aa5874

Romans 13.1-2, "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God, the powers that be are ordained of God.
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God, and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.

Romans 13. 6-7, "For this cause pay ye tribute also, for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.
Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom is due; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.

The Roman leaders were pagans and polytheistic in the 1st century, some were even proclaimed to be gods themselves. It was the customs of the Roman leaders to place statues of themselves at temples of worship, even at the sites of other non-roman religion, the Romans had no regards for the Christians, based on Suetonius and Tacitus.

When were Tiberius, Nero, Vespasian, Agrippa, Claudius or Augustus, ordained by the Christian gods?

Romans 13 appears to be anachronistic, during the 1st century, there seems to be no Christian Roman leader or government anywhere in the habitable earth.

Toto

Jews and Christians both thought that god worked through the temporal authorities. The King might be a pagan, but still doing god's will. If god is omnipotent, he can do this.

aa5874

The question is when did Christians think that God worked through any Roman leader or government? I cannot find any historical writings that show Christians were paying tribute to or honoring Nero, Gauis, Vespasian or any other emperor and leader of the Roman Empire in the first century.

Even in the NT, according to Matthew, the Christian God, supposedly omnipotent, asked the wise men to disobey the orders of Herod (ordained by God? ) by not divulging the whereabouts of his Son Jesus.

We read about another "power ordained by God", according to Romans 13, in Acts 12.21-23, "And upon a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made an oration unto them.
And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man.
And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory, and he was eaten of worms and gave up the ghost."


And if "Paul" and Peter were following Romans 13, then there would probably be no reason for them to be executed by the powers ordained by God.

The exhortations of Romans 13 seem not to fit the 1st century, they are applicable to the 4th century under Constantine and later, perhaps, but certainly not 1st century when the powers (ordained of God?) were also gods unto themselves and prosecuted and persecuted Christians according to the NT and the Church fathers.

andrewcriddle

Romans is normally dated c 57 CE early in Nero's reign.
Persecution of Christians by the Roman state is usually dated from c 64 CE late in Nero's reign.
IE at the time Romans was written persecution of Christians by the Roman state had not yet begun.

Andrew Criddle

DCHindley

Well,

You folks have really got to stop treating different ancient documents as if drawn from the same well and speaking with the same voice. Paul, if the quoted part of the letter to the Romans is authentic, is a primary source of greater evidentiary weight than Acts, which is a secondary source.

The author of Acts was certainly a Christian. And why is Acts addressed to a promimant (Roman?) official for? To exonerate Christians, and most notably Paul, of a bad rep! I would EXPECT the author to tell a Roman official that Paul taught folks to accept the Roman order.

As for Paul's letters, as I have stated before on the basis of my obviously wrong and evil analysis of the Pauline corpus, Paul (or at least the original author, who we can call "Paul" here) was certainly NOT even a Christian. On the other hand, the person(s) who edited his letters for publication cerainly was/were. They were writing to different audiences, with the editor constanly reinterpreting and explaining away the things said by the original author. Also I'd even go so far as to say that the editor was even more radical a "Christian" than the author of Acts, maybe suggesting that he lived in a somewhat earlier period (on the assumtion that ideas usually start out hot but cool down over time).

Here is Paul, talking to his god-fearig gentile buddies:

"13:1a Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. 1b [...]. 2 Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 - 14 [...]."

Hey, what he says there is a FACT! The "powers that be" DO punish those who resist them. As for God "appointing" them, look at how Jewish tradition, even in the 1C CE, saw the Babylonian captivity as a divine punishment of his people for having strayed into error, and depicts Daniel (and Ezra and Nehemiah, etc) as going along with the pagan kings who held power over them, but wih an eye to the future when God gets over it. This is in fact what the Rabbis of later times did after the Romans utterly defeated all attempts by renegade Jews to establish their hoped-for independent nation and, on a good day, world empire.

What the editor says, is:

"13:1b For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God 2. [...] 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. 6 For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. 7 Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. 8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," (Ex 20:13-15, 17 = Dt 5:17-19, 21) and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Lv 19:18) 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. 11 Besides this you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; 12 the night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13 let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires."

All that crap ... I mean genius level sophistry ... um ... rhetoric, is thematically related to replacement theology. The reason for attributing this part of the text to an editor like I do is due to a characteristic I noted where Christ theology in the letters consistently uses an anarthrous QEOS (no "the" before "God", which is not always evident in English translation), as it also does here, while all the statements relating to the faithfulness of gentiles does use QEOS with a definite article, as is the case in the passage (13:2) I attribute to the original author. To the original author, his God is THE (not just any old pagan) God.

In the editor's replacement theology, which this pasage is just one example, Jesus is actually a divine redeemer come to save the elect of mankind, who came as a fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, whom the Jews foolishly disregarded, ultimately demonstrating their true colors by rebelling against God's authority (rebelling against the Romans in 66-74 CE), and who were thus ruthlessly and justly crushed by the Roman empire in an act of divine justice. To the editor, Paul's faithful gentiles, along with his own group of Christians, knew better than the Jews themselves the true plan of God, that Jesus was a redeemer figure and not a military savior.

HE (the editor) can thus be dated after the Jewish war. The author of Acts could have written before or after it, although I think that Christianity was precipitated by that very war and would not have evolved as we know it if it had not occurred.

Damn, I forgot to include the Jesus myth in this post! Never mind, you can ignore it ...

DCH

Doug Shaver

Only if we assume that Paul's thinking was similar to modern Christian thinking.

mountainman

When exactly was Romans 13 written?
IMO between 312 and 324 CE, near Rome.




"Christian prayers, said Constantine,
were intimately connected with
the safety of the state." [FN:45]

[FN:45] Codex Theodosius 16.2.1-6 and 14;
Eus HE 10.7.1-2; T.G. Elliott (1978), 326


"This enormous favor was an open invitation to false pretence:
by 320 Constantine already had to legislate against rich pagans
who were showing a fascinating ingenuity
and were claiming exemptions as alleged
Christian priests." [FN:47]

[FN:47] Codex Theodosius 16.2.3 and 6




"Constantine enacted a law
that stressed the validity
of a man's death bed legacies
to a church fund,
a topic which was particularly sensitive
because of the clergy's special presence
at the moment of death." [FN:48]

[FN:48] C.Theod 16.2.4



Codex Theodosius 16.2.18

the word "pagani: in everyday use meant "civilian" and/or "rustic".
"pagani: first appears in christian inscriptions from early 4th century.
"pagani: earliest use in the Law Codes in Codex Theodosius 16.2.18 (c.370)
"pagani: is a word coined by christians -- of the towns and cities.


Best wishes,


Pete Brown

aa5874

From Origen in Contra Celsus, it seems that Origen contradicts or does not know about Romans 13.1-2.

Contra Celsus, ch 1, written sometime in the 3rd century,

"........if a man were placed among Scythians, whose laws were unholy, and having no opportunity of escape, were compelled to live among them, such an one would with good reason, for the sake of the law of truth, which the Scythians would regard as wickedness, enter into associations contrary to their laws, with those like-minded with himself; so, if truth is to decide, the laws of the heathens which relate to images, and an atheistical polytheism, are Scythian laws, or more impious even than these, if there be any such.
It is not irrational then, to form associations in opposition to existing laws, if done for the sake of truth."


And Origen continues to show that some governments are of the Devil and that Christians should revolt from them.

" For as those persons would do well who enter into a secret association in order to put to death a tyrant who had seized upon the liberties of a state, so Christians also, when tyrannized over him who is called the devil, and by falsehood, form leagues contrary to the laws of the devil, against his power, and for the safety of those others whom they may suceed in persuading to revolt from a government which is, as it were, "Scythian" and despotic".


Romans 13 seem to work well in the 4th century.