Romans 13
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Apostle Paul is clear, even if the application is not. Lawful government is Biblical … G-d doesn't support anarchism. But unrighteous policy is to be ignored at least. This totally failed during Covid lockdown.
Historical context is everything in Romans. Two Hasmonean civil wars in the 1st century BC. The 2nd civil war leading to the Roman occupation of Judea with ongoing resistance and strife among Judean factions. Early Christians boycotted Roman institutions ("Roman gods") for centuries.
Except the actul Jewish prophets before, were also punished by the authorities. So the Sanhedrin was consistent with pre-Exile Judah.
Used to be a citizen was just a subject who lives in a city.
Shakers were founded by a woman from England. Woke?
Gods permissive will vs his perfect will.
Rings true to me.
Yes, Bonhoeffer was right:
“Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. … The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Hey Paul,
Another figure in the time frame as Bonhoeffer is Helmuth James Moltke. He too was executed but, he was not involved in the plot to take out Hitler, although he was accused of this.
Read : Last Letters / The Prison Correspondence between Freya and Helmuth between 1944-1945.
We are to try to physically protect so people can attempt to stop not kill the murderous attacker; whether or not a Hitler-like person dies in an attempt to stop them would be God's call, so God evidently takes forms of vengeance through our bio-logical stewardship that attempts to protect all life as best we can. Turning the other cheek evidently means trying to create a space for repentance and reconciliation on earth now; that doesn't involve allowing ourselves or others to be murdered. If it wasn't already qualified by Jesus saying not to throw the first stone, Jesus' death evidently abolishes the state death penalty; hence Barabbas; we are to strive to help everyone be a living sacrifice of bio-logical service in the Church. Sorry, I've only heard part of the middle part of the video so far. I think bio-logical law is upheld throughout the covenants with the covenants bringing different logical ordinances; states are to be bio-logical under God's Edenic Genesis commission that respects human stewardship (further evidenced by the apparently wider picture of Psalm 82); the citizens are not to enact any anti-biological (that is to say, illogical, disrespectful, sinful) policy of any state. Whilst the vote bio-logically respect's everyone's responsibility to learn to bio-logically steward, the individual is not to enact the anti-biological policy of any majority; the responsibility of the individual regardless of any majority can arguably be appropriately symbolised by a monarch who acts as a referee as does a juror who decides whether what is meant to be legislation is actually just; if it is not, then a not guilty verdict can be passed by the individual or, at an earlier stage, proposed ideas that have been voted for can thrown out by a monarch who is trusted to be a referee in relation to human rights as are members of second, nominated houses of parliament that exist alongside an elected body that was elected by a wider public; the prime minister of those could nominate others to a second house.
Thank you Paul for all that you do.
Good Bible discussion, Paul.
The problem with most people’s perception of Romans 13, is – as you point out – it seems to give a blank check, morally, as it were, to the State.
In truth, however, it establishes the State as directly answerable in judgment, to the Lord, of himself, in his given historic appearances; and by which, it alone receives its moral justification.
The fact that “the powers that be are ordained of God”, means that they must be able to “show” God, to give public answer for him, since they have historically “be-held” him, directly, as said, in each such given historic appearance and judgment.
The public institutions of Church and State, however, can no longer show the God of scripture that they claim to be morally justified by; and so, terror arises in response to political and economic injustices, in the very popular rise of the Liberal, and then Socialist States, of themselves, and together.
Indeed, this becomes the very initial figuring of Moses – (with the Socialist as a stranger in a capitalistic land which is not theirs) – in his killing of the Egyptian, as it becomes a popular question of where to establish moral bounds, when the expediency of a legislated killing and silencing of others is taken as a legitimate foundation for establishing the social order; and so that, one thereby autocratically posits their self, inevitably, as a judge between all men.
It is Camus, in The Rebel, that establishes this point most clearly, I think, when he observes that the Rebel is always a man who is searching for a just order, when he is true to his rebellion; since it is precisely at injustice that he first balked, and questioned the social order as legitimate.
Indeed, he there posits Europe in the modern age, as the sons of Cain; and situates its fall as perhaps beginning with the Albigensian Crusade – (though, that is the murder of Abel, as I have come to understand it, and the Cluny reforms, the Original Sin leading to those Crusades).
Indeed, this is the basis of Revelation 20, where Satan – (as the high priestly or Papal hierarchy today of the Old World, since those Cluny reforms and Crusades creating the great red dragon of Revelation 12, following a Protestant woman or people into the wilderness prepared for her) – is loosed after a thousand years, to deceive the nations with the lie of an otherworldly deity; and to gather them together in the four corners of the earth in such New Worlds and finally Universal Civilizations, like America today, and Rome itself before.
To be sure, the High Priestly office of Judaism centered in the Temple and upon Jerusalem before obviously, in relation to a then democratic Roman Empire, and ruling Caesar, became not only the democratic mob as it were in Jerusalem, claiming Caesar rather than Christ as king, in relation to a Roman provincial governor, otherwise saying, of himself, that Jesus was king of the Jews, in truth – (and as Jesus observed to him, when he answered Pilate’s question of being a king, with, Thou sayest) – through the inscription written in the Trinity of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, legislatively, executively, and judicially – (hence, the clearly judicial terms in Revelation, of “testimony”, or “witness”, and “record”).
But such same high priestly or Papal features are established by the Vatican in Rome today, over and against, or in contrast to, the now similarly democratic Empire of the US, centered on Washington DC now.
This, or such Protestant foundations religiously to the US, through such previous Old World kings of colonization who thereby “set themselves” anew, historically and culturally no less than religiously, time and again, in such eventual Lordly judgments, coming at those finally universal heights, become the pulse and water eaten by Daniel and the Hebrew children, locally and directly, in the stead of the meat and wine of such imperial expansions of such Old World kings and the merchant classes.
You might observe, therefore, that the trying of Daniel for “ten days”, is noted also in relation to the second church of Smyrna as Austin today, in concerns of David Koresh, and that decade of the 1990s, where they were clearly faithful unto death, and receive a crown of life, a few decades later in the 2020s; and as with the “ten days”, for example, recently observed in relation to the late Queen Elizabeth, and the since newly crowned King Charles, as they form, in such a still existing English Crown, the Lion of the Tribe of Juda, which becomes equally the Root of David, in an agricultural aristocracy like our Founding Fathers of the Southern Colonies, which have then prevailed in such certain new National and religious foundations, to politically martyr – (with David Koresh, observing to Federal agents, that “This is America!”) – a “Lamb”, or given religious community, “which stood as it were slain”, both, through himself, and through my continued witness of him, both, in prophecy before, and in a moral justification still, after such an event.
The man of metals, in Daniel 2, to a today Germanic or Protestant Nebuchadnezzar’s now American dream – (and as symbolic of the knights, for example, of the Middle Ages, but also of the whole armor of God noted at Ephesus, as a Protestant East Texas today, going back to our Colonial beginnings with Jamestown, and exampled in literature, by Twain’s a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court) – become the stone of Plymouth Rock, with Christ, which shatters that image at such finally universal heights; just as that stone of Plymouth Rock is the “white stone” given to a more Catholic Albuquerque as Pergamos, and having the “new name” of “Jesus Christ”, doctrinally no less than historically “written” on it, thereby, which no man knows saving he that receives it, in just such a given place and people and culture having come Spiritually and geographically anew, of itself, with every such New World and particular new Nation.
This, of course, becomes the differing historic advances, of the industrial north with Chicago as Sardis, creating “the image of gold,” in Daniel 3, that is nationally set up, in such a given Anglo-Saxon Protestant foundation today, in relation to an otherwise political east – (hence, the gathering together of the princes, governors, judges, sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces to stand before such an image) – forming Philadelphia as the church in Philadelphia.
Just as the commercial west becomes the basis, as the Laodiceans, of the musical instruments of a stringed or piped orchestration of all, by a multilevel marketing, behind that national “image of gold”; and to which, everyone is forced to bow, as if to God, when it plays the tune of that Global marketplace – and these three national regions form the three Hebrew children who fall down bound in the furnace, until they are seen as walking with the “Son of God”, like that “Son of God”, noted regionally and prophetically in the south, in relation to the church in Thyatira as Oklahoma City today, and having feet as molten brass.
The tree then observed upon Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4, then not only becomes the stump of such a certain national region of the south, having bands of iron and brass, or of the State and marketplace, placed upon it, in relation to the Lord; but it becomes the tree of Life at Ephesus, in relation to the Lord, of himself, as a candle which is removed out of his place – (since men do not light a candle, and put it under a bushel of the Presidency, like the bowl covering the candlestick in Zechariah 4, I think it is, but they put it on a candlestick like David Koresh, and it gives light unto all that are in the house).
John Milton, who supported the execution of King Charles I, made an interesting argument for opposing tyrants in his writing on The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. I am sure there must be, on both sides of the Atlantic, several historic Protestant arguments justifying the actions that have been taken to resist and depose tyrants.
A few thoughts:
It is correct to note that the “government” in the United States is the Constitution. Unfortunately, the only part of the Constitution that still seems to be respected is the period of election for the various national offices – and even this idea of “election” is now questioned by far more than half of the country, and not for no cause.
My understanding is that the Greek word translated as “governing authorities” can mean authorities at any level, for example, for the family, for the Church, and for the state. Hence, some people apply Paul’s words to mean we may (even must) defy governing authorities if they step out of their proper role – for example, when the state tells us how to raise our children, or when the state tells us if we can go to church on Sunday.
Finally, I have often wondered why we only look at this passage as Paul writing to the subjects / citizens. He is at least equally writing to the governing authorities – setting the limits and boundaries about how these authorities should act. In the case of the state, when they punish wrongdoers, they are acting according to Paul’s teaching. When the state punishes right-doers (as is many times the case, even today and even in the United States), the state is acting against Paul’s teaching.