Apocalyptic Expectation. If some have seen an attenuation of Roman power in the identification of the God of Jesus Christ (implicit in 13:1) as the God by whom Rome rules, even more have seen 13:11-12 as an eschatological mantra which casts an apocalyptic light back over vv. 1-7, thus relativizing and temporalizing the Christian community’s subordination to Roman domination. “Do this,” Paul writes, “knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.” This line can be seen to a very limited extent in Bruce (1977: 110), but is taken up more tenaciously by Elliott when he concludes, contra Dunn (1986: 60; 1988: 772), that vv. 11-14 situate vv. 1-7 within a clear eschatological framework. As such, Elliott writes, “we can hardly suppose that Paul regarded the civil authorities with a resigned sense of inevitability” (1997: 187). Rather, Elliott sees the Roman imperial order in view as an enemy of God’s people (12:14-21), and the Christians “are not to take the righting of wrongs into their own hands by opposing the present ‘disposition’ (diatagê) of earthly power, since God’s redisposition of the powers is imminent anyway (13:11-14)” (2006: 224, original emphasis). Indeed, “the clear implications suggest temporary resignation to the rule of the powers-that-be. For Paul, God’s redisposition of the powers was imminent and nothing should be done to endanger the crucial undertakings of the movement” (Horsley and Silberman 1997: 191). Similarly, Roetzel sees in vv. 11-12 an “imminent expectation of the end” and therefore asks what incentive Paul would have “to develop an anti-imperialistic program” if “the kingdom of God would soon replace the Roman hegemony.” In fact, “one might argue that such intense apocalyptic expectation is by implication anti-imperialistic for it anticipates its imminent demise. . . . One might argue that this is the nature of apocalypticism” (2000: 228).

This kind of apocalyptic critique of the Roman empire is certainly not foreign to Paul. For instance, in 1 Thessalonians 5:3 Paul writes, “While people are saying, ‘Pax et Securitas,’ destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.” Paul’s language here is an “ironic allusion to the official theology and propaganda of the Pax Romana” (Georgi 1991: 28), popularized under Augustus: Pax et Securitas, or eirênê kai asphaleia—“peace and security.” The ones proclaiming Pax et Securitas, of course, are the imperial propagandists, the rulers, and all those who have given their pistis (faith/loyalty) to the Pax Romana. They are the ones living “in darkness” (1 Thess. 5:4; cf. Wengst 1986: 77-78), upon whom the apocalyptic destruction will fall. Abraham Smith sees this as the “eschatological battle in which God will bring the imperial order under judgment” (2004: 48). By it, Ernst Bammel writes, “the pretensions of imperial propaganda are torn away” (cited in Elliott 2006: 190).[1]

Furthermore, Elliott reminds us that Paul has been utilizing inflammatory political language right throughout 1 Thessalonians, language like basileia theou (the rule of God), parousia, apantêsis (vocabulary for royal visitations) and even euangelion (good news, which was the word used to announce imperial military triumphs throughout the empire). Elliott notes that all of this language could easily be construed in a subversive political fashion, and that “rather than prudently retreating from potential ‘misunderstanding’ through some quick and circumspect qualifications, Paul seizes the opportunity to press home his frontal attack on the false peace of the empire” in 5:3 (2006: 190). With this evidence in view, a parallel reading of Romans 13:11-12 as an apocalyptic proclamation of the Roman imperial order’s impending demise is certainly a resounding possibility, especially considering the remarkable parallelism of imagery:

Romans 13:11-12

Do this, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

1 Thessalonians 5:2-8

For you know that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, ‘Pax et Securitas,’ destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. For those who sleep, sleep at night. . . . But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.

Echoing Elliott, Horsley and Silberman note that Paul came increasingly “to express his understanding of Christ’s power in the idiom of empire.” Here in 1 Thessalonians 5:8 (as well as in Romans 13:12), Paul invites “the members of the community to become the palace guard of this heavenly emperor,” to put on the armor of light, “the breastplate of love and faith and the helmet of love and salvation. These images, initially drawn from Jewish apocalyptic imagery, were at the same time inextricably linked with the visual symbolism of Roman rule.” Paul’s vision of the kingdom was directly “contesting the legitimacy of Rome,” and Paul knew full well that the “political stakes of such pointed apocalyptic agitation were enormous” (1997: 156).

Finally, as with some of the approaches we have already examined, this line of interpretation also has the virtue of locating Paul at least partially within the tradition of Jeremiah, who advocated subordination to Babylon (Jer. 29:7 = Rom. 13:1), called Nebuchadnezzar “YHWH’s servant” (Jer. 27:6 = Rom. 13:4), and proscribed armed resistance to Babylon (Jer. 27:8-17; 29:8-9, 15-21 = Rom. 13:2), while nevertheless promising that the time of their subservience to Babylon would be short and that they would soon be delivered from the darkness of Babylonian domination (Jer. 27:7, 22; 29:10; 56:52-58 = Rom. 13:11-12). There are striking parallels between the Jeremianic logic and the logic of Romans 13:1-14.

Yet not all have read vv. 11-12 apocalyptically. Characteristically, C. H. Dodd argues that although in 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians Paul seems to expect the parousia within his own lifetime or shortly thereafter, in Romans Paul never mentions the parousia, with the only possible exception being the (allegedly) more ambiguous language of vv. 11-14. Yet Dodd rejects that possibility. “There is no suggestion of ‘interim ethics’ in 12:1-13:10. The positive value assigned to political institutions in 13:1-6 stands in contrast to the depreciation of family life in view of the shortness of time in 1 Corinthians 7.”[2] Thus, Dodd concludes that “the urgent sense of the imminence of ‘the End’ was fading in Paul’s mind as the years passed. He dwelt more and more on the thought that Christians were already living in the New Age, and the date at which it should be consummated became a matter of indifference. Only in the present passage the old idea of nearness of the Day of the Lord survives to give point to his moral exhortations” (1932: 209).

Insofar as Dodd’s position hinges upon the contrast between political institutions and the family, it is fatally flawed. Not only is this is a classic case of comparing apples and oranges, it is quite a misstep, since Paul’s eschatologically-motivated directive for each Christian to “retain the place in life that the Lord has assigned” him or her (1 Cor. 7:17-31) is quite comparable to a non-resistant political ethic. The common denominator is subordination, whether to the powers-that-be or to one’s social or marital status. An eschatological motivation fits both of these contexts quite fluidly.

A more recent and more provocative detractor is Esler. Although Esler, following Dodd, does not see vv. 11-12 as evidence of Paul’s persisting expectation of an imminent parousia, he nevertheless surpasses Dodd by refocusing our attention on the differences between modern and ancient Mediterranean conceptions of time. In the ancient Mediterranean world, there was what Esler calls a “temporal dimension in the existence and maintenance of the identity of a group. . . . Members see the groups to which they belong as being generated over time. As social actors the members understand the groups to which they belong as historical phenomena, stretching backward in time and forward into the future.” According to Esler, “this means that groups tell themselves who they are in part by imagining where they are going. Extrapolations of their group’s future contribute to their sense of identity in the present” (2003: 336-37).

Despite this incredibly helpful alternative template, Esler is misled by his foregone conclusion as to what an eschatological import in vv. 11-12 might look like. He seems to think that if Paul’s language is apocalyptic, then the object of the coming judgment in the immediate context must be the Christian community. He rightly notes that “the picture of the future in 13:11-14 is an unreservedly positive one,” while finding it “particularly noticeable that the horrors of the judgment are not cited here as a motivation for moral behavior in the meantime, even though that message comes through loud and clear in 2:1-10” (337). This discrepancy is easily overcome if we see the Roman domination system—the immediate context—as the darkness from which God’s people are soon to be delivered, a possibility Esler never entertains. As Esler rightly notes, Paul has already used the parousia as a motivation for moral behavior in ch. 2, so there is no need for him to do it again. That would only indicate that the reference to the parousia in 13:11-12 is “an unreservedly positive one” for those who have heeded God’s call to dikaiosynê (justice/righteousness), while remaining a negative reference in respect to those who have not—namely, the powers that be.

But Esler’s account of temporality in the formation of group identity is remarkably useful and, far from undermining the apocalyptic readings of Elliott and others, actually shows how Paul’s apocalyptic logic can be extended across time. The imminent parousia is not a necessary condition for Paul’s logic to obtain, since, as Esler explains, “the (future-oriented) actions of collectivities are often directed toward a future beyond the lifetimes of existing category members” (337). Put differently, the Roman Christians in Paul’s day are empowered to subordinate themselves voluntarily to an unjust domination system, combating it from within through love (13:8-10) rather than from without through violence (12:14-21), because of their belief that they would one day share with future generations the justice and shalom of a newly created cosmos. There is therefore no inherent disconnect, as J. Christiaan Beker rightly argues, between apocalyptic expectation and political activism (1980: 178-79). “One would expect that the church as the blueprint and beachhead of the kingdom of God would strain itself in all its activities to prepare the world for its coming destiny in the kingdom of God” (326). In this light, it may be helpful to think of vv. 8-10 as the centerpiece of chapter 13, making intelligible the prima facie incongruity between vv. 1-7 and vv. 11-14.

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