One of the obvious difficulties with using James C. Scott’s categories of public and hidden transcripts for reading ancient texts is that it is not always clear, given our distance from the social location, exactly where the hidden transcript is surfacing. This is displayed in the numerous different possibilities presented by those who have sought to apply Scott’s categories to Romans 13. Though most of these possibilities are complementary, surely they cannot all have been in the mind of Paul at once! But what is clear is that after the work of James C. Scott, those who want to take the texts seriously, whether religiously, historically, or both together, are not going to be able to do so without paying attention to the discourse dynamics Scott has observed to be in one way or another common to all environments in which asymmetrical power relations obtain. Using Scott’s categories is not “playing fast and loose with the text,” as it may appear to some; on the contrary, it is a practice we must adopt if we are going to treat these texts with the respect they deserve as products of real, historical, and human struggle.

Although the fact remains that all of the problems of Romans 13 may never be resolved exegetically, that is all right, because the problems of Romans 13 were not originally exegetical problems at all, but political ones. Or rather, the problem is that too many scholars persist in denial of the fact that exegesis all too frequently has been just one more bureaucratic function of power politics. Only as more scholars determine consciously to inhabit the political sphere and stand, and live, in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed will the floodgates open up for them, bursting with new multidimensional exegetical possibilities, not for commentaries, but for communities, who are gathered around the text desperate to find the strength and the wisdom necessary to resist conformity to this present evil age.

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