Civil Obedience?

Every person is to be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Romans 13:1  NASB

Governing authorities – The divine right of kings.  That’s what this verse seems to support.  And for centuries some parts of the Christian Church read it that way, especially if such a reading established God’s endorsement of political connections.  But there have always been Christians who took exception to such an interpretation (they often paid with their lives).  In recent times, there has been considerable debate about the traditional interpretation since it seems to require believers to submit to government policies that are clearly in opposition to God’s ethical demands.  One such objector is Pastor Matthew Trewhella, whose article on the subject you can find HERE.

His argument is a good one, based on the need to view Scripture as a consistent whole, but it is still a Christian view of the problem, and Paul was not a Christian.

What if we change the context of Paul’s statements?  What if we read Paul as a Jew writing to a Jewish assembly under Jewish leadership?  What happens then?

Mark Nanos makes precisely this point in his commentary on Romans.  What matters in our exegesis of this passage is not so much its integration with the rest of Scripture, although that is important, but rather the intended audience.  Nanos points out that the audience is the assembly of believers in Rome, namely, the synagogue.  That assembly consists of Jews, proselytes, and Gentiles who have joined the Jewish assembly because of their relationship with Yeshua.  The “authorities” in this assembly are the leaders of the synagogue, who, as Paul describes them, are there to act as God’s agents in the world and whose rulings will always be in agreement with God’s instructions in Torah.  Since there are Gentiles in the audience who do not have the tradition of synagogue authority and leadership in their background, Paul takes some time in his letter to tell them (the Gentiles who have joined the Jews) that they are to be subject to the governing authorities of the assembly.  He is not endorsing blanket obedience to the Roman Empire.  Given Rome’s view of Torah obedience, this would simply be impossible for Paul.  What Paul is saying is that there isn’t a single person who has authority in the synagogue community who isn’t there precisely because God wanted him there.  When Paul goes on to describe the behavior of these leaders, that becomes very obvious, and would have been crystal clear to the members of the Roman synagogue in the first century.

So, while Trewhella’s argument is valid within the Christian context, the need for such an argument disappears completely if we pay attention to Paul’s audience.  It’s the Church that has created the debate, not Paul.  In the Jewish synagogue the reason for Paul’s statements would have been obvious.

Topical Index: government, authority, synagogue, Mark Nanos, Romans 13:1