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Spanish Mission. Jewett has attempted to set Romans 13:1-7 within the context of Paul’s mission to Spain. Noting the presence in the Roman churches of two groups of Roman governmental bureaucrats (cf. 2007: 949-74), Jewett argues that Paul’s strategy in this pericope is to secure their confidence and thus their patronage for his mission to Spain (794). Though Jewett writes that Paul should not be commended for his poor assessment of “the evil potential of totalitarian regimes, including the Neronian government then in power” (796), he does not write off Paul as entirely politically naïve. Jewett argues, for instance, that the interlocutor Paul imagines in his transition to the diatribe style in 13:3b represents the group of Jewish Christians in Rome who had “experienced the unfair burden of [unjust] verdicts in connection with their banning in C.E. 49,” as well as many others who “had probably witnessed or experienced governmental brutality in other contexts, because Rome ruled with an iron hand.” Jewett’s Paul is fully conscious of this. Nevertheless, Jewett suggests, “the fact that Romans was drafted during a period of exemplary Roman administration led by Seneca and Burrus augments the likelihood that Paul’s [pro-government] formulation would have resonated positively in Rome.” Of course, as Jewett concedes, “before and after that period, Paul’s unqualified formulation that officials punish the bad and praise the good seems far from accurate” (793).[1]
Jewett’s argument remains, however, rather intriguing. Jewett sees Paul’s argument as “missional rather than theoretical” (794) and posits that Paul’s attribution of divine rights to Roman authorities in regards to the punishment of lawbreakers was a strategy meant to allay the fears of the Roman bureaucrats within the church who knew the oral traditions about Paul’s past involvement in riots and his multiple imprisonments (793).[2] “Paul hopes that for the Christian bureaucrats, such concerns can be overcome. In this diatribe, he places an effective argument at their service: he [who had a] reputation as a subversive troublemaker was in fact an advocate of good public order; and his plans for the Spanish venture should, therefore, not be thwarted.” Though aware of the “problematic aspects of governmental behavior in times past,” Paul overlooks Rome’s history of brutality “in order to appeal to the groups of believers within the imperial bureaucracy whose cooperation was perceived to be absolutely vital in the Spanish mission” (794). While Jewett’s thesis is relatively fresh, and therefore interesting, it is far less persuasive. According to Jewett, when Paul asks, “Do you want to be free from fear of the authority?” he is speaking directly to those who had recently experienced or witnessed the full weight of Roman oppression (793). Thus, Paul’s answer represents a way to avoid the constant anxiety with which Jews and slaves typically were forced to live: “Then do good deeds and he will commend you; he is a minister of God for your benefit.” But it is difficult to believe that this could have been taken seriously on a superficial level. “We have to wonder, in the first place, whether restive members of the ekklesia . . . really would have had their minds changed by platitudes about magistrates serving the good and punishing only the bad” (Elliott 2006: 219-20). Indeed, Paul and his audience both knew all too well that even Paul’s own good deeds had been met consistently with persecution by the Roman authorities.
Concomitantly, it is difficult to believe that Paul would have risked alienating the vast majority of poor and slave class Christians in Rome in order to win over the minority of well-to-do bureaucrats, especially considering Paul’s antipathetic attitude to conventional power-structures in Roman society (e.g. 1 Cor. 1:26-29). While Paul may indeed have desired the cooperation of the bureaucrats in his Spanish mission, I do not think it characteristic of him to allow such considerations to determine the shape of his theology and ethics. By implication, Jewett here paints Paul as something of an opportunist, and even goes on to claim explicitly that Paul’s opportunism causes him to renege on his own deeply embedded anti-timocratic principles in 13:7 (2007: 803). In my estimation, any reading of 13:1-7 that does not force Paul to contradict himself ought to be preferred to one that does. Moreover, Jewett’s entire thesis hinges upon the assumption that there were in fact Roman bureaucrats in the Christian community. This is of course possible, perhaps even likely, but it is by no means certain. Labels: New Perspective on Paul, Paul, Pauline Theology, Romans 13
 
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