It should be clear by now that in Romans 13:1-7, Paul is saying relatively little about government qua government. Paul’s concern is not to demarcate the differences between just and unjust governments, because Paul is writing to a people who obviously are and have been the subjects of systemic Roman injustice for some time. Rather than constituting a treatise on the state, Romans 12-13 taken together is meant to contrast the Roman order against the body of Christ in order to show how the two stand in opposition to one another. In doing this, Paul is also concerned to display how the body of Christ the crucified one is to wrestle with that very real opposition in the very real world of domination and subordination. The strategies Paul suggests, much like the strategies suggested by Jesus of Nazareth (Matt. 5:38-42), are liberating practices which would, if their adoption became pervasive, effectively undermine the very structures of a Roman society built along lines of class, race, and gender difference. Isaak is correct when he notes that

while Paul is expressing a prodemocracy worldview, no longer valued by most westerners, the hermeneutical gap can still be bridged by exercising imaginative appropriation. The moral vision that Paul tapped into calls Christians to choose voluntarily to comply with and to engage the basic political/social structures of the society within which the they live without giving up their primary allegiance, which is reserved for God’s rule/reign. In this way, the Christian political responsibility involves subverting the political system from within and inviting all creation to join in God’s ongoing mission to bring life and wholeness to all. (2003: 45)

Although many have read Romans 13:1-7 as a charter for conservative, political quietism, it is now clear from a three-dimensional engagement with the text that Paul is in fact calling for strategic, grassroots political activism. With this in view, it is no wonder at all that just a few years after the writing of this letter, Nero would deem it necessary, for the sake of Roman order, to unsheathe that decorative sword of his and cut off Paul’s seditious head.

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