Finally, Monya Stubbs (2004) also seeks to bring the categories of public and hidden transcripts to bear on our text, but takes up an approach quite different than that of the prior three samples, with innovative but complementary results. Stubbs argues that taking 13:1-7 in isolation from its surrounding context produces one-dimensional readings which focus primarily on the “subjection” aspect of the text. If instead we look at 13:1-7 in light of the surrounding context (12:1-13:14), the emphasis is shifted from “subjection as a single hermeneutical frame,” and the frame is expanded “to include subjection-reflection-resistance as a three-dimensional process that Paul espouses for empowering those who may feel powerless in their relationship with governing authorities” (172).[1]

The first part of the hermeneutical frame is subjection, which is the “first step in the three-dimensional process of empowerment” (173). In order to identify how Paul understands subjection (hypotassesthô), Stubbs traces Paul’s use of the word throughout the letter.

The first instance is in 8:7, which reads: “For the mind belonging to flesh is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, indeed it lacks the power.”[2] The mind that is not subject to God is by implication subject to flesh. What is significant here is that “the refusal by those whose minds are set on ‘this world’ to ‘subject’ to the will of God moves beyond the matter of one’s personal will. Paul raises the question of ability.” Humanity, subjected to the flesh (the “flesh” being shorthand for the unjust structures that sustain a rebellious world), “lacks the power to free itself when confronted by the law of God” (176). Thus, although humanity has voluntarily subjected itself to flesh, it is now subjected by flesh.

The second use of subjection is in Romans 8:20: “For the creation was subjected to futility not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it.” Of course, the one who subjected the creation to futility was God himself, and he did it, as the rest of the verse says, “in hope,” that is, in hope that “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (v. 21). But what is pertinent for Stubbs is not why the creation was subjected, but that it was subjected by an exterior entity, and “not of its own will.” She calls this “subjection as a consequence of coercion” (176).

Thus, Stubbs establishes that subjection in Romans can be “both an act of volition and imposition,” and sometimes (as in 8:7) both at once. Turning to 13:1, Stubbs asks of the text, “Why do people tolerate subjection?” According to Stubbs, “Paul suggests that people willingly tolerate and perpetuate their subjection because they lack the ability to recognize or resist the influence of power” (177). This raises the question of how to translate 13:1. Pasa psyche exousiais hyperechousais hypotassesthô can be translated in either the imperative middle or the imperative passive. The imperative middle would read, “Let every soul subject itself to the governing authorities.” But if we were to take the dative case of exousiais hyperechousais as the dative of means, the imperative passive would read, “Be every soul subjected by the governing authorities.” Stubbs observes that the former reading treats subjection as a volitional matter, and indicates that Paul’s hearers possess “the power to socially situate themselves within the order of their environment.”

On the other hand, the latter reading would indicate that the governing authority “is a structure in which the Christian is placed or already exists and it acts upon the Christian existence. The Christian cannot but live within a preexisting social system” that by its very structure imposes limitations upon the Christian’s ability to communicate his or her faith through intentional social formations. In other words, for Stubbs, being “subjected by the governing authorities” means accepting the imposed structures of society (typically built along lines of race, class, and gender) as limitations upon an individual’s or a group’s ability to allow their most basic convictions to transform the structures of their social relationships.

But Stubbs contends that the potency of Paul’s logic rests in the both/and, not in the either/or, of these two translations (177). Paul intends to suggest that Christians both act as agents in their subjection and are acted upon by it. “The combined reading takes seriously the enormity of the social and religious ideological weight placed on the lives of individuals within given communities” (179). Significantly, this means that Paul is not so much commanding subjection or prohibiting rebellion as much as he is pressing the Roman Christians “to acknowledge the social reality of their relation to the Roman state” (178). Paul is making explicit the “unspoken/unwritten values that underpin Roman social life,” forcing them to see it as an “ideological construct.” Ideology is a “representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.”[3] Or rather, “ideology is that which is self-evident. Yet, that which is self-evident is a construct, is created through the imagination,” and the construct “is the way in which human beings conceive of their relationship” with the structure of society and with other human beings (179).

Thus Paul forces his hearers to face the consequences of their subjection within the terms of the ideological construct. “Every soul be subjected by and to governing authorities for there is no authority if not by God and the existing ones have been appointed by God. So that the ones [who] resist the authority resist what God has ordained, and those who resist shall themselves receive judgment” (vv. 1-2). Here Paul has represented a reality constructed by the ideological construct, that is, “by the social acceptance of the people’s perceived relation to governing authority.” Within terms of this construct, “to resist the system is to resist God and live in a state of alienation from God. Alienation from God is manifested in misfortunes within the system of authority” (180). Therefore, “if you do evil, fear, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain” (v. 4).

Extrapolating on Stubbs’s reading, we might add that within the construct, of course, “evil” is whatever disrupts or controverts the established social order. For instance, in patriarchal orders such as Rome was, any group encouraging female leadership, or coequal leadership, is seen as “evil” and is immediately suspected of every seditious crime from anarchy to zealotry. Or we might take as a more current example McCarthyism as an order, and communism as an “evil,” which is damnable in a democratic cosmos fashioned after self-evident, divinely instituted principles, such as the inalienable right to pursue capital, or the right to privatize and commoditize natural resources.

The “world” Paul urges Christians not to conform to (12:2), the world that is passing away, is the ideological construct, or the public transcript, an artifice the powerholders have created in order to preserve their power. God is co-opted and re-created as the creator of the world, the order, so that what serves the interests of the ruling elites is what is natural, what is divinely instituted. Disobedience to the order is disobedience to God and alienation from God. To be alienated from God is to be crushed beneath the weight of the world of his design. Perhaps it was the weight of precisely such a world that caused a crucified Jewish rebel to wonder whether his God had forsaken him. Was Rome’s god God after all?

According to Stubbs, this is the kind of question Paul intends to incite from his hearers in the first step in his three-dimensional process of empowerment. Because “subjection alone is an oppressive posture and mere submission forces one to remain in a powerless state,” the capacity to acknowledge one’s subjection by the authority is the first step toward empowerment to resist. But Paul’s next step, according to Stubbs, is “to reflect upon the situation in which they live.” Paul is challenging the Christians in Rome “to engage in the process of careful examination that leads to the conviction that God dwells both in and beyond their ‘subjection by governing authorities’” (181). Paul wants them to come to this conviction through reflection on the nature of their relationship to the ideologically constructed world to and by which they are subjected.

Stubbs points out, as we have already noted, that “Paul has already advised the Christian community against accepting as absolute the apparent order of ‘this world’” (181). “Do not be conformed,” Paul writes, “to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God—the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (12:2). Stubbs finds Enrique Dussel instructive here. Dussel observes that in the scriptures, “this world, is a ‘practical’ totality (a totality constituted and characterized by relationship of praxis), a system or structure of prevailing, dominant social actions and relationships, under hegemony of evil” (1988: 29). “This world” refers to empire, to Babylon, to Egypt, not merely as nations, but as “systems of practices” which confront and engage God’s people. It is “self-totalizing,” lifting itself “as an absolute system of authority which is opposed to the will of God.” This also, Stubbs suggests, is how Paul uses “this world.” It is shorthand for a system of social formations and relations which itself resists the will of God. (2004: 181).

It is to “this world” that Christians are called not to conform, this world as a set of social formations. Instead, Christians are to accurately identify what are “the prevailing norms of the society in which they live,” so that they can understand how to build more just polities, which is what the ecclesiai represent. This capacity to recognize and name the prevailing norms is made possible by what Paul calls the “renewal of the mind,” the transformation of paradigm effected by the Christian’s participation in the body and work of Christ. “The renewing of the mind is evidenced by one’s rational discrimination,” by a person or group’s ability to make the predominant ideology explicit and recognize it precisely as ideology. Thus, “reflection is a process of discernment” (182). Wink reminds us that “discernment does not entail esoteric knowledge, but rather the gift of seeing reality as it really is. Nothing is more rare, or more truly revolutionary, than an accurate description of reality” (1992a: 89). Reflection is a process of discernment that infuses those subjected by the “illusionary relationship of subjection to the ‘governing authorities’ with the ability to discern that subjection to ‘worldly’ authority is not absolute” (Stubbs: 2004: 182). This liberates the subjected ones to reflect on the potential for God’s will, rather than the prevailing societal norms (derived from Roman values, Jewish law or some other ostensibly unassailable source), to shape their social formations.

It is in fact the transformation of the mind from the old patterns of prescribed norms which permits the subjected ones to know God’s will. “The significance of reflection, however, is not to end the subjection. Instead reflection prevents the Christians at Rome from making absolute the Roman political authority.” Or as Wink frames the matter, “the seer’s gift is not to be immune to invasion by the empire’s spirituality, but to be able to discern the internalized spirituality, name it, and externalize it” (1992a: 89). As a result, Stubbs perceives, the humanity of Romans 12:2 “in a state of reflection stands in direct opposition to the state of humanity described in Romans 1:21: ‘for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened’” (2004: 182).

Thus, through the first two steps in Paul’s three-dimensional process of empowerment, namely—through the acknowledgment of the fact of one’s subjection and through the discerning reflection that identifies the ideological nature of this subjection—the gospel of salvation Paul has been proclaiming has finally been brought to bear on the real world.

Whereas reflection makes obvious the subjection, and allows one to envision other possibilities of God’s reality beyond subjection, resistance represents the state of transformation: It represents those acts that a person or a community makes, based on reflection, which places both their minds and bodies beyond the given subjection. Resistance is about acting and speaking in such a way that reflects commitment against conformity both to and by this world. (185)

It is at this point that Stubbs moves into her discussion of the hidden transcript embedded in Romans 13. Having just summarized Herzog’s reading of 13:1-7, Stubbs does not deny the presence of the hidden transcript within those verses. Nevertheless, on her reading, 13:1-7 as a whole functions as the “public transcript” or the “subjection.” The entire pericope is used by Paul to force the Roman Christians to “acknowledge it as the ideological system in which they live.” Paul does this because, “by not recognizing the system, they are not only subjected by it, but they also subject themselves to it” (186). Consequently, for Stubbs, the hidden transcript in the text is not seen in vv. 1-7 (although there are certainly interpretive possibilities there), but comes crashing to the surface in vv. 8-10:

Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for whoever loves the other has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this saying: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Thus love fulfills the law. (translation mine)

The “debts” of custom taxes, tributes, fear and honor are debts imposed upon the subjects of Roman domination. This kind of “debt” comes from what Lenski calls “the proprietary theory of the state” common among agrarian rulers (1966: 214-19). Herzog explains that this means “agrarian rulers view their conquered domains as their estate to exploit and dispose of as they choose. Because they rule, they can demand from their subjects whatever they require to maintain their rule. Tribute is but one expression of this right.” This concept of the proprietary “right” was absolutely essential in order for the administration to be able to pursue its political goals. “Rulers of aristocratic empires require enormous amounts of wealth, and they can accumulate that wealth from only two sources, internal tribute through exploitation or external booty through conquest” (1994: 349). That the Neronian administration was, as we have seen, abstracting tribute even from the inhabitants of Rome proper at the time of the writing of Paul’s letter is incredibly instructive. While the public transcript of the Roman empire dictates that “giving all (military and financial bureaucrats) their expected dues is a service to both humanity and God,” Paul tells a different story in v. 8. “Herein lies Paul’s resistance language, where the hidden transcript imposes itself upon the public transcript” (Stubbs 2004: 186). Paul counsels the Roman Christians to “owe no one any debt, except the debt to love.” This is Paul’s call to resistance. Paul “employs the language most indicative of Roman social, political, and economic structure to describe how Christians ought not engage in relationship with each other” (187). While the Roman order characterizes human relationships asymmetrically, along the standard patron-client pattern, so that the term “debt” naturally belongs to asymmetrical relationships of domination and subordination, Paul radically alters the meaning of “debt” by bonding it to love. The two words are now conjoined in such a way that the one effectively redefines the other (188). By transforming debt into the commitment to love “the other” (ton heteron), Paul has undermined the empire’s claim to proprietary rights and has effectively leveled the playing fields. Now “the enemy” (12:20) has become “the neighbor” (13:9).

Thus, Paul’s revolutionary concept of debt as the duty to love is a charter for resistance, discreetly appearing “onstage” in the midst of Paul’s ostensibly loyal performance of the public transcript. Just as significantly, Paul’s allusion to the hidden transcript carries with it a scathing critique of the Roman order by “suggesting that true servants or ministers of God occupy themselves with addressing the physical and spiritual needs of the citizens, not in exacting burdensome taxes and forced military might to maintain control of the masses of people for the benefit of the governing elite.” By juxtaposing debt and love, Paul has called into question the absolute authority of Roman order and has offered “debt of love as an alternative system of authority, as a measuring stick which gauges the actions and intentions of both individuals and governing institutions” (188).

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