Stoic Interpretation. As a way of reconciling Paul’s claim in verse 4 that the Roman ruler is a “servant of God to do you good,” with the harsh realities of the Roman ruling class’s treatment of Jews, slaves, peasants, and noncitizens in general, Cranfield argues for a rather idiosyncratic definition of “good.” In Cranfield’s assessment, Paul believes that no matter what the government does to the believer, it will be “good.” If the government rewards good citizens, that is “good.” If the government persecutes good citizens, God is glorified in that too. Witherington, also, follows Cranfield on this point (2004: 314).

A cursory reading of the text makes it clear that this is not at all what Paul is saying. In no uncertain terms, Paul says that the ruler gives rewards to good citizens, and serves up punishment to criminals. To be sure, Paul knew as well as anybody that this was not an historically accurate assessment of Rome’s power relations; nevertheless, that fact is not license to put words into Paul’s mouth that contradict the logic of his argument. I would hardly see fit even to mention this kind of Stoic line of Cranfield’s, were it not for the fact that it is so widely held on a popular level by apolitical Christians. In contemporary culture, the recent upsurge of pacifism in younger Christians has in many respects begun to fall in line with Cranfield’s stoicism on this point. Many Christian pacifists assume that a commitment to nonviolence somehow is the equivalent of a commitment to apoliticism. The idea is that if the government persecutes Christians, God will be glorified in their suffering. It is a “come-what-may” sort of attitude. The problem of course is the failure to recognize that the persecutions of Jesus, Paul, and the early church, by the Roman authorities, were political persecutions. They were persecuted because they represented a threat to what Rome called stability. They were political actors who were forging alternative polities to the power-polities of their day. Early Christian nonviolence was not a “come-what-may” stoicism, but an active, dialectical, and critical engagement with political edifices (cf. Wink 1992b; Stassen 2003; Elliott 2004b; Horsley 1997). That Witherington already recognizes much of this makes his agreement with Cranfield on this point all the more perplexing.

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