The Conventional Reading of “Give to Caesar” Leads Inevitably to Oppression

 

I’ve heard from a number of WORLD readers who refer to [the transfer of wealth through taxation] as theft, which involves the Eighth Commandment. That, I think, goes too far. A thief has no right to take what belongs to someone else. If a government, though, has an inherent right to tax its citizens, who can say at what point such taxation constitutes taking something to which it is not entitled? Jesus told us to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. At which marginal tax rate does Caesar’s right end? A 32 percent tax rate might strike me as destructively high for the national good—but I’m not sure I can call it theft. A Christian in a thoroughly socialist nation is still Biblically obligated to pay his taxes fully and honestly. —  Joel Belz, “When Politics Is Cover for Coveting,” WORLD, Oct 9, 2010, republished Feb 10, 2024

Judging from this excerpt, Joel Belz (r.i.p.) believed that governments have the right to take whatever they please from their subjects. No matter what the tax rate, he’s not sure he can call it theft. If a tax rate “destructively high for the national good” is not theft and therefore not sinful, a tax rate “destructively high” for an individual household—that is, by definition, something that makes it impossible for a household full of flesh-and-blood human beings to survive—is not theft and therefore is not sin. Is this really what Jesus is all about?

His argument hinges on an assumption, “a government ... has an inherent right to tax its citizens.” But does it?

Governments are abstractions. Do abstractions have rights? How do we know if a given abstraction, whether government or freedom or poverty, has rights? How do we know that an abstraction’s rights supersede the rights of living beings? The New Testament does attach importance to abstractions: The fruits of the Holy Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, meekness, temperance, goodness, and faith—and the characteristics of the kingdom of God—righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit—are indeed abstractions. But are these abstractions important as abstractions, or do those abstractions gain importance only insofar as they apply to the actions and attitudes of living beings?

If we can assume that abstractions are shorthand for the actions and attitudes of living beings, then Belz’s assumption can be rephrased as “government officials have an inherent right to tax the people under their rule.” Furthermore, because he sees no limit to that right, he sees all taxation as legitimate, no matter the financial harm it does to taxpayers.

Since those who have the power to tax are usually comparatively rich and certainly by definition more powerful than those whom they tax, and since they set the tax rates by doing “what is right in their own eyes,” Belz believes, again by definition, that the richest and most powerful people in a society have the right to take what they deem expedient from those less powerful who cannot resist them. He takes away from the poor and powerless the one earthly defense they have against plunder by the rich and powerful: the words “This is mine. You have no right to take it.”

Isaiah writes, “Learn to do good! Seek justice! Rescue the oppressed! Defend the orphan! Plead for the widow!” (1:17). If a ruinous tax rate is justice, what is there to seek? If it is not oppression, who needs to be rescued? He goes on: “Those who enact unjust policies are as good as dead, those who are always instituting unfair regulations . . . so they can steal what widows own, and loot what belongs to orphans” (10:1–2). If this is not a description of taxing widows and orphans off their land, what is it? Belz is, apparenly, “not sure,” and he is not alone. I have never heard anyone defend the conventional reading of “render unto Caesar” and give the poor and powerless any defense against plunder.

But it gets worse. Not only are the poor and powerless also defenseless, rulers have no way of knowing where, if anywhere, they are to draw the line.

Belz rightly notes that the tax-gathering class and net tax receivers might be motivated by the sin of covetousness, but he is unable to help either know if they are indeed being covetous. How is a Christian politician or public educator to know whether his salary is to be $75,000 per year or $125,000 or only $50,000? Or if he should vote for an appropriation to start a graduate school of microbiology at a university in his district—and how is he to know if his daughter’s plans to become a microbiologist influence his decision? Should he provide retirement benefits that enable recipients to live in beachfront condos and drive new luxury cars? Does his inherent right to tax extend to the conscription of children (1 Sam 8:11–13)? To the confiscation of land (1 Sam 8:14–15)?

Further, do people respond to incentives? What incentive does a zealous “public servant” have to lower taxes and spending rates? If the ideal citizenry needs schools to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, why not also history? Calculus? Chemistry and physics? Anatomy and physiology? Why not hospitals and clinics? Why not sports complexes, theaters, drama and dance troupes? Where does the Bible give guidance on the subject? If nowhere, is it more likely that God doesn’t care where the line is drawn or that the line is drawn at the one measurable mark: No one can rightfully take innocent people’s property?

Belz’s answer is pure pragmatism: “At the end of the day, even if the tax law gets changed so that rich people have to pay 40 percent of their income instead of just 30 percent, the coveters end up with virtually none of that difference. . . . We’ve gotten to the point that it doesn’t matter much anymore how we change things. All the taxpayers together haven’t got enough money now to change the fact that we’ve spent ourselves into oblivion.” That is, the system’s failure is purely pragmatic; the practical failure has no moral basis.

For that matter, who is this “we” he speaks of? Can those who voted against the election winners who assessed the taxes and built up the debt by appropriating the expenditures be held responsible for the descent into oblivion? Or is it rather the powerful who are the “we” who have spent the money and the powerless are the “ourselves” who are bearing the consequences?

Worse, he is no help to net tax payers. How are they supposed to know if they are being covetous for desiring or calling for a 3.2 percent tax rate when they are being assessed ten times that amount? Because he believes that “a government . . . has an inherent right to tax its citizens” and he places no limit on “what is Caesar’s,” he—again—takes from the powerless their one earthly defense: the words “In the name of God, I tell you that you have no right to take this from me.”

Or does God simply regard poverty as an abstraction to be spiritualized to the state of not having asked Christ into one’s heart? Does he not care about the material deprivation brought about by people with a generous view of Caesar’s domain? Do those responsible for tax increases that they and their associates profit from bear no responsibility for the people who lose their homes or livelihoods as a result? Or is God simply a heavenly Donald Trump who sacrifices individuals on the altar of what the powerful call progress?

Has he given no measurable guide to justice that can be used to fulfill the Great Commission?

I think he has: No human beings, not even those called the government, have the right to do as they please with the defenseless.

The one who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet,” (and if there is any other commandment) are summed up in this, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Romans 13:8b–10)

The Speech I Wasn’t Asked to Give at My Seventieth Birthday Party

Hello, and thank you for coming. It’s an honor to have you here and it’s an honor for me to be asked to speak.

I had actually been thinking for quite some time about what I would say today, and it sounded good in the shower, so let’s see how it sounds in real life.

I think the first thing I’d like to say is what I wish I had sincerely believed by the time I was ten years old—and you can put this on my gravestone. I wish I had sincerely believed that I had no business closer than conversational distance to a female until I knew what I wanted to do with my life and I was actually paying the bills doing it. It would have saved me years of agony and heartache and feeling sorry for myself. There’s nothing or very little I can think of in the world you want to have less than a former girlfriend, and there’s almost nothing I can think of that you don’t want to be more than a former boyfriend.

More importantly, I would like to say that I have tasted and seen that God is good. “The Lord is good, and his mercy, his love, his kindness, endures forever.” God is good, and he shows his goodness through his people.

I wanted to have this event somewhere else besides this church. After all, at this phase in life, it’s all about the alcohol, and they wouldn’t let us serve any here. So it’s ironic—or providential—that we are here because this building has been a very important part of God showing his goodness to me and my family through his people.

Twenty-two years ago. I was a disgraced former missionary with a wife and three school-age daughters to provide for. I had no job and no skills I knew how to work into a job, and I felt like a leper. We had family, but there are people with families who are sleeping on the street, and I was literally afraid of having to sleep under overpasses. Ginny’s sister and her husband took us in, though—ten people in a one-bathroom house—and we were OK for the summer. But how long could that last?

One of the first things we wanted to do, however, was to put our girls into a Christian school, so we enrolled them in a Christian school from a Christian tradition much different from ours. But one of the people who worked there happened to go to this church, and she was somehow instrumental in connecting us with a Christian couple who had an available rental house we could almost afford. We lived there dry and reasonably warm for fifteen years.

Soon after that, we wandered into this church, not knowing anybody or anything about it. The people took us in right away—our girls were involved in youth groups, Ginny was playing keyboards, and I was part of the missions committee. They were imperfect people, and we were imperfect people, so we got along fine. I’ll never forget that first Thanksgiving week when somebody knocked on the door one evening and brought in four big boxes full of groceries that were badly needed.

I managed to go through three jobs in the first year, each less enjoyable than the previous and none paying anything close to what I needed to provide for my family. But God provided Ginny with piano students, which paid the majority of our bills. And God hadn’t forgotten me either: one of the men in the church heard a bit of my story and help me get a gig teaching English writing skills at a local seminary. I felt like the leper being invited to work at a hospital. That job evolved into the editing business that I’m still somewhat involved in.

A bit later, one of God’s people, the husband of one of Ginny’s old roommates, helped me get a long-term temporary gig working on the notes for a Bible published by a major publishing house, and now I felt like the leper was being allowed to work with patients. I was being allowed to work with holy things again, and that was also a great time for us financially.That gig ended, and there were some lean years until an old colleague suggested I call some mutual colleagues, and before long I was working not only on notes but also on the translation of the Bible that that group was putting into the hands of people from minority groups that could never hope to have their own expatriate specialists on site long term. I could hardly believe that God would allow me to do those things working remotely and to travel to Hanoi and Kathmandu on business: the leper was now in the operating room! And over the last few years, I have been privileged to go by myself to Costa Rica and to accompany Ginny to Peru, Cameroon, and Gambia to hold workshops, with most of the expenses provided by donations from God’s people.

So, my testimony is that God is good. He has certainly been good to me and to my family. What the catechism says is true: the most important thing in life—”the chief end of man”—the most important thing in life, what life is all about, is to “glorify God and enjoy him forever”—that is, to show the world how good God is and then know that he has accepted you as his child and you will be enjoying him forever. He shows his goodness through his people, through his church. What life is all about is to be part of God’s community, the community God is building to live for Jesus. Everything else is just stuff.

So that’s what I’ve learned from living for seventy years.

Thank you.

No One Is Exempt: Romans 13:1–7 in Context

Part 4: Implementation: How Do We Get There from Here?

In my first three posts (see here, here, and here), I laid the groundwork for tetranomy, the idea that nobody but nobody has the right to kill innocent people, take their property, defraud them, or defame them; I argued that to assign legitimacy to the state as described in Romans 13:1–7 is by nature to set up a class of people exempt from tetranomy, defended a reading of Romans 13:1–7 that comports with tetranomy, and showed that the command to honor one’s parents (Exod 20:12) cannot be extended to imply that the state is ordained to command or forbid behavior apart from the criteria of tetranomy. In this final post, I argue that the implementation of tetranomy must itself be tetranomic in nature: it must make the righteousness of the kingdom of God and the fulfillment of the Great Commission its means as well as its end.

States are almost always established and run from the top down: someone wins a war and establishes the system. The only exceptions I can think of to this rule are King Saul and later King Jeroboam of Israel. Saul was anointed by Samuel and became king without armed conflict within his society. His successor David, while also anointed by Samuel (1 Sam 16:13), was able to establish his dynasty only after armed conflict (2 Sam 2:8–4:12). David’s son Solomon inherited the dynasty peaceably, but armed conflict at the inception of Jeroboam’s secession from Rehoboam was prevented only by divine intervention (1 Kgs 12:21–24). Israel’s monarchy was marked by changes in dynasty through assassinations by Baasha, Zimri, Jehu, Shallum, Menahem, Pekah, and Hosheah—and, of course, the deportation by Nebuchadnezzar. The United States is no different. It was born of a revolutionary war; the victors—the leaders of the armed conflict—wrote its constitution, and the winners of elections since then and their appointees have determined how that constitution is to be put into practice. While the shift is viewed as salubrious by some and deleterious by others, both sides agree that the balance of power has shifted from the local level to the national level: as some have noted, the United States have become the United State, run from the top down.

It is therefore natural that when the question of implementing tetranomy is raised, the first reaction is to think of a top-down implementation, as though tetranomy’s proponents expect to win elections, repeal antitetranomic laws, and pass tetranomic ones or stage a coup or violent revolution and install a tetranomic government. Such an antitetranomic implementation is sure to fail. However, the success of tetranomy depends on the hearts of the population; there has to be a critical mass of the population that believes that nobody but nobody has the right to kill innocent people, take their property, defraud them, or defame them. It can only be implemented from the bottom up through a change in the hearts of the people. Only the Holy Spirit can change hearts, and he does so through the preaching of the message of Jesus. The implementation of tetranomy goes hand in hand with obedience to the Great Commission.

I said in the first post that a person obeys the commandment to love God in Deuteronomy 6:5 only insofar as they obey the commandment to love their neighbor (Matt 9:18–19; 25:31–46; Rom 13:8–10; 1 John 4:20). The Great Commission not only includes the command to tell people that they are incorrigible rebels against God, that Jesus died to pay for their sins, and that they need to repent (Matt 28:19); it also includes the command to teach them to obey Christ’s commands, the most important of which is to love their neighbors by respecting and promoting life, property, and truth. As individuals respect and promote life, property, and truth, the groups that they form will in turn protect and promote life, property and truth. As those groups cooperate with each other, they will gain influence and eventually control over their circumstances.

Health and education are two areas in which we can see this at work already. I assume that school taxes are a violation of the command not to steal. But no candidate who runs on a platform of defunding the schools would be elected anywhere, and no such initiative would pass. However, as tax-funded schools are becoming self-consistent with their ungodly presuppositions, parents—even non-Christian parents—are becoming frustrated that their children are becoming not so much educated as indoctrinated. Many have pulled their children out of the tax-funded schools and begun educating them at home, but home education is beyond the reach of many people of modest means. While the idea is viewed askance in the United States, Christian schools in many less-affluent countries welcome children who will obey the rules from non-Christian families who will pay the fees. While not all non-Christian students at Christian schools come to Christ, and some Christian children at those same schools apostatize, a Christian staff serving the worldly needs of nonbelievers in Christ’s name and speaking his words as the opportunity arises seems to me a reasonable way to try to fulfill the Great Commission. Rather than trying to top-down legislate policies in tax-funded schools, a tetranomic strategy is to provide a godly alternative, hoping that eventually enough taxpayers find themselves served better by the Christian schools that they vote to stop taxing themselves for anti-Christian schools.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has given us ample evidence that a tax-funded, state-run health system will inevitably be subject to the whims of the rich and powerful who run the political system: that is, such systems are by nature political, not moral, and not based on science. As a result of the politicization of the health care industry—actually, the system has been heavily political for a long time, but it has only recently alienated so many of the people it supposedly exists to serve—many Christians and non-Christians have chosen to seek treatment outside the official system. While there are strident calls for this or that official to be replaced because of their performance during the pandemic, so far there have been few calls for the system to be defunded. However, again, the Western church has much to learn from less-affluent parts of the world. In Cameroon, every Baptist mission consists of a church, a school, and a hospital. I do not know if the level of care in the Baptist hospitals is as high as that in the tax-funded hospitals, but a safe assumption is that if it is, people will choose to go to them.

But what about national defense and law enforcement, those areas considered sacred by proponents of the “watchman” state? Wouldn’t a tetranomic state dissolve into internal chaos and be taken over by foreign invaders?

Again, because a tetranomic society would have to be built from the bottom up, it would not exist until there were a critical mass of the population who believed that life, property, and truth are sacred. Such people would not only not promote chaos in their society, they would not tolerate chaotic behavior. And as a critical mass, they would (eventually, anyway) by definition be in control. They might not all agree on every point—deviant sexuality and abortion being probable examples—just as today not all private schools are Christian and some private health establishments perform abortions. But today, Christians pay taxes to promote sexual perversion in schools and perform abortions in tax-funded health systems; not having to pay for what we consider immoral would be an improvement, and one can hope and pray that once the gun of politically directed, tax-funded law enforcement is taken off the table, the groups—and most importantly, individuals—can talk to each other, and as the Spirit moves, people come to Christ and repent of their sins.

As for foreign invaders, who is more likely to put up a daunting defense: mercenaries paid by people who despise their overlords and vice versa, or a militia of free people accustomed to being responsible for themselves and who view their neighbors as partners in mutually beneficial relationships? Will defense budgets and professional soldiers be needed? Probably—freedom isn’t free. But the lower the social level at which the budget for these budgets and soldiers is established—as should be plain by now, the money would come from membership fees to what would amount to mutual aid societies, not taxes—the less likely the money will go for extravagance and fool’s errands.

Finally, who will build the roads? I don’t know. But I am sure that if I want to buy oranges from Florida and visit my children on the West Coast, as I look for a mutual aid society to buy into, I will look for one with cordial relationships with other such societies that will enable me to travel across the continent, and those who have invested their hard-earned capital in such societies will be looking to serve me. I believe that just societies are peaceful and peaceful societies are prosperous, and a tetranomic society, which has to be built by a tetranomic process, will be just, peaceful, and prosperous.

I submit that in attempting to build prosperous societies through taxation, Christians through the ages have gained the world to the degree that they have found prosperity, but they have lost their soul. The unpleasantness since March 2020 is a symptom of that loss, and until the church pursues justice and compassion based on justice as the most important part of her own discipleship and the discipleship to which she calls the nations, things will continue to get worse. Jesus has promised that his people will be persecuted, so Christians in even the most just society will suffer persecution, but he has promised to bless such people (1 Pet 3:14). If people hate or persecute us for doing evil, however, even our suffering has no value (1 Pet 2:22).

The book of Judges chronicles a society that began as something of a tetranomy and ended in tyranny. Even a tetranomy will be imperfect, will be semper reformanda, and will eventually perish, sharing the fate of the worst tyranny, though it will surely leave a vision for those who would rebuild the ruins. But those who lived in the fear of God during the periods in which “the land had rest” (Jdg 3:11, 30; 5:31) were the freest and most prosperous people the world has ever known. We can do no better than to build such a society for our progeny.

No One Is Exempt: Romans 13:1–7 in Context

Part 3: Parental Authority and Its Extension to the State

In my first post, I laid out the theological context in which Romans 13:1–7 was written, defending the idea that those to whom God gives irresistible force have no right to take life or property, not even if they call it taxes, from those they control. In the second, I defended my interpretation of Romans 13:1–7 as Paul’s instruction to his readers about how to live with the inevitable injustices perpetrated by the rich and powerful against whom they had no defense. Here, I show that the relationships cited as analogical to that between the state and its subjects are best understood as also subject to tetranomy.

Parents and Children

Adherents to the “authority is a gift from God” school make much of “the first commandment with a promise,” Exodus 20:12, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” With no warrant from that passage, they jump to the conclusion that this means that believers are to be subservient to “their betters,” those “over them”; thus, the command to children is extended to apply to women, slaves, and subjects of government. God has ordained a chain of command: the Father is the head of Christ; Christ is the head of husbands, slave-masters, and governing authorities: “The head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor 11:3); “Slaves, obey your human masters with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart as to Christ” (Eph 6:5); “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities” (Rom 13:1).

Of course, the dominant party has responsibilities as well: “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her” (Eph 5:25); “Masters, treat your slaves the same way, giving up the use of threats, because you know that both you and they have the same master in heaven” (Eph 6:9). Well, two of them do; though wise kings are said to rule justly (Prov 8:15) and they are urged to remember God (Ps 2:10–12; 138:4–5), I see no command from God specifically to the state to do anything to benefit its subjects. But the conventional wisdom says that this places an obligation on the state to be just and on its subjects to obey as they would obey God except for worship and evangelism, the vaguely defined areas discussed earlier.

A tetranomic reading of Exodus 20 warrants no such extension of “the first commandment with a promise” to either slave owners or the state, as the following presentation will make clear.

I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. (2–3)

Here we have two main predications: “I am your God” and “You shall have no other gods.” How are we to understand how they are connected? There is no conjunction between them. Are they two separate, unrelated predications? Or is the second a necessary inference drawn from the first? Or is there another possible connection?

I find it most likely that God wants them to understand that they are to have no other gods before him because he is their God: “I am your God; therefore, you shall have no other gods before me,” as it were. Not only is the LORD their God, he has acted on their behalf: “[I] brought you from the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery.” Biblical faith is always a response of gratitude for gracious actions by God. This faithful response carries through the prohibition against carved images and misusing God’s name (and, of course, all of the rest of the way through Scripture); these directly diminish the identity of the LORD as their God and the one who has acted on their behalf.

Remember the Sabbath day to set it apart as holy. For six days you may labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God; on it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or your cattle, or the resident foreigner who is in your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy. (8–11)

While God says here that the Sabbath rest is to reflect his rest after he had finished creation, in practical terms, the Israelites were not going from one “house of slavery” to another: they were allowed—yea, commanded—to rest and trust that God would make up for the resulting loss of income. God had brought them out of slavery; therefore, they were to rest.

In true tetranomic style, we see that nobody but nobody was exempt from this command to rest; it was to be obeyed—and presumably enjoyed—by everyone.

Honor your father and your mother, that you may live a long time in the land the LORD your God is giving to you.

Their God had brought them out of slavery; therefore, they were to honor their parents. In practical terms, why?

It is through our parents, even the worst of them, that God makes us who we are. They conceive, carry, and birth us. They feed us, house us, clothe us, and clean up after us. For that, if nothing else, we should honor them out of gratitude.

The “authority is a gift” mentality says that we are to honor them because of their position. Tetranomy says we honor them because they have first served us. Everything good most of us have has come from them. God through them has provided for us, so we honor and thank God by honoring and thanking them.

Does this position of honor permit them to violate tetranomy? Does a father have the right to force his daughter to have sex or even get married against her will? Can he force his son to kill or take goods from innocent people? Does a child have the right to choose his profession? If Dad wants him to be a lawyer, does he have the right to be a musician?

These can be tough questions. The Pakistani father in the movie “A Girl in the River,” who has unsuccessfully attempted to kill his daughter who eloped, says, “She took away our honor. . . . I labored and earned lawfully to feed her. [She has destroyed] my lawful labor.” Another man adds, “Parents put in so much effort to nurture, support, and care for their children. Don’t parents have the right to decide their children’s future?”

All parents and all children are sinners. All require forgiveness, and forgiveness is by nature gracious; it can never be earned. A child can expect God to require him to give honor that his parents do not deserve. A parent can expect God to require him, like the father in the parable of the lost son, to allow his child to engage in foolishness in the hope of receiving him back later.

Are there times apart from parents forcing Christian children to worship idols or marry outside the faith when the children need to refuse? Tetranomy would say that a parent has no right to command his child to violate the laws that nobody but nobody has the right to violate. Beyond that, God expects people to seek wisdom from the Bible, in prayer, and from godly companions and accept the consequences as God’s providence.

This command is essentially a command to be grateful for what one has received from God through other people. Only to the degree that the state has first provided benefits does the believer honor the state as a matter of gratitude. A state that demands total obedience is claiming to be the source of all benefits; this is clearly blasphemy. Believers are commanded, however, to be gracious, to go the extra mile with those who oppress them (Matt 5:41), and primarily because they have been so commanded—not because the recipient has any right to it—they are to “honor the king” (1 Pet 2:17).

Slaves and Masters

As stated in the second post, subjects of the state, as slaves, have really no choice but to submit to their masters—the alternative is usually death. So submitting to commands that do not violate tetranomy—working without compensation and being plundered or persecuted, for example—is what we do as part of taking up our cross and following Jesus. It is how we “live to fight another day.” God will cause all things to eventuate for our benefit in this life or the next (Rom 8:28; 2 Cor 4:17). God commands us to prepare to suffer injustice (1 Pet 3:14, 17); that is, nothing we suffer or are commanded to do is necessarily right or just per se.

For that reason, slaves and subjects of the state are free to gain their freedom if they can do so lawfully (1 Cor 7:21). That is, prisoners of terrorist groups should submit as much as they need to to preserve their lives, but they do not need to consider their captors—who are the rich and powerful in their lives at the time—appointed by God as ministers of God’s righteousness; rather, their captors are ministers of their own version of “righteousness,” most likely ungodly and unjust, and so, if the captives can escape, they are theologically justified in doing so.

Some suffering is deserved (1 Pet 2:20), and so is some slavery. In a perfectly just society, a man who steals or damages property and cannot be trusted or expected to recompense his victim would become a slave for a stated period of time (Exod 22:3). Such a slave has no right to escape.

In that vein, one might wonder if a person who has benefited from a state’s tax-subsidized programs—Social Security or “public service” pensions, for example—receiving more than he put in, has any right to escape that state when it becomes tyrannical. Perhaps Christian Americans are becoming increasingly enslaved to the healthcare, education, and welfare establishment because in freer times they were happy to receive its benefits and thought nothing of those who were forced to pay into the system but did not receive (or even want) its benefits (Jas 5:4).

Again, the tetranomic position is that while slaves have no practical choice but to submit to commands to engage in morally permissible actions, nobody but nobody has the right to enslave innocent people or to command those justly enslaved or otherwise subordinated to violate the life or property of innocent people.

Part Four is here.

No One Is Exempt: Romans 13:1–7 in Context

Part 2: Romans 13:1–7 Verse by Verse

If, as I have claimed in my previous post, Romans 13:1–7 is not an exposition of the purpose of government, what is it?

As previously stated, Paul’s main purpose in writing the epistle to the Romans is to explain what salvation in Christ entails: why it is needed (universal, irremediable sin), how it is accomplished (Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection and God’s calling), and how those whom God has saved are to live as a result. He was most likely writing to a sizable group of people who had come to the attention of the ruling powers in Rome, so he would have kept in mind that his words would find their way to the rulers; he needed to be sure to avoid the exousiai misunderstanding his words and bringing misguided persecution on his readers. (He acknowledges that some persecution is inevitable in 8:35 and 12:4.) In our passage, he assumes his readers understand that nobody but nobody has the right to do the evils perpetrated or commanded by the exousiai, reminds them that God will work all things to their good, and instructs them to submit as much as they can within those limits.

Exposition

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. (1a)

In one sense, everyone is subject to the governing authorities whether they want to be or not. “Governing authorities” are always ultimately the people to whom no one can say no. But of course, Paul is talking about the attitude of the heart: we are to be somehow willing to have them rule over us. Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount come to mind: “Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles” (Matt 5:39–41). That is, if we are treated unjustly—that seems to be the implied context—not only do we not fight back, we treat those who mistreat us graciously and generously. (I suppose one application to these verses could be that we should pay double the amount on our tax bills, but I am certainly not that holy yet.) That does not mean that either those who strike us, those who sue us, those who enslave us, or those who otherwise “govern” us have the right to do as they do. Rather, what they do is between them and God; we are to be gracious and generous, period. We are to strive to live “a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity” (1 Tim 2:2). Within limits, that means obeying the laws.

For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. (1b)

God ordains kings, from Pharaoh (“I have raised you up,” Exod 9:16) to Nebuchadnezzar (“The Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will,” Dan 4:25) to the antichrist Beast (“The beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them. . . . I saw a beast rising out of the sea . . . . The whole earth marveled as they followed the beast. . . . And the beast was given [by God] a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed [by God] to exercise authority for forty-two months,” Rev 11:7; 13:1–5). So yes, God gives them authority and power.

But do they have the right to use that God-given authority and power to kill innocent people? Is the idea of a person having the right to act unjustly not an oxymoron? It is one thing to say that God in his providence will bring good from evil actions, quite another to say that that act was legitimate because good came from it.

God surely granted Pilate the authority to act unjustly (John 19:10–11)—unless we hold that Pilate acted justly by having Jesus executed—but did he give him the right? If tetranomy holds here, Pilate had no right to harm an innocent person, so to have Jesus crucified was to commit injustice, and he had no right to do so.

God ordained the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem because of the people’s sin, but he also holds them guilty of robbery and murder (Hab 2:7–8). If tetranomy holds, how much more will he hold guilty those governors who kill and plunder innocent people!

Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment . . . (2)

The key word here is “judgment”—whose judgment? God’s? Man’s?

Obviously, if you drive 55 in a 25 mile-per-hour zone and run over a child, you will get judgment from both God and man. But is it possible to be judged by God but not by man? Or vice versa? If tetranomy is a valid principle, then the answer is yes in both cases. The Roman soldiers who murdered the innocent children in Bethlehem (Matt 2:16) were not condemned as murderers by the governing authority, but tetranomy would predict that God convicted them of murder. To find someone guilty of an unjust law duly instituted—that is, punished by the authorities for an activity that transgresses no divine law—we need look no further than today’s America, where people have been punished for transgressing laws of which they were not aware against crossing state lines to buy cough medicine.

This “judgment” (krima) that resisters will incur—what is it? Is it “damnation” (KJV), eternal separation from God, or is it punishment by the earthly authority? To follow the KJV here is to claim that people who disobey even the most godless decree of the state risk damnation and that the way to please God is to obey such godless decrees. The claim of tetranomy is that the punishment that those who disobey the state’s decrees can expect to suffer is earthly, inflicted by the authorities. And, of course, persecution by the state is precisely the enforcement of unjust laws and infliction of undeserved suffering. Our discussion of verse 1 warns, or at least advises, us to obey the petty dictates. Tetranomy tells us to disobey the evil ones.

. . . (for rulers cause no fear for good conduct but for bad). (3a)

The key words here are good and bad. Who defines them in this situation? The conventional wisdom says that because it is God who ultimately determines good and bad, “good” and “bad” here refer to what God calls good and bad. However, as has been said, unless we hold that “the one who is in authority” listens to God, it is “the one who is in authority” who determines good and bad in everyday life, and, as has also been said, we can expect his view of good and bad to be ungodly. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (Isa 5:20); tetranomy would add that woe to those who do so on the basis of decrees by the rich and powerful ungodly.

I am not sure how to answer anyone who thinks the mothers in Bethlehem or the family of Naboth or the Jews of the Third Reich or the Christians under Islam and Communism had no fear in earthly terms for their good conduct. Yes, the Christian is to “be strong and courageous” even in the face of torture and death—I get that. But Paul is speaking of normal human fear here. His words are the same as the tyrant’s reassurance, “If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.”

But the fact is that some rulers do terrorize those who do good. This is why the conventional wisdom tries (and succeeds with most people) to sneak in the idea that the ruler is not supposed to cause good people to fear. But that’s not what the text says. It flatly declares that rulers rightly (at least as much as humanly possible) are out to protect the good and punish the evil.

Jesus says that we can expect unbelieving rulers to act in their own interests and contrary to the interests of those they rule. “The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions use their authority over them” (Matt 20:25). Such people are even considered benefactors (Luke 22:25). But they will not use godly standards to determine good and bad because they cannot. “The outlook of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to the law of God, nor is it able to do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom 8:7–8). “The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:14).

So if we can pretty much guarantee that the rulers will be the ones who determine what is good conduct and what is bad conduct on the street and that they will use ungodly criteria to make that determination, we can expect that many of the laws they make will be unjust. God gives them the opportunity to make unjust laws, but—unless God has granted them the right to act unjustly, which the standard of tetranomy denies—they have no right to make those laws.

Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval. (3b)

Do we want the “approval” of the ungodly? Or is it God’s approval that we seek?

Paul is saying here that as long as we obey the decrees of the powerful, we can expect to live in peace. He is not supposing, let alone claiming, that those decrees are just.

For he is God’s servant for your good. (4a)

Paul has already said, “All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). Whether the actions or decrees of the one in authority are just or unjust, they will work together—or as 픓⁴⁶ and Codex Vaticanus put it, God works all things together—for the good of God’s people. God calls Nebuchadnezzar his servant (Jer 25:9; 27:6; 43:10), and Nebuchadnezzar’s murderous pillaging was ultimately God’s plan for the good of his people; what Nebuchadnezzar planned for evil, God planned for good (cp. Gen 50:20)—it was no less murder and pillage because God planned it for good, but God did plan it for good. We need not fear the one in authority—not because he will always treat us well when we do good, but because whatever evil he does in the short term God will ultimately turn to good.

But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. (4b)

Again, as with the discussion of “good” above, the salient word here is “wrong”: who defines what is right and wrong? Ultimately, of course, it is God, but whose definition of wrong is Paul talking about in this instance? Since “the sword” here is a metaphor for earthly judgment, it seems reasonable to expect “wrong” to be defined by the earthly judge, whether he listens to God or not. And he will “bear the sword” against anyone who goes against what he thinks is wrong.

Here, I must admit, my rendering runs into a problem: “be afraid.” Jesus’s people are not to be afraid of those who can only kill the body; we are only to fear God (Matt 10:28). If we take this word (phobou) as proof that our fear here is to be only of God, then “wrong” here would be defined as what God calls wrong. I have two reasons for thinking this is not the case.

First, I assume that this verse was written with the likely imperial spies in mind. The spies would be unfamiliar with Jesus and Scripture and would take this sentence in its earthly sense: “If you do what is morally wrong, you should be afraid of the one in authority because he will punish you.” The more loyal the spy to the Emperor, the more likely he is to equate imperial edicts with moral rightness and consider whatever punishment is meted out to be just. So Paul is hiding the truth in plain sight: loving God first and your neighbor as yourself—or proclaiming Jesus as Lord—may get you in trouble with the state.

Second, if the correct interpretation were that “wrong” here refers to what God judges as wrong, it would logically follow that whatever the one in authority says is God’s word, either because the ruler’s words are or become God’s word or because the ruler is somehow in touch with God and speaking his mind. First Corinthians 2:14 eliminates the latter possibility, and the examples of the Hebrew midwives (Exod 1:17), Moses’s parents (Heb 11:23), and the wife of the man of Bahurim (2 Sam 17:17–20) eliminate the former. Tetranomy allows us to take “be afraid” as a code word or metonym for “prepare to die.” Again, the truth is hidden in plain sight.

For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out wrath on the wrongdoer. (4c)

The Greek does not specify that the “wrath” here is God’s: the phrase is “the one who avenges for punishment on the one who does what is bad” (LEB; ekdikos eis orgēn tō to kakon prassonti). The conventional wisdom (e.g., ESV) infers that the wrath is God’s, but a tetranomic reading would lead us to posit that the definitions of “wrath” and “wrongdoer” here are, as above, those of the one in authority, which may or may not match God’s definitions. If you go against the authority, you can expect him to carry out his wrath on you.

Not all laws promulgated by the ungodly are unjust, so the wrath of the “servant of God” may indeed be God’s wrath. How do we know whether the authorities are carrying out God’s wrath? Simple: if the violation is of tetranomy, the punishment is just. Otherwise (with debatable exceptions), it’s not.

This interpretation is like the conventional wisdom in that both acknowledge that the passage cannot be taken at face value. However, it has two advantages. First, instead of importing its modifications from material that may or may not have been available to the original readers and is certainly in a different part of Scripture, it gets its key from an adjacent passage. Secondly, it pulls out from the roots the all-too-human and ungodly tendency to create a special class of people exempt from the most important commandments who can procure advantages for those they favor that are unavailable through the peaceful interactions of a tetranomic system.

Therefore one must be in subjection, not only because of wrath but also for the sake of conscience. (5)

We know what the “therefore” is there for: because those who do what the authorities consider wrong can expect to suffer punishment, we need to “be in subjection” for two reasons, “because of wrath” and “for the sake of conscience.” We have dealt with the matter of wrath already, but what about the matter of “conscience”? Is Paul not saying that our consciences will rightly bother us if we disobey the authorities?

At least one lexicon (Abbot-Smith) gives the primary definition of syneidēsis (translated “conscience” in v. 5) as “consciousness,” and if this is the case here, it would mean that we would be “conscious,” thinking about and thus bothered by our actions. However, Paul elsewhere only uses the term to refer to a person’s sense of right and wrong. He says the conscience can be “wounded” (1 Cor 8:2) or “seared” (1 Tim 4:2), and in both cases it no longer judges right and wrong as God does; its default condition, however, seems to be receptive at some level to God’s standards of right and wrong. So again, if we disobey the authorities when they forbid us to carry out tetranomy or command us to break it, will our consciences not rightly convict us of sin?

I have no good exegetical answer. I can only say that the Hebrew midwives, Moses’s parents, and the wife of the man of Bahurim mentioned earlier must have had what felt like pangs of conscience (i.e., consciousness) until the authorities called off the dogs. Even Peter and John must have felt on edge returning to the temple after having been in prison and engaging in the activity that they had just been imprisoned for. How could they not? Or more recently, Martin Luther, “the Bull,” the first time he was asked if he would recant, asked for a day to think again before answering. Who of us has never waffled between absolute certainty and questioning whether we were really doing the right thing?

I am left with saying that syneidēsis here is a catachresis, metonym, or code word to be taken as the feeling of being on edge and in line for suffering as the result of actions that go against the prevailing spirit of the time. We should obey as much as possible, not only to avoid being punished but also to avoid being on edge until the authorities have moved on. But again, the ultimate judge of right and wrong is God; we need to obey God no matter what, not only so he does not punish us but so that we can have an unhindered relationship with him, and to obey God, what we need to live according to is not the decrees of the godless rich and powerful but the spirit of tetranomy.

For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. (6)

The conjunction here, dia touto gar, “for because of this,” is a variant of dio, “therefore,” in the previous clause; it means that what follows is based on something, “this,” that precedes it. What does “this” refer to? The closest referent is “one must be in subjection”: because one must be in subjection—and, as we have seen, the Roman Christians had no real literal choice but to be in subjection—you also pay taxes. That is, being in subjection, essentially a slave, means giving up whatever property those in power demand.

As we have also seen, “the authorities are ministers of God”—not because they are especially committed to godly rule or are especially attentive to God’s word, but because God ordains whatever they do, good or evil (Amos 3:6) and will use it for his glory and the good of his people.

Taxation is the sine qua non of the state. Without taxes, no state can survive. The larger the tax base, the better off and more secure the ruling elite are (Prov 14:28). The down side is that heavy taxes breed resentment (1 Kgs 12:4), and as soon as the oppressed see an opportunity, they will revolt (1 Kgs 12:16). Until that day, however, it is taxes that enable the authorities to exercise, expand, and secure their power.

Since the authorities use tax money to oppress people, should we pay taxes? While the Pharisees asked Jesus that question to test him (Matt 22:17), disciples through the ages have asked the same question in all sincerity: should we give the government the resources it uses to oppress people? Jesus “realized [the Pharisees’] evil intentions” and so gave them an answer that was no practical help. (If everything on earth belongs to God, Ps 24:1, what belongs to Caesar? Does everything Caesar puts his name on automatically become his?) The tax about which Jesus gave Peter the answer before the question was asked (Matt 17:24–27) was to the temple, not to the Romans. So before Paul raises the subject in our passage, there has been no inscripturated instruction.

Paul tells his readers that they are to pay taxes, no matter how onerous or how evil the purposes for which they will be used. They are not guilty of the murder, theft, fraud, and defamation their tax money pays for. Again, they are essentially slaves, so their choice is between paying taxes and dying. Paul tells them to pay the tax and live, knowing that God will work out everything for the good of his people.

Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes, revenue to whom revenue, respect to whom respect, honor to whom honor. (7)

The salient term here is “owed.” Who determines what is owed? In normal society, what one person owes to a second person is no more or less than what properly belongs to the second person. In this context, however, the determination is obviously being made by the state. The ruler is thus asserting that he is the proper owner of whatever that tax covers. But does he truly automatically become the owner of whatever he says is his? Again, if the earth and everything in it properly belong to God, how does the one in authority declare ownership over anything by fiat?

This leads to the question of how God grants people stewardship over what are ultimately his own resources. A corollary of tetranomy is that he grants that stewardship of physical resources to those who are able to acquire them without violating life, property, trust, or reputation. Some people will be able to so acquire much more than they need to survive, others enough to enjoy varying degrees of comfort, and others not enough to survive. If what we have has been acquired lawfully, we can rightly say in the name of God to everyone, from Pharaoh on the throne to the slave girl grinding grain, “This is mine; you can’t take it.”

This means that the slave girl has no right to pilfer from her master (the legitimacy of master-slave relationships being a subject to be covered elsewhere), and, to the point of this essay, Pharaoh has no right to assess taxes. We have to pay taxes because God has given us no command to withhold them, but Pharaoh has no right to assess them.

Put another way, the poor and defenseless have no physical defense against the rich and powerful oppressor. But if tetranomy holds, they can rightly say to him in the name of God, “You have no right to take this from me. God sees and will repay.” The conventional wisdom deprives the poor of even that defense by placing no limit on the acquisitiveness of the authorities; thus, as the Pharisees’ declaration of corban freed its adherents from honoring their parents (Mark 7:11–13), the conventional wisdom frees its adherents from defending the rights of the poor and defenseless against the rich and powerful (Prov 29:7; 31:9; Isa 10:2; 27:2).

Perhaps for that reason we will never be able to throw off the yoke of oppression by the rich and powerful “authorities.” But to the degree that God allows our actions to be part of his answer to “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,”—and even if that degree is no degree—he commands us to defend the rights of the poor as part of the Great Commission (Luke 4:18), and that defense begins with the defense of life, property, and truth. The state systematically violates all three. It is high time for the church to declare that it has no right to do so.

The substance of Romans 13:1–7 is not the only argument that has been raised against tetranomy. Appeal is often made to the institution of authority per se, as noted in the commandment to honor father and mother and Paul’s instructions for slaves to obey their masters. Subsequent posts will deal with these matters.

Part Three is here.

No One Is Exempt: Romans 13:1–7 in Context

Part 1: Prolegomena

Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor.” — Augustine, City of God IV:4

Whatever else is true of the events since March 2020, we have seen excellent examples of rich and powerful people doing as they please with those who cannot defend themselves. The biggest names in anti-COVID mitigation measures, millionaires all, never missed a day of work or a paycheck, but my barber and my Peruvian cacao farming Christian brother, both of whom have considerably smaller budgets, missed months of both.

The question most Christians ask about the situation is, Does the government have the right to shut down the economy? But to phrase the question that way is to ask if one abstraction has the right to act on another abstraction. This is absurd because abstractions do not act, nor can they be acted upon, nor do they have rights. If “government” is anything tangible, it is people so powerful (and usually rich) that no one can defend himself against them. So, the better way to phrase the question is, Do rich and powerful people have the right to forcibly prevent those who cannot defend themselves from peaceably providing goods and services to their neighbors in voluntary exchange for what they themselves need?

This is a subset of the larger question that is usually phrased, What is the proper function of government? I will argue in this series of posts that that also is an absurd question. Government is an abstraction, so it cannot function. The proper question is, How are rich and powerful people to treat those who cannot defend themselves against them?

On the basis of Romans 13:1–7, the conventional wisdom says that because the “authorities” (exousiai) have been “instituted by God” they are therefore entitled to, among other things, collect taxes because they are “God’s servants devoted to governing.” A man from Mars reading that passage before landing on earth would expect to see nothing but orderly societies run by God’s servants in the political class using tax revenue for the good of their subjects. Would he be surprised at the reality today? Would he have been surprised at what he saw if had landed in the Rome of Paul’s day?

Of course not. But the problem is even worse than that. What if there were a Christian—a devotee of sola Scriptura who truly wanted to serve God—and he were put in charge of a government’s budget: where would he go in Scripture to find guidance for a just tax structure and for where the money should go after it is collected? I was told by one respected Christian leader that taxation can be theft, but is not always, but when asked where Scripture distinguishes the two, he had no answer. Another told me that because Scripture does not address tax rates they are not a moral issue—which I take to mean that tax rates of 5%, 50%, and 95% are equally moral. As anyone familiar with the Laffer curve can attest, those rates would have drastically different effects in the real world, and to say that taxpayers have no moral argument against being taxed into financial ruin seems at best a counterintuitive way to defend the rights of the poor (Jer 5:28). So where does our sola Scriptura Christian magistrate go for wisdom—to John Maynard Keynes?

If a Christian can get no practical guidance in the fundamentals of just governance—taxation being the sine qua non of government—from Scripture, how can we expect God to direct the heathen to govern justly? If they will not believe the law and the prophets and would not believe if someone returned from the dead (Luke 16:31), how will they know what justice is, and how will their hearts receive the wise words that describe it? Will God give them special revelation?

I argue in this series that nobody but nobody has the right to kill innocent people, take their property, defraud them, or defame them (Rom 13:8–10). Winning an election or a war does not entitle a person to do as he pleases with the lives, property, trust, or reputations of those who cannot defend themselves against him. I will be challenging the conventional wisdom on Romans 13:1–7, so I will present in the second installment an interpretation of that passage that keys off of Romans 13:8–10.

The conventional wisdom

The conventional wisdom is that God has instituted the family, the church, and the state. We can see where God institutes the family (Gen 2:24) and the worshiping community (Exod 20–23). I argue that while God gives laws that govern human conduct, he nowhere institutes a state; he nowhere ordains some people to take for any purpose the lives and property of innocent people. He nowhere makes some people exempt from the prohibitions against murder, theft, fraud, or defamation.

Three thousand years ago, the people of God were the freest people the world had ever known or has ever known since. They had been living in a stateless society: “There was no king in Israel” (Jdg 17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25). They paid no taxes. When they obeyed God, their nation was safe from enemies foreign and domestic: “the land had rest” for forty years twice (Jdg 3:11; 8:28) and eighty years once (Jdg 3:30). But the day came when they forgot God. They turned their backs on the perfect law (Ps 19:7) God had given them, despised the times God had delivered them from their enemies despite their sin (1 Sam 12:8–11), and committed great wickedness by demanding a king (1 Sam 12:17). This sin was so heinous that God said that he would not remove the punishment even if they repented (1 Sam 8:18). No matter—they did not repent.

The mentality that drove that revolt is still with us today and has been since at least the Reformation. Matthew Henry speaks for the majority of Christians when he famously writes, “Better a bad government than none at all,” this following the words, “Never did sovereign prince pervert the ends of government as Nero did, and yet to him Paul appealed, and under him had the protection of the law and the inferior magistrates more than once.”[1] What is this “government”? What can be so wonderful that its absence is more to be feared than even its most maleficent forms?

Luther, Calvin, every major Puritan writer, Kuyper, and every major “Bible-based” writer today echo the sentiment. Reformed Christians, as have their Baptist brethren, have stood shoulder to shoulder with tyrants since the beginning, and as the world suffers through the greatest moral crisis at least since the Third Reich—some would look at the unprecedented global scale and say in all of history—the “Bible-believing” church is at best helpless to fight the moral decline and descent into tyranny and at worst helping it along, with the insouciant majority somewhere in the middle.

In what way does today’s church resemble what Jesus was talking about when he said, “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18)? Europe and the United States could have passed for Christendom a century or so ago, but today, the church, if not in retreat, is certainly losing ground, and these societies are better known for sexual immorality, political corruption, warmongering, and now man-made pestilence—much if not all of it made possible by government.

The state

Government (or the state) for the purpose of this essay is defined as those people who are rich and powerful enough to force their will on other people. They can prohibit their neighbors from peaceable activities and force their neighbors to act contrary to their choice and even to their welfare. They can make rules for others that they themselves do not have to obey. They are those to whom the poor and defenseless cannot say no.

Scripture makes it clear that it is God who has ordained these people to be rich and powerful and enabled them to impose their will on those who cannot resist them, but I will argue that he has not thereby allowed them to take the life or property of innocent people, to defraud them, or to defame them. Innocent is, of course, a loaded term in Scripture. Ultimately, no one is innocent in God’s sight. For our purposes here, however, I define innocent as “not guilty of violating the body, property, reputation, or trust of a person similarly not guilty.”

Is this the Scriptural definition of government? “There was no king in Israel” during the period of the judges, so whatever a king is, there was none in Israel then. First Samuel 8 describes government using Samuel’s description of what the Israelites were asking for:

He will conscript your sons and put them in his chariot forces and in his cavalry; they will run in front of his chariot. He will appoint for himself leaders of thousands and leaders of fifties, as well as those who plow his ground, reap his harvest, and make his weapons of war and his chariot equipment. He will take your daughters to be ointment makers, cooks, and bakers. He will take your best fields and vineyards and give them to his own servants. He will demand a tenth of your seed and of the produce of your vineyards and give it to his administrators and his servants. He will take your male and female servants, as well as your best cattle and your donkeys, and assign them for his own use. He will demand a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will be his servants. (1 Sam 8:11–17)

In a word, they were asking to return to Egypt and live under a Pharaoh, someone exempt from the laws that governed the rest of them and against whom they were helpless (cf. Deut 17:16).

Romans 13:1–7 assumes that government is put in place by God, that it brings judgment and retribution, that it serves God, and that it collects taxes. However, note the pronoun “it.” (I follow the NET here.) Many translations quite understandably regard the abstract exousia (“authority”; vv. 1b, 2a, 3b[,c]) as a metonym for the concrete and human exousiai (“people in authority,” v. 1a), archontes (“rulers,” v. 3a), and diakonos (“servant,” v. 4a, [b,] c). Government is thus not fundamentally an “it.” It is a “them.” It is people. While the conventional reading of Romans 13:1–7 considers them a special privileged class, I will argue that that is not the best way to read the passage.

The questions to be addressed here are these: How are Christians to relate to their neighbors? How are defenseless Christians to relate to the rich and powerful? How are rich and powerful Christians to relate to the defenseless? What does any of this have to do with fulfilling the Great Commission?

The gospel defined

This is my understanding of the gospel: God is good. People have rebelled against him and so deserve nothing but his eternal wrath. Jesus died to pay the penalty of that rebellion for those who repent, believe the gospel, and join in calling the world to repent. The church is repentant sinners calling sinners to repent. As sinners repent and believe the gospel, their lives change as individuals, families, and larger social structures, and we should see societies characterized by people of integrity promoting justice, peace, and prosperity. But going back to square one, if people are to believe the church’s call to repentance—that is, to respond to the Great Commission—Christians have to live out their own repentance. If they live out their repentance—if they truly become disciples who make disciples fulfilling the Great Commission—they will build just, peaceful, and prosperous societies. And for that, they will have to know what it is not only to love God above all else with their entire being and walk humbly with him but how to love their neighbors as themselves, to do justice, and to love mercy. The state as Scripture and the conventional wisdom define it is inimical to the entire Christian purpose.

God does indeed want Christians, as part of the Great Commission, to work toward building a just society; in such a society everyone is truly equal before the law—there are no exceptions—and the rights of the poor and insignificant carry the same weight as those of the rich and powerful. Such a society and only such a society is truly just; because it is just it is peaceful; because it is peaceful it is prosperous. Such a society will have no state.

The biblical case for anarchy

The Israelites in Egypt were under the government of a king, but when they came into their promised land, they were not (Jdg 17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25): under Othniel, “the land had rest for forty years” (Jdg 3:11); under Ehud and the judges who succeeded him, “the land had rest for eighty years” (Jdg 3:30); under Gideon, “the land had rest for [another] forty years” (Jdg 8:28), a record that was never matched after the establishment of the monarchy. Had they really been better off under government in Egypt than they were without it in the promised land? Were the Christians under the government of Nero better off in earthly terms than the Israelites were with no government in the days of the aforementioned judges? If your answer is no, you should enjoy reading on.

It is easy to see where God ordains the family (Gen 2:24) and where he ordains the church (Matt 16:18; John 20:22; Acts 2:4). But Scripture nowhere bestows on one group of people the right to do as they please with the lives and property of their innocent neighbors, even in the name of the latter’s welfare; that is, God nowhere ordains the state.

The argument that the judges were kings in all but name is an argument from silence. A state begins with taxation, but the Torah—which devotes mind-numbing detail to items that seem to be important (e.g., the tribal offerings, Num 7:12–83), no matter how private (e.g., how men are to clean up after nocturnal emissions, Lev 15:17), and therefore cannot be accused of lacking attention to detail—says not a word about a taxation system, nor does it speak of a standing army, road construction, public schools, or any other supposed benefit we associate with the state. The closest it comes to establishing a state is in Deuteronomy 17:14–20, which is a concession, not a prescription. Israel in the promised land had no king, no state, no government.

So if government, the state, some people entitled to tax and govern—“exercise continuous sovereign authority over,” in Webster’s words—their neighbors, is not God’s design for society, God’s best, what is?

Well, what is the most important thing God wants us to keep in mind? When Jesus was asked that question, he said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments” (Matt 22:37–40). Would God’s best for his people—for all people—not flow from consistent obedience to those two commandments?

What it means to love God

If God’s best for his people does indeed flow from consistent obedience to the commands to love God above all and our neighbors as ourselves, we need to ask what it means to love God, what it means to love our neighbor, and what Jesus meant when he said that loving our neighbor is “like” loving God.

We are to love God first, but the nature of that love is not what comes first to modern minds. We tend to think of love as a feeling that overflows in words, but confessions of love for God are rare even where we would expect to find them, in the Psalms (18:1; 116:1)—as are claims to praise him (71:6,8; 119:164).[2] Instead, the Psalms speak of loving God in terms of obeying his word (Ps 1:2; 119:47, 48, 97, 113, 119, 127, 159, 167). Love seems to hinge on obedience to God’s commands: “If you love me, you will obey my commandments. . . . The person who has my commandments and obeys them is the one who loves me. . . . If anyone loves me, he will obey my word” (John 14:15, 21, 23). This echoes Moses’s words in Deuteronomy: “What does the LORD your God require of you except to revere him, to obey all his commandments, to love him, . . . ? . . . What I am commanding you today is to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to obey his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances. . . .  I also call on you to love the LORD your God, to obey him and be loyal to him” (10:12; 30:16, 20).

I assume that at some level the man who asked Jesus about the most important commandment (Matt 19:16) knew that to show his love for God he needed to obey the commands; he was asking where to begin, where to concentrate his efforts. Jesus’s answer was, in essence, “You do not begin with the minutiae of the ceremonial laws; you begin with loving your neighbor.” If we take the idea of love as gushy feelings, then we’re still at square one. But, of course, he gave the man, and by extension us, measurable criteria with which to judge our compliance with that command and thus with the first: “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 19:18–19). Paul repeats much of this in Romans 13:8–10: “The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet,’ (and if there is any other commandment) are summed up in this, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.”

This is not to equate love with obedience. No one obeys perfectly, and even those who do well can sense that they lack something (Matt 19:16). But love for God and man shows itself in obedience (James 2:17–18), specifically respect for the life, property, trust, and reputation of the neighbor.

What it means to love the neighbor

The commandments against murder, theft, fraud, and slander are not invitations to get as close to those activities as possible without crossing the line as they are commands to stay as far away from those activities as possible.

Thus, the true meaning of “Do not murder” is more like “protect and preserve your neighbor’s life” than “it’s OK to beat him or otherwise afflict him as long as you do not kill him.” The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) and the teaching about judgment day in Matthew 25 make it plain that there is more to loving one’s neighbor than not harming his body: we are to actively promote his health and physical welfare. But that promotion has to be built on the foundation of doing no harm to him or to anyone else.

Similarly, “do not steal” is not a license to damage property or borrow it unbidden as long as we do not maintain possession of it. Rather, we are to actively enable our innocent neighbors to acquire physical resources (Matt 25:35–36) and to protect them from those who would expropriate them (Ps 82:3; Jer 5:28). John the Baptist defined the repentance to which he called people by saying, “The person who has two tunics must share with the person who has none, and the person who has food must do likewise” (Luke 3:11). John the apostle adds, “Whoever has the world’s possessions and sees his fellow Christian in need and shuts off his compassion against him, how can the love of God reside in such a person?” (1 John 3:7). Promoting our neighbor’s material good has to begin with considering everyone’s property sacrosanct; while we may be called to give up our own property for our neighbor’s benefit, we are not to take from one neighbor to benefit another.

The commands against adultery and false witness both have to do with transgressions against truth. Adultery is simply the worst form of fraud. A man who commits adultery has taken a woman’s virginity, which she can only give once, under the condition that she will have exclusive rights to that man; to go against that condition later is fraud. Anytime anyone promises to give something later in return for something now and does not come through, he has committed fraud.

Similarly, bearing false witness in court is the worst form of defamation. Slander is defamation outside of court, and gossip, while it does not deal with untruths, still conveys facts to those who have no business knowing them such that the betrayed person’s reputation suffers unjustly. Bearing false witness in court exposes the victim to fines, imprisonment, and possibly death.

According to Jesus and Paul, then, the most important thing for us to remember as we seek to please God is to protect innocent people, their property, their trust, and their reputations. Christian discipleship requires more than this, but it requires no less: this is where it begins. The second commandment is, in Jesus’s word, “like” the first because we cannot obey the first without obeying the second.

Tetranomy introduced

Here is the primary message of this series: nobody but nobody has the right to kill innocent people, take their property, or defame them. Nobody but nobody can legitimize killing innocent people by using a different term (like “collateral damage”) for it. Nobody but nobody can legitimize taking innocent people’s property by calling it by another name, even “taxation” or “regulation” or “zoning” or “eminent domain.” Nobody but nobody can defraud or defame his neighbor and justify it by calling it a “cost overrun” or “a campaign promise that was impossible to fulfill” or “a noble lie.” Nobody but nobody can defame his neighbor and justify it by calling it “spin.” I call the resulting ethos, based on these four laws, for lack of an extant term, tetranomy.

The world is full of practical problems. My claim here is that those practical problems can be solved without resorting to any of the practices just mentioned. Without such practices, the world would look very different from how it looks today. Eminent domain, for example, makes possible the highway system that arguably enables better movement of goods and services than what would exist without it. However, the system also results in urban sprawl, increased exhaust emissions, and the scattering of families and weakening of family ties; and, of course, those who lose their proper-ty to eminent domain—by definition the powerless—lose what is proper‑ly theirs—to those who are by definition more powerful—and thus suffer injustice. I will argue that correcting this injustice, while it might make the solutions to the practical problems more difficult, would bring about increased peace and increased prosperity in the ways that truly count. It is of no profit for a society to gain material abundance and forfeit its soul (Mark 8:36).

A matter of the heart

I will address the text of Romans 13:1–7 in a later post, but first, let me address what I think is the issue of the heart. I’m assuming that most of the people I talk to are typical: they consider government—some people rightly controlling other people—essential to a just society and the activities Samuel describes in 1 Samuel 8—military conscription, eminent domain, patronage—simply part of the price that needs to be paid. This is life the way God intended, and they are prepared to give thanks for every part of it. Why?

Why do Christians want to consider taxation a sacred part of life? Why do they want the rich and powerful—the “authorities,” the “powers that be”—to have God’s permission to do as they please with the poor and defenseless? I understand that they want the rich and powerful to defend the rights of the poor and defenseless, and this is why they want Christians and Christ-like thinking to permeate the political power structure (the good intentions of Abraham Kuyper come to mind), but is it not the rich and powerful by definition who act against the poor and defenseless? “Are not the rich oppressing you and dragging you into the courts?” (Jas 2:6). How likely are rich and powerful elite non-Christians (or Christians, for that matter) to work against their own interests for the sake of the poor and defenseless? Why do Christians prefer a system that privileges some at the expense of others to one in which all are equal?

Could it be because they think they are good people and they—or those with whom they sympathize—receive positive benefits from the state and believe that any system that benefits good people like them is thus by definition a good system? Many times I have heard something like, “Public schools can be good. I got a good education in the public schools. They have problems, but we should work to fix the problems, not abolish the schools.” Ditto, mutatis mutandis, for the Americans with Disabilities Act, the highways, sports venues, the War on Drugs, the wars on racism, communism, terror, COVID-19, ad infinitum, and other supposed exceptions to tetranomy. Is it not worth at least considering the possibility that good people can benefit from evil systems? Does the benefit that good people derive from a system justify that system?

The issue is not whether schools, provision for the disabled, highways, and sports venues are good things or whether some evils need to be resisted forcibly; it is rather whether God wants Christians to continue to live under the command to hold life and property sacred when they make those provisions and resist those evils or whether the basic commands to love our neighbors by protecting their lives, property, reputations, and trust can be suspended when we decide they need to be.

Does the scriptural view of human nature say that those who have power over others would not use it for their own benefit? That they would never fool themselves into thinking that they are sacrificing alongside those whom they are oppressing when in fact they are doing nothing of the sort? Does “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” (Jer 17:9) not apply to the rich and powerful who win wars and elections?

I assume all Christians really do want the poor and helpless and afflicted to be taken care of and provided for. My argument is that this is more likely to happen under a system in which all people are bound as much as possible by the duty to protect life, property, and truth than they are in a system that allows some people to violate others’ property and lives. “As much as possible” here brooks no legitimate exception: people are sinners, so they will sin, and the system needs to provide for defense against, prosecution of, restitution by, reconciliation with, and, if necessary, execution of malefactors. However, these provisions must be made in a context of respect for innocent life, property, and truth; the system must be voluntary and treat all participants equally.

The first objection the Christian reader is likely to make to my claims thus far is, “Why didn’t God think of that? Romans 13:1–7 assumes that God has ordained some people to govern others.” In my next post, I will show that the conventional wisdom about that passage is simply wrong, but here I explain that conventional wisdom.

The conventional wisdom on Romans 13:1–7

Let us begin by noting that the conventional wisdom does not take the passage at face value. A face-value reading gives the “governing authorities” (NET, ESV) carte blanche: “The authorities that exist have been instituted by God. So the person who resists such authority resists the ordinance of God” (13:1–2). The ordination of the authority (the person) extends to his decrees: he speaks for God, in loco Dei, and his decrees are thus God’s will. “. . . (for rulers cause no fear for good conduct but for bad.) Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid . . . . For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” There is no room there for a difference between the decree of the authority and the will of God. The text does not say that the ruler should cause no fear for good conduct, that he should approve good behavior, or that he should carry out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer; rather, it says that this is what he does. In matters of governance, then, in a face-value reading of our passage, the governing authority speaks for God and must be obeyed in every detail.

Here the conventional wisdom departs from the face-value interpretation by appealing—and reasonably so—to Acts 5:29, “We must obey God rather than men.” My point is not that this appeal is wrong; it is that by making this appeal, the conventional wisdom departs from the face-value interpretation of our passage and posits that there are times when the governing authority can speak without divine authority.

(It also violates two exegetical principles. By reading the didactic Romans passage in the light of the narrative passage from Acts, it violates the principle that narrative is not normative but didactic passages are. It also reads the later revelation—Romans was written after the events in Acts—in the light of the earlier revelation.)

The logical question, then, is when do governors overstep their authority? The conventional answer is, “When they prohibit us from worship [or from evangelism]” or “When they command us to break God’s law [again usually defined as worship or evangelism].” Do they overstep their bounds if they prohibit peaceable activities, as when the US government made it illegal to own gold? How about if they force people to engage in risky activities, like being injected with experimental substances, or even silly ones, like wearing useless “face coverings” in public? More importantly, how does one determine whether the governor has overstepped his bounds, and what recourse does one have if he does? If we cannot look to Romans 13:1–7, the putative plainest statement of the legitimacy of government, where can we look? If we look at Acts 5:29, we are simply going around the circle again. So how do we get out of the circle?

The stepping-off place is precisely where it is in Romans 13: the “love your neighbor” verses, verses 8–10. This is a restatement of Jesus’s answer to the question about the commandment that is “like” the greatest commandment and from which no one is exempt. Stated positively, it commands us to treat our innocent neighbors, their property, their reputations, and their trust as inviolable. Nobody but nobody has the right to violate these things, nobody but nobody has the right to command that they be violated, and nobody but nobody has the right to obey such commands. Ergo, whenever government commands that innocent people be physically harmed, expropriated, defrauded, or defamed, it is overstepping its bounds. This condemns “collateral damage” and military conscription, taxation and eminent domain, broken campaign promises, and propaganda.

What about Romans 13:6, which assumes that we pay taxes? That verse is a statement of fact, not a command, but the question is legitimate and will be dealt with in the exposition.

An exegetical presupposition

Let me state an important presupposition on which I am basing my exposition: I presume that the highest priority of any state is to stay in power. Scripture attests to this abundantly: The king of Sodom was willing to give up his entire fortune as long as he had people to rule over (Gen 14:21). Even after Egypt had been destroyed (Exod 10:7), the Pharaoh of the exodus was not willing to let go of his power over the Israelites. Saul knew that God was against him (1 Sam 13:14) and that David would someday be king (1 Sam 24:20), yet he never abdicated; instead, he hunted David until his dying day. Herod apparently was so desperate to hold on to his power that he felt he needed to eliminate the threat of a toddler (Matt 2:16).

Would we expect the emperor of Rome to be any different? It would be bad enough for him to have Jews in Rome, those odd people who claim that there is no god but their God. While they had their religion and caused trouble by trying to shake off Roman rule over their homeland, they were in no position to threaten to overthrow the empire by assassinating the Emperor. But an offshoot of that religion that was even more fanatical might be worrisome, saying as it does that the one who would eventually rule the world had been born, had died, and had come back to life; he had gone off to the afterlife but could be expected to come back at any time and set up his rule. (Think of how afraid Herod was that John the Baptist had come back from the dead, Matt 14:2.) Even the Jews did not go that far!

No ruler looks in the mirror and sees an unjust man, and one symptom of the face-saving that characterizes non-Christian religions is that justice is whatever the party that wins armed conflict says it is, a corollary being that the further from godly justice the decrees of ungodly rulers are, the less likely those rulers are to countenance debate or dissent.

We do not know how many Christians were in Rome to read Paul’s epistle. Conceivably dozens or hundreds of Roman Jews could have been converted in Jerusalem at Pentecost (Acts 2:10, 41) and returned. If they were able to make disciples themselves in the subsequent twenty-five years or so, there could have been thousands of Christians in Rome when the epistle arrived. This was less than ten years before the great fire in Rome and Nero’s subsequent notorious persecution of the Christian community. I think it reasonable to assume that the Roman Christian community was visible and a matter of some concern to the Roman government.

As surely as water runs downhill, the Roman government would have sent spies into the Christians’ midst to find out what they were planning—or to look for disenchanted former members who would be willing to tell their secrets. How the people of God were to interact with godless rulers was a question that believers had been facing for centuries, and Paul needed to balance the unjust laws all too familiar to his readers with the jeopardy he was putting his readers in by mentioning those laws generally, let alone specific instances. He thus had to lay any question of the emperor’s legitimacy or morality between the lines.

Am I reading too much into the passage? Allow me to call your attention to the book of Esther, which is notable in part because the most important character in it, the God of the Jews, is nowhere mentioned; the reader needs to enter with presuppositions and read between the lines to arrive at the message of the story. Further, note how the book up to 2:18 introduces the situation: the king as a model of hospitality and fun, the party as a rich Presbyterian wedding reception, the queen as an irrational rebel, and the gathering of the virgins as the chance of a lifetime for a girl to become royalty. Is it unreasonable to read the king as a dissipate monster, the event as a tax-funded drunken orgy, the queen as stripped of her dignity, and the gathering of virgins as kidnap and sex slavery? The former reading is that of the conventional wisdom regarding Romans 13:1–7, the latter of tetranomy.

I do not know whether the Christians in Rome had read the book of Acts or heard of Peter and John’s words to the Sanhedrin, “We must obey God rather than man,” such that they could have heard our passage read and automatically responded, as modern Christians do, “That’s all well and good, but we have to obey God rather than man,” let alone that they would have thought to say, “That’s what rulers are supposed to do, but his rule is legitimate even if he doesn’t.”

What I do know is that after Paul lays out his case in verses 1–7, he reminds his readers what they surely knew because Jesus had said the same thing (Matt 7:12; 22:40): “Love your neighbor as yourself”—as measured by respect for life, property, trust, and whatever other commandment there might be—was the fulfillment of the law (Rom 13:8–10). This, I submit, is the lens through which we are to read our passage and is the basis of what will follow in subsequent posts.

Part Two is here.

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[1] Matthew Henry, “Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible,” Bible Hub, https://biblehub.com/commentaries/mhcw/romans/13.htm.

[2] Psalms-only singing traditions are highly unlikely to fall into the trap of gushy “Jesus is my boyfriend” love songs and endless repetitions of “Hallelujah” and “Praise the Lord.”