After I posted about resistance in Nazi Germany last month ["Swing
Heil" - Even Dancing Can Be an Act of Courage] I received an email
from a long-time acquaintance. She said that she did not think I was
really writing about resistance to Hitler, that I was actually encouraging
resistance to a current regime. [If the shoe fits.] She went on to
issue a gentile chastisement, saying that I needed to remember what St. Paul
says about obeying governing authorities.
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience. (Romans 13:1-15)
Taken in isolation, Paul does seem to be calling for unquestioned obedience to governing authorities regardless of what those authorities do.
These verses have been used by authorities,
both religious and secular, to demand unquestioned loyalty and obedience from
the first century right up to the present day. Nazi-aligned pastors
[Nazis again! Swing Heil!] used Paul to justify unquestioned obedience to
Hitler. American segregationists used Romans to oppose civil
disobedience during the civil rights movement. Some religious
leaders used Romans to support the U.S. government's invasion of
Iraq. And currently some evangelicals in multiple countries are
identifying certain candidates for office and officeholders as chosen by God to
govern and are using Romans to deter protest, dissent, and civil disobedience.
Models of Civil Disobedience
Whether or not we are familiar with their stories, Paul
would have known of the many examples of civil disobedience by Israel’s ancient
heroes.
- In Exodus,
the Hebrew midwives disobeyed pharaoh's order to kill all the newborn
Hebrew boys.
- In Daniel, Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego were sent into a fiery furnace for refusing to obey
King Nebuchadnezzar.
- In Esther, Esther
risked death by violating the law by approaching the king without an
invitation in order to save the Jewish people.
- In 1
Kings, Obadiah, a majordomo in charge of King Ahab's palace, hid a
hundred prophets in caves to protect them from Queen Jezebel who wanted to
kill them.
And the list goes on.
Furthermore, although the earliest canonical Gospel had not
yet been written in Paul’s lifetime, certainly stories about Jesus’s life
circulated among believers. Paul would have known of Jesus’s acts of
civil disobedience: healing on the sabbath; eating with tax collectors,
foreigners, and sinners; talking with women in public without their husbands
being present; chasing the merchants and moneychangers from the
temple. Ultimately, Jesus was executed for his acts of civil
disobedience.
Would Paul have rejected all acts of resistance and civil
disobedience in the face of these models of civil
disobedience? Seems unlikely.
The Rebellious Paul
It also seems unlikely that someone whose friends had to
sneak him out of Damascus by lowering him over the city wall hidden in a basket
(Acts 9:23-25) because he defied the religious authorities would then turn
around and insist on unquestioned obedience to those authorities. Of
course, Paul’s thinking could have evolved over the two decades between his
escape from Damascus and his letter to Rome’s Christian
community. But 14 years after his escape from Damascus Paul was
still getting into trouble for defying the authorities and for advocating
“customs that are not lawful” (Acts 16:16–40). And ultimately, Paul
was executed in Rome for resisting the governing authorities.
So, if Paul believed in an absolute duty of the governed to
obey the governing authorities, his own behavior was not consistent with that
belief. A case of “do as I say, not as I
do”? Seems unlikely.
Unquestioned Obedience?
Unquestioned obedience to governing authorities does not gel
with what we know about Paul and his own behavior - and as Detective Martin
Arbogast says in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho, “if it
doesn’t gel, it isn’t aspic.”
