Love and Law: A Protestant Conundrum

One way of characterizing an ongoing tension in early Protestant political theology, I will suggest, is as a tug-of-war between articulations of civil obedience in the key of Romans 13:1 and of Romans 13:8.  Both can claim Luther as an heir; both are attempts to square the crucial doctrine of Christian liberty with an ongoing duty to obey the legitimate authority of the magistrate.  On the one hand, liberty could be absolutely closeted away in the spiritual kingdom, and an uncompromising demand for obedience proclaimed in the civil kingdom.  Certainly many have seen this as the legacy of Luther's political theology—Quentin Skinner in particular.  This strand of Protestant political thought rests exegetically on a peremptory invocation of Romans 13:1: "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.  For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God."  To the question, "How can we be conscience-bound to obey civil law if by Christian liberty, we are bound only to God" this line of argument answered simple, "To obey the magistrate is to obey God.  Therefore you are conscience-bound."

 On the other hand, another line of reflection could take its cue from Luther's fascinating "free lord of all/dutiful servant of all" dialectic, in which the Christian's outward subjection in this life was compatible with his inner freedom because the Christian was one who, by love, subjected himself to authority for the sake of others.

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Justice Against the Oppressor--What to do with Imprecatory Psalms

Another gem of a passage from Bauckham's The Bible in Politics, offering perhaps the most satisfactory discussion of the issue of imprecatory psalms and forgiving enemies that I have yet read:

"The oppressed Christian who discovers Jesus' solidarity with him must take account of one respect in which Jesus in his suffering prayed differently from the way the psalmists prayed.  Jesus prayed for his enemies' forgiveness (Luke 23:34), thus practising his own teaching (Matt. 5:44).  The psalmists never did this: their attitude to their enemies is consistently unforgiving.  They pray for God's judgement on their enemies (Ps. 10:2b, 15), sometimes in the form of solemn and extensive curses (Ps. 69:22-8; 109:6-20).  But such prayers are not unknown in the New Testament (Rev. 6:10).  They need to be accorded a kind of provisional validity, which does not excuse any Christian from the duty of forgiving enemies, but does help us to understand what is really involved in forgiveness.  Jesus' demand for forgiveness of enemies does not, we might say, simply revoke these prayers, but takes a step further beyond them.  We have to appreciate what is valid about them before we can rightly take, as followers of Jesus must take, that further step.  

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The Debt of Love: Romans 13:1-7 in Context

Regular readers of this blog know that I have an annoying habit of dropping enigmatic hints about my research on Romans 13 (which I did initially more than two years ago and have been chipping away at again over the last year or so), implying that it contains the answer to this or that problem in ethics or political theology, but providing precious few details.  Well, I don't think my reading of this passage gives all the answers, but it does, I think, provide a more helpful starting-point not only for understanding this section of Romans, but for hopefully for understanding many issues in political theology.  So, I will stop being enigmatic and share an excerpt from a paper I'll be giving at the SBL Int'l Meeting next week containing a very concise version of one of the key lines of argument--the literary structure of the passage in context.  Bits of this appear in previous posts, but this is much more systematic, I hope.

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Can we explain Paul's admonitions in 13:1-7 within the same logic of love that dominates the surrounding context?  

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Set Free for Service: Kasemann on Rom. 13

In his 1969 article “Principles on the Interpretation of Romans 13,” Ernst Kasemann offers what may be the best discussion of Romans 13 I have yet come across (and I’ve come across several dozen).  What is most remarkable about the article is that he succeeds in doing this despite resolutely refusing to take into account the context--the end of chapter 12 and 13:8-10--no, Romans 13:1-7 must be interpreted, he doggedly persists, as an independent unit.  Oddly, though, the resulting interpretation he offers is one that fits like a glove into this context, and which absolutely demands to be read in continuity with these flanking passages.  In other words, his conclusion would make much more sense and be much stronger as the result of an exegesis of 12:9-13:10, not merely 13:1-7.   

I shan’t try to summarize the whole article here, but I’ll try to cover a couple key bases and then share some of the particularly fine quotes toward the ends.  Kasemann surveys the basic existing interpretive options for Romans 13 (those existing as of 1969, at least; several more have arisen since) and says that the basic problem with all of them is that they want to reverse the priority of Paul’s command and the grounding he gives that command; they want to shift the emphasis from the concrete ethical directives to the abstract metaphysical principles that they feel must underlie these directives.  The history of the interpretation, he says, “suffers from its conception of the real problem as lying not in the content of the exhortation as such but in the basis on which it is made.”  Although of course the latter is important, he says, “I believe it to be an error to make this the pivot of the whole thing....the tenor of the passage is not didactic as if the parenesis were a conclusion from a thesis.  The stresses must not be incorrectly interchanged; otherwise we shall almost inevitably find ourselves on a path which does not correspond to the emphasis of the passage.”

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The Reformation's Revolution of Romans 13

When the Reformers argued that Romans 13 established God as the direct efficient cause of civil magistracy, they put themselves into a bit of a pickle.  For of course, no one wants to make God the author of evil, and it was quite clear then as now that civil magistrates often do a heck of a lot of evil.  Of course, Calvinists are used to rebutting the charge that predestination makes God the author of evil; we distinguish between his direct providence and his indirect providence, or between what he actively ordains and what he passively permits, etc.  But this wouldn’t quite do for civil magistracy, because the Reformers were clear that Romans 13 wasn’t just about God’s providential control over rulers, but his very direct ruling in, with, and under them (if we may borrow sacramental language).  A solution (but one that was to prove treacherous) was to be found in their additional conviction that Romans 13 intended to provide a blueprint for the rationale and proper function of civil authority.  

Vermigli provides a great illustration when he faces up to the problem in his De Magistratu and in his commentary on Romans 13.  What if someone objects, “if every magistrate is divinely given, then each should always rule without fault”?  He counters that “this reason does not move us, nor should it.  The office must be distinguished from the individual.”  Evil individuals may occupy a divinely sanctioned office.  “The testimony of Daniel makes it plain that magistrates are divinely ordained, for God gives and transfers kingdoms at His own discretion.”  The office of magistrate, you see, proceeds from God in a very direct and unqualified sense.  But the particular person who occupies it does so only by the general providence of God, who oversees the rise and fall of men and kingdoms in the course of his governance over all creation--this is the point made in Daniel.  This would seem to undermine any argument for obedience, for how is any particular citizen under a particular ungodly king supposed to know that he’s supposed to submit to this particular providence, and not rather to be the providential means of the fall of this particular king?  If you want to discourage rebellion, it does little good to say that God has directly authorized the kingdom, but not necessarily the king.

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