gospel looks like. This community is rooted in genuine love: people whose love for God and each other transcends barriers of gender, ethnicity, class, and education to the point where they understand that they are as intimately interconnected as parts of the same body. As Sylvia K. Keesmaat and Brian J. Walsh note, in Romans 12, Paul “is striving to engender an alternative imagination that will shape a new and liberating household of faith at the center of the empire.”
Romans 13.1-7 marks such a drastic shift in tone and message on first reading that some commentators have assumed it must be a later interpolation (SBL), or even not be about submission to Rome at all, but to the synagogue authorities (Nanos). But is this text really so out-of-place? Let’s re-read those last four verse of chapter 12 for greater context:
[17] Do not repay anyone evil for evil; plan ahead for what would be good for all people. [18] As much as you are able, as much as it is in your power, live peacefully with all people. [19] Do not take justice into your own hands, beloved, but leave wrath to God, for it is written: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” [20] Instead, “if your enemy is hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink. For by doing this you will heap burning coals upon their heads.” [21] Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
If we read today’s text direct after this, without the chapter division, it suddenly seems a lot less out-of-place. Paul has just argued for sober-mindedness and practical wisdom, lived out in not making waves, refusing vengeance, and repaying evil with good, thereby overcoming evil through doing good to others. And that’s the same kind of orientation he’s advocating here: not courting trouble by questioning authority or refusing to pay taxes or overtly disturbing the peace. In this context, the verses read less as supporting authoritarianism than they do the practical wisdom of oppressed peoples across the world and throughout history: Keep your eyes down, don’t make trouble, and respect those in power who disrespect you. It’s not about propping up human authority, but about staying alive to fight another day (Witherington 307)
Let’s look at our other questions to see if this is on the right track.
Civil Authority in the Biblical and Roman Traditions
Paul affirms that all authorities are appointed by God. But this is not the ringing endorsement of authoritarianism it may seem to be. He isn’t repeating the law-and-order platitudes of Empire, but is drawing on ancient Biblical traditions which subjugate the world’s self-serious Empires to God: The Wisdom tradition explicitly states that all earthly rulers govern by virtue of divine support (Proverbs 8.15f; Wisdom 6.1-3; Sirach 10.4-5). Moreover, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon were all understood in the Prophets to have been raised up by God only to be cast aside when they had served their purpose; and, as with Babylon, so with Rome. All this was so even in the Apocalyptic tradition, which as we’ve seen time and time again, was a form of theological resistance to political oppression: being appointed by God does not make civil authorities good (SBL). One image found in ancient Jewish discourse compared civil authorities to large animals; you respect them not because they own you or control you, but because they could trample you and hardly notice.
This is far from the narratives of imperial propaganda. As Elliott puts it, “The emperor was a ‘god upon the earth’, and the notion that he and his officials served the Jewish God would have been doubly offensive to the auctoritas [that is, ‘authority, gravitas, initiative’] and projected self-image of the emperor.” Similarly, N.T. Wright considers Romans 13 to be “a severe demotion of arrogant and self-divinizing rulers.” And so, while to our ears this passage seems to grant government an uncomfortable amount of divine sanction, it would have struck its first readers very differently. Any power Rome had was conditional, dependent on God, and temporary.
Paul’s words are right at home in this Jewish discourse. The idea here isn’t unquestioning obedience to the state, but not to court trouble. In a world where authorities were looking for opportunities to show off their power, Paul is telling the Roman Christians not to give them even the appearance of an opportunity. Romans 13.1-7 therefore stands in continuity with — not in contrast to — the witness of his people within their long history of being subject to Empire. Paul isn’t abandoning the oppressed and marginalized to the whims of the powerful, but drawing on the traditional resources of his people that had provided them with the resilience to survive (and even thrive during) centuries of foreign domination.
Paul’s Language of Submission
We have to ask what Paul means by ‘submitting’ to authority here. The word Paul uses, a form of ὑποτάσσω (hypotasso, ‘place, set down’), refers primarily to the orderly arrangement of things and people. It does not have a moral or cognitive connotation; as Witherington notes, Greek had three verbs that meant ‘obey’, and Paul doesn’t use any of them. What Paul is talking about is the disposition of one’s energies and efforts, not a disposition of the heart or mind. Paul is opposing lawlessness and trouble-making, nothing more and nothing less. Paul is pretty clear how how he really feels about the Empire — the present age is “night,” “darkness,” and “evil” (13.12; cf. Galatians 1.4; 1 Thessalonians 5.3; 2 Thessalonians 2.6-12). As Witherington puts it, this passage:
does not justify the sins of the state, as if might makes right and whatever the state is able to do is a reflection of God’s will. Paul is not calling for the resignation of Christian conscience, especially not in the face of a pagan state. There is no full-blown theology of church and state here; there is rather, by implication, a limited endorsement of the state in principle until Christ returns—if the state truly operates as servant of God and minister to the people, bringing justice and peace. But the focus is on an exhortation to Christians as to how they should respond to the legitimate claims of the state on them for respect, honor, and resources. (Witherington 307)
As Paul’s own life demonstrates, submitting to authorities included the strong and necessary possibility of civil disobedience, provided one was willing to accept the punishment the government meted out for it. This interpretation is borne out by the historical record. For, as surprising as it may be to us, in the early centuries after Christ, the Romans 13.1-7 was most often referenced by martyrs:
- Polycarp of Smyrna proclaimed at his martyrdom: “We have been taught to show appropriate honor to the principalities and powers ordained by God, if that does not compromise us” (Martyrdom of Polycarp 10).
- Apollonius of Rome, at his trial before the Senate, declared that Jesus “taught us to tame our anger, to moderate our desires, to bridle our cravings, to banish sadness, to be peaceable, to increase in love, to lay aside vanity, not to permit ourselves to be carried away with vengeance toward those who offend us, to despise death on the basis of a legal sentence, not because one has done wrong, but by bearing it patiently, additionally to obey the laws of Caesar and to honor him; however, to worship and adore God alone, the only immortal one” (Acts of Scilitan Martyrs 37).
- A North African Christian named Speratus in the late 2nd Century is reputed to have said: “We have never done evil to anyone and have in no manner worked for the cause of injustice: we have never cursed, we have rather been thankful when we were mistreated; therefore we give honor to Caesar” (Acts of the Scilitan Martyrs 2).
- The same text records the pithier remark by the martyr Donata: “Honor Caesar as Caesar, but fear God!” (Acts of the Scilitan Martyrs 9).
These Christian martyrs’ insistence that they were respectful and law-abiding subjects of the Empire connects them with generations of Jewish martyrs who had preceded them, who willingly submitted to execution while proclaiming their clear conscience as those who gave the state its due authority under God.
Challenge
In a lot of ways this whole post has been a Challenge section. Taken out of its historical and literary context, the text easily reads as a tool in the authoritarian toolbox, and it has been used as such. Because of the long history of abuse of this text, it’s important to reiterate what Paul was actually saying.
What we have in Romans 13.1-7 is nothing more than an elaboration on what Paul said in 12.21, where he exhorted his readers not to fight evil with evil but to overcome it with goodness. It asks, “How does the household of Jesus relate to the household that is subject to a ‘Lord Caesar’ who is the embodied political opposite of the Lord Christ?” (Keesmaat and Walsh, 134). In working this out, Paul follows the teachings of Jesus, who taught us to turn the other cheek and to bless our persecutors. It is not a legitimization of government oppression, but embodies the same spirit of nonviolent resistance that inspired pacifist Anabaptist communities in Eastern Europe, the Indian Salt March, the sit-ins and marches of the American Civil Rights movement, and continues to inspire activists and community organizers to this day.
This doesn’t make it any less challenging or difficult or controversial. Christian love is hard work; and this particular expression of that love is perhaps harder still. But it is the way of Jesus and I am convinced that when lived out, it is nothing short of apocalyptic in its power to transform the world.
Expand
The goal of this section is to ensure that our interpretation serves the big, bold vision of the gospel. This doesn’t mean explaining away difficult passages, like the one we’ve looked at today — far from it. ‘Disarming’ texts like this isn’t about removing the teeth from the Scriptures, but about providing faithful alternatives to the ways they have become the weapons of oppression. The interpretation that has emerged in today’s study does just this, by demonstrating that it stands in continuity with the hard-earned wisdom of oppressed peoples throughout history. Showing deference to authority does not mean abdicating the right and responsibility to resist faithfully, but is rather only about not courting trouble, not adding your own sin to the state’s, and staying alive to fight another day.
Summary & Conclusions
As part of Paul’s exploration of community life, he pauses to say more about the responsible and faithful posture towards civil authority: We are to live peaceably as much as possible, and that means showing due deference to government. It doesn’t however mean buying into the ways of the kingdoms of this world, which are always opposed to the ways of the Kingdom of God, which is our true home, citizenship, and family.
For full references, please see the series bibliography.
Matthew Root 