Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
Uh, yeah it does. Unless you interpreted it different than I did.
NIV.
It helps to read it in context.  |
You mean in the context of Romans 12 too I hope.... where Paul explicitly states that vengeance is God's prerogative alone?
I'm no biblical scholar, I'm the first to admit that. But after your post I did a little digging, and found that your interpretation of Romans 13:4 is pretty old-fashioned, associated mainly with those people we loosely term "Christian conservatives"--who believe in what Textcritic calls "biblical inerrency" along with a need for the state to submit and conform to the greater authority of God ad the Bible.
If you think about it, this passage makes no sense in the context of that worldview. If the state always enacts the will of God, then it is also the will of God that abortion be legal, that the government levy an Alternative Minimum Tax, or that offshore drilling be banned. Clearly some things belong only in the realm of the secular, and others can be understood through revelation. Governance isn't one--and I don't think your passage really contradicts that view, though it certainly introduces a little ambiguity.
Moreover, the interpretation you cite essentially requires that Christianity merely reinscribe the system of authority that it replaced, but now with a Christian at the head rather than a Roman. In other words, you replace one tyrant with another, and grant both dominance over not only the body but also over religion. It's far likelier that Paul was advocating something along the lines of "submission without compliance"--a kind of fatalistic knowledge that the hand of God is in all things, even a state run by people not chosen by him.
Here's a pretty interesting article about the very passage you cited. You may be surprised by its interpretation--it's in fact exactly opposite to yours. It's not the only possible one--but I've found only one source that claims this passage justifies capital punishment, and it was a website for a Southern Babtist church.
http://www.directionjournal.org/article/?1287