Angelic Authorities. Oscar Cullmann (1957: 97ff) famously argued that exousiai (authorities) in Romans 13:1 refers at once to human governmental agents as well as to the angelic/demonic principalities and powers that stand behind them. His argument is fourfold: (1) Primitive Christianity inherited from late Judaism the belief that invisible powers are at work behind earthly institutions. (2) All the other Pauline references to the exousiai are spiritual. (3) The theme of the subjection of the angelic powers to Christ’s lordship is an important one in the Pauline corpus (Col. 2:15). (4) There is a similar double-referent in 1 Corinthians 2:8.

While each of Cullmann’s four points is virtually incontrovertible, the conclusion Cullmann proceeds to derive from them is not. Reading these angelic powers into the exousiai of 13:1, the pericope comes to Cullmann to mean that after the triumph of Christ over the powers (Col. 2:15), these powers have now been “harnessed” and are finally about the business of doing God’s will. In other words, the picture of government Paul is painting in Romans 13:1-7 is an eschatological picture in which the powers that be have been reigned in by the work of Christ.

Problems with this reading are manifold. The first is simply that if this is what Paul is saying, he is wrong. This would make Revelation 13 the corrective to Romans 13.[1] Moreover, it would become clear to Paul in less than a decade that “reigned in” is precisely what these powers are not, as he and thousands of other Christians would fall victim to the sadistic whim of the very emperor that lurks in the background of this passage.

Strobel (1956: 79ff) had already countered Cullmann a year prior. Strobel shows that each of the terms Paul uses to describe government (e.g. authorities, servants, ministers) had a normal referent in secular use. Though that alone does not prove definitively that Paul did not intend a double-entendre, it does suggest that Paul was not sacralizing government, as some have contended (e.g. Dunn 1986: 67). Paul may not have been ascribing religious/cultic terminology to secular rulers so much as reminding his hearers that these secular rulers still fall under the sovereignty of God.

Wink entertains the possibility that Paul could have been referring to spiritual powers “behind the throne,” but nevertheless argues convincingly that while Paul “certainly affirmed the existence of higher spiritual powers behind all the physical expressions of government, he is simply not concerned with that dimension of power here. He is preoccupied instead with the very mundane and practical issue of the church’s behavior toward bureaucratic officials (exousiai).” He argues that context is determinative for the identity of the powers. While in other contexts, Paul’s use of exousiai indicates primarily spiritual forces (Rom. 8:38-39), or both spiritual forces and human agents (1 Cor. 2:6-8), in Romans 13 Paul’s use seems to indicate primarily human agents (1984: 47).

What is clear is that there is not in Romans 13 any kind of convoluted claim about the spiritual powers having been reigned in and put to work for God’s purposes. This interpretation is a non sequitur on the heels of Cullmann’s fourfold argument. Moreover, it ignores the fact that much of what Paul seems to be saying in Romans 13:1-7 is not very different (superficially at least) from the Jewish establishment’s view (superficial at least) of pagan power in the Second Temple period (Dunn 1986: 64). One does not have to accept the notion of Christ’s triumph over the principalities and powers in order to believe that the powers that be are working for God. In fact, the basic lines of Paul’s argument would have been acceptable to most people in the Hellenistic world of Paul’s day, regardless of religion (Malina and Pilch 2006: 280). It did not become the state’s job to reward good and punish evil only after the death and resurrection of Christ. That has always been the function of the state. Therefore, we must conclude, notwithstanding the basic correctness of Cullmann’s observation that Paul saw more than mere human agency in the exousiai, the angelic interpretation has failed to resolve the disparity between the ideal Rome of Paul’s imagination, and the real Rome of Paul’s experience.

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