Divine Command Clause. What I am calling the “Divine Command Clause” is very close to the ideal government approach. It was classically formulated by Basil: “It is right to submit to higher authority whenever a command of God is not violated thereby” (The Morals 79.1). Similarly, Augustine warned that “if anyone thinks he ought to submit to the point where he accepts that someone who is his superior in temporal affairs should have authority even over his faith, he falls into an even greater error” (Commentary on Romans 72). This is perhaps the most pervasive view. It is basically a conservative view which entails the attitude that the government’s business is the government’s business unless the government attempts to force me to (a) do something that violates a direct command of God or (b) profess belief in a doctrine which violates the integrity of the faith. Sometimes these can be combined into one, as in the case of Daniel in Babylonian exile. When the believer is finally forced to that crossroads, the stock response is summed up in Peter’s words to the Sanhedrin: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29)! Subordination to the governing authorities is the norm, but there is a clause, a single clause, which forbids the Christian from subordinating him or herself any further.

The problem with this view is that the criteria for determining the Christians’ point of departure from the will of the powers remain perniciously unclear. What constitutes a violation of a divine command? At what point is the authority of a government or of a particular agent of a government determined to be illegitimate? We can quite easily hold up genocidal regimes as clear examples of illegitimate authority, but on the other hand the Hebrew Scriptures sustain accounts that justify the genocidal slaughter of the Canaanites precisely in terms of divine command. Many evangelical Christians have claimed that the widespread practice of abortion in the United States constitutes a genocide, but relatively few of them have seen that as reason enough to engage in revolutionary resistance. And what about a government that has renounced the practice of debt forgiveness? If we support such a government, are we in violation of the divine principle of jubilee? What if a person is a dual citizen of two nations at war with each other? To which does she owe her subordination? Which is her legitimate authority? What does a Christian do when a fellow believer who is an illegal alien (according to one state) seeks safe harbor in his home? What if harboring illegal aliens is an offense punishable by law? Would such a situation constitute for the Christian a legitimate point of departure from an otherwise legitimate authority?

Moreover, who gets to determine which divine commands count—the individual Christian, the household, the local body of believers, the bishop, the scholarly consensus, or some other entity? What constitutes a divine command in the first place? Must it be explicitly stated in Scripture, or can it be derivative of narrative logic and theological and ethical trajectories that are discerned in Scripture? Who determines which trajectories are the right ones from which to derive a “divine command”? Should a Christian consider authority illegitimate only when it is forcing itself upon him or herself, or upon his or her local Christian community, or rather is it legitimate for a Christian to resist an authority on behalf of a remote, otherwise unconnected victim of governmental imposition? Put differently, is the Divine Command Clause self-oriented only, or does it look beyond the self to the needs of the wholly other? If a Christian can resist on behalf of another Christian, can a Christian resist on behalf of a non-Christian? If some German Christians rightly resisted the Nazi regime during World War II, would it have been right for North American Christians to resist the United States government in the aftermath of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, or, for instance, while the Carter administration was upping its sale of arms to Indonesia during Indonesia’s genocidal campaign in East Timor (Chomsky 1987: 303-311)? If genocide constitutes a Divine Command Clause, what about economic oppression? What about the United States government’s endorsement and implementation of the Milton Friedman doctrine (Klein 2007)? What about the displacement of a people, resulting in mass starvation, deprivation, and disease?

And what does normative subordination entail anyway? Is a Christian war-tax resister still in subordination to her government if she willingly goes to prison for tax evasion? Or does the Divine Command Clause require absolute obedience except when the Christian’s individual, personal religious rights are being infringed upon? In that case, how can the Divine Command Clause be reconciled with the divine command to love one’s neighbor as oneself?

Proponents of this approach rarely entertain such questions, but when the tenets of the Divine Command Clause are scrutinized under exacting logical rigor, it quickly becomes apparent that they are not fit for the task of preserving the status quo.

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Labels: New Perspective on Paul, Paul, Pauline Theology, Romans 13