A servant for good

A brief theological aside:

The number 13 comes after the number 12. That’s not a surprising or remarkable observation, most of the time, but it can become a controversial and contentious point in certain contexts. As in, for example, when we note that Romans 13 comes after Romans 12.

Our discussion here yesterday about police carrying guns and relying on guns as their primary and paramount source of authority inevitably prompts a certain type of Christian to drag out Romans 13:1-7. That’s a classic text in Christian political thought, the place where Paul suggests that government is established by God as “a servant for good” and “does not bear the sword in vain.”

It’s not possible here to summarize or relitigate centuries of Christian discussion about the meaning of this text, or of its implications for revolution and/or self-government. The disagreement among Christian readers of this text isn’t focused on the “instituted by God” bits, but rather on what Paul says about the temporal source of power and legitimacy for these “authorities.” Some Christians argue that this source of power and legitimacy is “the sword.” Others of us disagree: We say it is “the good.”

This is where that business about 13 following 12 comes in. Team Sword wants to treat Romans 13:1-7 in isolation, as a discrete and authoritative text on the matter of authority. Team Good says you can’t understand those seven verses apart from their context — including the Pauline rehash of the Sermon on the Mount that precedes it in chapter 12 (which sums up with “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” — the segue and introduction to those seven verses) and the reprise of that which follows in the very next verses of Romans 13.

Again, I’m over-simplifying here, and this all gets much more nuanced and complicated if you want to dive into this more deeply.

But wherever you encounter any implicit or explicit Christian theology of government — Augustine, Anabaptism, liberation theology, Jefferson, Lincoln, Charlemagne, the Flushing Remonstrance, Turner, Tutu, John Courtney Murray, Joan of Arc, Constantine, Kuyper, Kirchenkampf, King, Cromwell (either one), Empire criticism, Catholic social teaching, Rauschenbusch, Robertson, the brothers Niebuhr — you’re going to run into some variation of this argument about the relationship between the sword and the good, and which of those is the source of legitimacy legitimated and instituted by the God invoked by all of them.

And for the record, I’m on Team Good. Partly this is because I believe that is the better, stronger argument. And partly — perhaps mainly — it’s because I do not wish to live in a world where the alternative is regarded as true.