Limapela Education Project
Faith in Action
This project aims to provide quality education to children in Zambia's Copperbelt Province.
Paul holds that God is the source of all legitimate authority, so Christians should pay their taxes and respect their political leaders. In this message, preached at Greyfriars Classical Service on 21 October 2007, Rob Yule explains Paul’s positive view of Roman justice, but asks whether he might have recommended differently a decade later, when Nero’s persecution presented Christians with the issue of unlawful or abusive authority. Paul’s counsel that Christians live as exemplary citizens continued to shape Christian attitudes into the second century — paving the way for the ultimate triumph of Christianity in the Roman Empire.
Recent events have underlined how fragile democracy is in New Zealand. Police raids on para-military style jungle camps in the eastern Bay of Plenty suggest that this country has the potential for local terrorism among some disgruntled sections of society. But the actions of the police raise even more serious concerns whether basic human rights and liberties have been infringed.
New Zealanders, living in a stable democratic society, tend to view our political system as a universal norm. In fact, participatory democracy is very recent, only 150 years old, and very rare, shared by only a tiny minority of the world’s countries. Only eight, possibly nine, other countries in the world have parliamentary democracies that have lasted as long as New Zealand’s. Christians need to be concerned for the welfare of the state.
The political background and social world of the first Christians was very different from our world today.
Christianity originated in a Jewish environment. So initially Roman officials afforded Christian groups the same status, rights and protection that they gave to Jewish communities throughout the empire.
Jews, though a subject people, enjoyed exceptional privileges under the Romans, since Roman law recognized the Jewish faith as a ‘lawful religion’, and synagogue communities as ‘permitted associations’. The Romans allowed Jews to observe their Sabbath laws, food laws, even their prohibition of graven images; and exempted them from the requirement to take part in pagan rites and the worship of the emperor.
Roman law even allowed Jews to manage their own religious affairs. When Paul was accused by Jews in Corinth, the Roman proconsul Gallio dismissed the charge, saying it was a matter of Jewish law for them to deal with themselves (Acts 18:12-17).
This situation first began to change when Jews were expelled from the Roman capital by Emperor Claudius in AD 49 (Acts 18:2) — making the Jewish way of life briefly an ‘illegal religion’. When Nero readmitted Jews to Rome in AD 54, he forbade them to gather in synagogues — making them ‘prohibited associations’.
Paul held a positive view of Roman justice. Even when he was wrongfully whipped and imprisoned in Philippi, he got the Roman authorities to come and escort him from the city — an action that was tantamount to publicly admitting responsibility (Acts 16:37-39). When he was accused by Jews in Corinth, the Roman proconsul Gallio refused to take up the complaint against him (Acts 18:12-17).
These positive experiences of Roman justice undoubtedly influenced Paul’s view that the state is ‘God’s servant to do you good.’ (13:4). When Paul wrote Romans Emperor Nero was still under the benevolent influence of the great Roman moralist Seneca (who, incidentally, was Gallio’s brother).
Paul’s high view of the Roman authorities may even have continued after he wrote Romans (CE 56-57). When visiting Jerusalem soon after he appealed to the emperor for protection from his Jewish opponents (Acts 25:10-12) — enabling him to fulfil his ambition of visiting Rome by courtesy of Roman prison transport and with fares paid by the Roman Imperial Revenue Service!
It’s interesting to speculate whether Paul would have written in the same way a decade later, after the first outbreak of persecution in 64, when Emperor Nero turned Christians into Roman candles and made them political scapegoats for the great fire of Rome.
Christianity seems to have suffered from a political handicap, because of the suspicions of treason that surrounded its origins. It was popularly supposed that Jesus, its founder, had been executed on a charge of sedition or insurrection against the Romans. While in Thessalonica, Paul’s opponents had accused him of stirring up trouble, ‘defying the decrees of Caesar’, and ‘saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.’ (Acts 17:6-7).
Something similar seems to have happened in Rome in AD 49, when the Emperor Claudius expelled all Jews from the city (Acts 18:2) because of riots stirred up ‘at the instigation of Chrestus’ (as Suetonius records) — probably a reference to unrest in the Jewish community provoked by debates about Christ (‘Christos’).
Christianity was controversial; it claimed people’s ultimate allegiance. It has been said that wherever Paul went there was usually a riot or a revival — sometimes both! It was important for the acceptance of the Gospel that Paul encourage Christians to be law-abiding citizens who paid their taxes and respected the authorities. Later, when Caesar demanded the allegiance which belonged to God, Christians had to refuse his demands.
Paul says that God is the source of all authority. ‘There is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.’ (13:1, NRSV). Those who exercise authority do so with an authority derived from God. Governmental authority is not arbitrary but God-given.
The view Paul expresses here reflects the political viewpoint of the whole Bible. In Exodus, God commands Pharaoh to ‘Let my people go’ (Exodus 8:1). In Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon experienced a period of insanity, until he acknowledged ‘that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes’ (Daniel 4:32). In Isaiah, the Persian king Cyrus is referred to as the Lord’s ‘anointed’ instrument to restore the exiled Israelites back to their land (Isaiah 45:1). And in Acts, Paul says that God determines ‘the times… and exact places’ for the rise and fall of nations (Acts 17:26). God is sovereign over nations and governments.
Paul says the main purpose of the state is to restrict wrong and encourage right (Romans 13:3-5). Christians should therefore obey the just laws of the state, pay their taxes, and respect the authorities. Echoing Jesus’ words (Mark 12:17) Paul says, ‘Pay to all what is due them — taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honour to whom honour is due.’ (13:7, NRSV).
Wherever possible we are to respect political authority, observe the law, and pay our taxes. But what happens if the authorities are not godly or just, but authoritarian, evil, or unjust? Is Paul’s teaching a counsel for passivity, a blank cheque for rulers to do what they like?
Paul’s teaching is given in the context of divinely-delegated, just authority. It doesn’t oblige us to obey the state when it encourages crime, promotes injustice, or restricts good — as in modern unjust regimes like Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, the generals’ Myanmar, or Ahmadinejad’s Iran.
Faced with such unjust regimes, we must follow the advice of Jesus, which Paul echoes: ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’ (Mark 12:17). Caesar has no right to demand what belongs to God, nor are we obliged to give Caesar what is God’s. If there’s a conflict between duty to the state and duty to God, duty to God comes first: ‘We must obey God rather than men’ (Acts 5:29).
It was by being exemplary citizens and by following this counsel that the early Christians ultimately won the Roman Empire, even when faced with the hatred and persecution of the Roman government. ‘Owe no one anything,’ writes Paul, ‘except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.... Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.’ (13:8-10, NRSV).
I’d like to conclude with two examples showing how the early Christians continued to practice what Paul preached — even after open persecution began and Roman rulers brutalised them:
At the end of the 1st century, the Emperor Domitian launched a savage persecution of Christians, torturing and martyring many women. Clement, the third bishop or leader of the church in Rome, wrote urging Christians to pray that the authorities ‘may administer with piety, in peace and gentleness, the authority given to them.’
A century later, in 197, Tertullian wrote his famous Apology to the governors of the Roman provinces on behalf of persecuted Christians. This remarkable appeal assured the emperor that the Christians wished him no harm. They were his best citizens. They did him a service by not deifying him but treating him as fellow human being! Christians, he says, will not offer sacrifices to the Roman gods, even on behalf of the emperor, since they aren’t really gods and are powerless to help him. Only the true God can help the emperor — and it is to the true God that Christians pray, for the welfare of the emperor and the state. If you kill us off, Tertullian reminds the governors, who will there be to pray for you when you’re in trouble, heal your illnesses, and cast out your demons!
These documents show that Christians continued to respect political authorities even when that respect was not reciprocated. Such attitudes explain the ultimate success of Christianity in the Roman Empire — a victory described by Catholic scholar Michael Walsh as ‘the triumph of the meek’.
The lesson for us today is clear: if the early Christians respected those in authority, prayed for them, paid taxes to them, even though these authorities sometimes brutalised and persecuted them, how much more should we Christians today, as citizens of a democracy, be law-abiding and conscientious, playing our full part in the political process. If they were subject to the governing authorities, even when they were persecuted by them, how much more should we Christians today be involved in a democratic process that is open to our participation and influence.
Rob Yule, 21 October 2007
© 2007, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church
