Fusing the Horizons: Church and State
ROMANS 13
LIVING THE CHRISTIAN LIFE (12:1—15:13), cont.
Respecting the State (13:1–7)
This passage continues the preceding ethical exhortation about how to behave toward outsiders, and as such makes sense in its context. Yet Paul elaborates it at much greater length than even the exhortations for nonretaliation in 12:14, 17, 19–21. Why? Perhaps we should think of a chiastic approach:
A Exhortations regarding fellow believers (12:9–13)
B Exhortations regarding outsiders (12:14–21)
B’ A detailed issue regarding outsiders (13:1–7)
A’ A detailed question regarding fellow believers (14:1—15:7)
Such an approach is possible (though weakened by its asymmetry and failure to account for 13:8–14), but even if it is correct, it begs the question. Why does Paul elaborate on this particular issue regarding outsiders?
Ancient writers often addressed the topic of societal relationships, in terms of relationships to the state, parents and elders, wives, children, and household slaves.1 Where parts of this conventional topic appear in early Christian sources, they often relate to concern how outsiders will view believers (1 Tim 5:14–15; 6:1; Titus 2:5, 8, 10).2 That is, the authors write at least partly from apologetic concern for the reputation of this small, potentially persecuted minority sect,3 as John Chrysostom also recognized here.4 Diaspora Jews followed the same approach of submission to traditional structures, often to undermine Gentile suspicions of their subversiveness.5 Synagogues, like other associations in Rome, had to remain apolitical or face dissolution;6 the political relevance of a “messianic” claim may have led to the banning of Jewish believers from Rome a few years earlier (Suetonius Claud. 25.4).
Paul clearly is concerned how others in Rome will view the church there (12:17–18; cf. 14:16, 18; 15:2). If we grant an apologetic element in Paul’s purpose, the question remains as to why he focuses on relations with the state rather than other societal relationships. The local situation in Rome may help answer that question. Probably less than a decade earlier, the emperor had apparently punished a conflict in the Jewish community over the identity of the Messiah, a conflict that had probably included Jewish believers in Jesus.7 This could have left Jewish messianists’ reputation tenuous, inviting special attention to this issue. (It could also fit the warning not to seek their own revenge; see comment on 12:17–21.) That Nero scapegoated and massacred Christians beginning less than a decade (and perhaps just six years) after Paul wrote this letter suggests that Paul’s apologetic concern was a viable one.8
Having established God’s sovereignty in history in chapters 9–11, Paul now recognizes that God also appoints rulers for his purposes (13:1–2, 4).9 Paul elsewhere appeals to God’s sovereign plan when exhorting believers to remain content (2 Cor 9:8; Phil 4:11) and to remain in one’s situation (unless opportunity arises to change the situation, 1 Cor 7:21–24); this bears some resemblance to Stoic submission to fate, except with trust in God’s gracious providence.10 But no one assumed that such language was absolute; Stoics themselves would not compromise their integrity for the state, but submitted to what they believed the state should be.11 Paul speaks here of the moral function of civil government in restraining evil (13:3–5), a function shared with laws in general, which includes their role in punishing errant citizens (13:4).12 While believers must not avenge themselves (12:19), the state is right to avenge wrongdoing (13:4), at least for the sake of public order (cf. Deut 13:11; 17:13; 19:20; 21:21). Christians must submit to the state not only because of such punishments, however, but because they recognize that God appointed such rulers (13:5). Writing a few years before nationalist Judeans sought liberation from Rome by military means, Paul articulates instead a different prophetic view, that God expects his people to live in the societies where he has placed them (Jer 29:4–7).
Clearly Paul does not believe that Christians must always agree with governments. He would have warned against participation in the “patriotic” emperor cult (cf. 3:29–30), and he recognized Moses’s divinely commanded opposition to Pharaoh (cf. 9:15–17). But as a general rule, including in a pagan and unjustly structured society like the Roman Empire, he expected Christians to be model citizens. This does not mean that they should not work for change by evangelizing and seeking justice, but we should keep in mind that Paul’s audience did not have all the same recourses for political transformation available in a modern democracy, and they were a small minority movement in any case.
Moral exceptions like abstention from the emperor cult do not absolve Christians from paying taxes or customs (13:6–7). Taxes helped to fund Roman armies, which did evil as well as maintained order, and state cults. Nevertheless, Christians had to support their societies. In a society that emphasized honor and shame, showing honor to leaders was important (believers obeying 12:10 would already have practice relinquishing honor to others). Some noncitizens in Rome may have resented the taxes levied on them. Some have pointed out that the Jews expelled by Claudius would have been taxed as immigrants once they returned to Rome, and many have noted controversy in Rome over particular taxes at about this point in Nero’s reign, controversy that would surely have been known in Corinth where Paul wrote.13
Fusing the Horizons: Church and State
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.14 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 (cf. Rom 15:31), which would soon climax in open war with Rome.15
Many historically used this passage (among others) to support the divine right of kings.16 But if Paul follows Jesus’s teaching on giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s (13:6–7; Mark 12:17),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 (cf. 1 Cor 10:20–21). Further, submission was a temporary expedient; Paul did not expect Rome or other worldly empires to continue for long (cf. Rom 2:5; 8:21–23; 9:22; 11:26–27; 12:19; 13:12).18 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, cf. 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.
Live God’s Way (13:8–14)
The subject of taxes (13:6–7) may raise the issue of obligations to others more generally (13:8), but avoiding financial indebtedness was a common topic in antiquity.19 While moralists often warned against debts, Paul’s far more demanding alternative strikes at the heart of the obligation/reciprocity ethic of ancient Mediterranean culture: love, which gives freely without thought of fulfilling or seeking repayment (13:8–10; cf. 12:9; Gal 5:13–14). In a particular setting where Jewish and Gentile Christians differed over the law (cf. Rom 3:19–31; 7:1–25; 9:30—10:13), recalling them to this basic thrust of the law summoned them to consideration and unity. Other Jewish writers also recognized the importance of the love commandment,20 but Paul’s summary of individual commands may also recall the earlier-specified failure of some who affirm themselves as law keepers (adultery in 2:22; theft in 2:21; immoral desire in 7:7–8) as well as others (murder in 1:29; immoral desire in 1:24; 6:12).21
In 13:11–14 Paul concludes his general exhortations with an apparently eschatological moral summons. Although Paul’s audience in Rome could not compare 1 Thess 5:2–8 as we can to recognize the eschatological character of this exhortation, it probably reflects more general early Christian usage of eschatological images rather than only a recycled sermon of Paul (cf. Mark 13:33–37; Matt 24:43). The “day,” then, is the “day of the Lord” (1 Thess 5:2), and the day as the time for being awake (Rom 13:11) and sober (13:13) was a commonplace Paul’s audience could have understood (cf. 1 Thess 5:5–7). Believers thus need to live in the light of the eschatological reality they have already entered in Christ (Rom 12:2; cf. 2 Cor 5:5). Others used the image of awakening intellectually or morally,22 and being awake also contrasts with the spirit of stupor in 11:8 (Isa 29:10) and those darkened in 11:10.
Many connect the image of “putting off” and “putting on” with waking from sleep in the morning; whatever was worn during the night, certainly people did clothe themselves in the morning.23 Although Paul’s audience may think in terms of praetorian soldiers stationed just outside Rome, the “armor of light” (Rom 13:12; cf. 1 Thess 5:8; Eph 6:11–17) for him might recall additionally a sectarian Jewish expectation of an end-time battle between the children of light and the children of darkness (1QM 1.1, 11; cf. 1 Thess 5:5). Here, however, the exhortation is not to fight but to stand guard, to watch; ancients regularly condemned guards who would fall asleep or get drunk on duty.
Most importantly, Paul envisions not a literal physical battle but a spiritual one;24 staying alert here means avoiding the sorts of deeds done in darkness, at night or in secret. Such deeds include drunkenness, sexual immorality, and mistreatment of others (13:13; cf. Gal 5:21; 1 Pet 4:3).25 Paul has earlier warned of war with the passions (7:23) and condemned the premeditated following of the flesh and its lusts. Now he reiterates the only solution: “putting on” the new person, Christ (13:14; cf. Rom 5:12—8:13). Christ, then, is their “armor of light” (13:12). Paul’s metaphor should have been intelligible, as the image of “putting on” God’s strength appears in other Jewish sources.26
To speak of “putting on” the Lord Jesus Christ, however, reflects Paul’s (and early Christians’) distinctive Christology. Paul can apply the language to the past act of baptism, as in Gal 3:27, or to a command to be what they are in Christ, as here (cf. Eph 4:24; Col 3:10, 12; on the indicative and the imperative, see comment on 6:11).
1. See concisely Isocrates Demon. 16, Or. 1; Cicero Inv. 2.22.65; Diogenes Laertius 8.1.22–23; further, Lührmann 1980; Malherbe 1986: 89–90, 135, 145–47. For Stoic loyalty to the state, see e.g., Erskine 1990: 181–204; for Judaism, e.g., m. ’Abot 3:2; Tobin 2004: 397–98; Stuhlmacher 1994: 199–200. The frequency of the topic challenges the interpretation that this passage is directed toward submission to synagogue authorities (the argument of Nanos 1996: 289–336, despite many other strong features in his work).
2. See e.g., discussion in Padgett 1987.
3. For 1 Pet 2:13—3:7, see Balch 1981; idem 1988; for the household codes in Eph 5:21—6:9, see Keener 1992: 139–224 (esp. 146–47).
4. John Chrysostom Hom. Rom. 23 (on Rom 13:2; Bray 1998: 326).
5. Cf. 4 Macc 5:18; also Josephus (Spilsbury 2003).
6. Stuhlmacher 1994: 191; cf. Bammel 1984: 367–68.
7. Suetonius Claud. 25.4. Although Rome boasted of the multiculturalism of its empire, many “patriotically” xenophobic elements remained in the city itself.
8. It is also possible that the conflict had involved some messianists’ actual retaliation against synagogue opponents, hence Paul’s insistence on nonretaliation (12:17–19), hoping that the state would punish perpetrators and not pure victims. While plausible, however, we lack sufficient information to treat this proposal as more than mere speculation.
9. See also Prov 16:10 (but cf. 16:12); Wis 6:3; b. ‘Abod. Zar. 18a, bar.
10. Cf. e.g., Seneca Lucil. 96.1–2; Marcus Aurelius Med. 4.25; 5.27.
11. E.g., for disputes about obeying orders not in the giver’s own interests or intentions, see e.g., Musonius Rufus 16, p. 102.28–31 (with parents); Aulus Gellius Noct. att. 1.13.
12. Probably also the “condemnation” of 13:2. During the Empire Rome decapitated citizens by the sword (Seneca Dial. 3.18.4; m. Sanh. 7:3).
13. See the varying interpretations of Tacitus Ann. 13.50–51 in Dunn 1988: 766; Tobin 2004: 399–400; Jewett 2007: 798–99, though it is hard to be certain; even early interpreters differed regarding which taxes Paul intended (Bray 1998: 329). Haacker (2003: 121 n. 19) suggests that Paul says “you” (excluding himself) here because he was a Roman citizen (though Paul says “you” frequently in this context).
14. The early Nero, under Seneca’s influence, behaved better (see Griffin 1984: 50–82).
15. Some early Christian writers thought Jewish nationalism Paul’s target here (Apollinaris of Laodicea Pauline Commentary from the Greek Church on Rom 13:1–7; Bray 1998: 324), though Jews in Rome were probably mostly immune to it.
16. For its treatment through history, see concisely Reasoner 2005: 130–36; Bray 1998: 323–26. Luther’s approach may have been unconsciously co-opted by his political patrons, not unlike the co-opting of the religious right and left by political patrons in recent U.S. history.
17. Jewish sources that emphasize allegiance to the state also offer this qualification (Tobin 2004: 397–99; see esp. Josephus Ant. 18.266–68; idem J.W. 2.197; idem Ag. Ap. 2.76–77); philosophic treatises on kingship also qualified royal authority.
18. See Elliott 2008: 56.
19. E.g., Publilius Syrus 11; Petronius Sat. 57; Plutarch Ought not Borrow Mor. 827D–832A; Prov 22:7; 4Q416 f2ii:4–6; Ahiqar 111, saying 29.
20. Much discussed: see e.g., Neudecker 1992; Konradt 1997; Söding 1994–1995; idem 1995; idem 1998; Berthelot 2003 (though cf. de Jonge 2002); Bernard 2003; Flusser 1988: 55–65; see Mark 12:31.
21. Paul’s selection of examples from the Decalogue is consistent with its prominence among the commandments as well (e.g., Philo Decalogue 154; Yadin 1969).
22. E.g., Valerius Maximus 7.2.3; Seneca Ep. Lucil. 20.13; Tacitus Hist. 3.55; Lucian Hermot. 71, 83; Maximus of Tyre Or. 10.6; Marcus Aurelius Med. 6.31; in prophetic or eschatological settings, Isa 51:17; 52:1; Joel 1:5; 1 En. 82:3; Rev 3:2; cf. the quotation in Eph 5:14. It might also prepare for eschatological resurrection (Dan 12:2).
23. Cf. the conjunction of “awake” and “clothe” in Isa 52:1, which Paul would apply to that eschatological time (cf. Isa 52:7 in Rom 10:15).
24. For figurative armor for rhetorical “battles,” see e.g., Horace Ep. 1.18.15–16; Seneca the Elder Controv. 9, pref. 4; Fronto Eloq. 1.16; for moral or philosophic ones, Seneca Ep. Lucil. 109.8; 117.7, 25; Ps.-Diogenes Ep. 19; Dio Chrysostom Or. 16.6; 49.10; cf. Malherbe 1989: 101–5; 2 Cor 10:3–5. It is prayer in Wis 18:21.
25. Sexual immorality was sometimes available at drinking parties (e.g., Valerius Maximus 4.3. ext. 3a; Quintus Curtius 5.7.2; Alciphron Courtesans 13, frg. 6), though the warning here is doubtless broader, given “jealousy.”
26. The Spirit in Judg 6:34 LXX; 1 Chron 12:19; 2 Chron 24:20; L.A.B. 27:9–10; Luke 24:49; b. Meg. 14b; cf. immortality in 1 Cor 15:53–54; eschatological garments of life in 1 En. 62:15–16; Israel’s glory at restoration in Isa 52:1; 61:10; Ps. Sol. 11:7; natural metaphors in 4 Macc 6:2; b. ’Abot 6:1, bar. Cf. Eph 4:22, 25; Col 3:8; Jas 1:21; 1 Pet 2:1.