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Romans 13:1-7 Apartheid's Last Biblical Refuge
Abstract
That the interpretation of Romans 13:1-7 has been integral to much theological discussion in South Africa for over a decade is no accident. Having abandoned its previous biblical bases for support of apartheid ideology, the white Dutch Reformed church, in common with the state, and certain fundamentalist missionary groups, often connected with the American religious right, have pointed to this passage and its parallels as the ultimate sanction for enforced submission to present power relations. Liberationist and black theologians who signed The Kairos Document of 1985-86 castigate such use of the passage as an aspect of idolatrous "state theology." Their approach is to relativize its applicability by reference to situational and total biblical context. In contributing to the debate, Walter Wink argues that the passage forbids only violent, not non-violent opposition to the state. This view is criticized, and yet another approach proposed, based on the hypothesis that Romans 13:1-7 is part of an overall redaction of the Pauline letters connected with the Pastoral Epistles. A hermeneutical method similar to that of black theologian, Itumeleng J. Mosala is applied to the passage to identify a "kindred struggle" among Christians of Asia Minor in the earlier second century.
... Church history is full of schisms and divisions where the different parties each assumed that the Holy Spirit had given them God's mind on the matter at hand. Within American history, slavery was once understood as being "sanctioned" by the Bible and only recently has the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa reversed its view that the Bible supports subordination of one race to another (Munro, 1990). The most contemporary example of Christians in conflict, struggling to understand biblical truth, is the role of women or homosexuals in church structure. ...
... A clearer understanding of the intent of Romans 13 can occur only after understanding the situational context in which it was written. New evidence suggests that Paul was addressing a situation in Rome where the Christians were refusing to pay their taxes because they believed that as Christians they did not have to obey any civil authority (Munro, 1990). If this was indeed the situation that Paul was addressing, then this passage is not intended to preclude civil disobedience or disobedience to illegal and unethical government practices, but is instead intended to exhort Christians to carry out their ethical and moral responsibilities to the government and the secular community where they live. ...
Psychologists often encounter clients or students who have questions that relate to particular passages of Scripture. Because the Bible is often an important part of their organizing worldview, it becomes imperative that both therapist and client develop an accurate understanding of how to read and apply the Scriptures correctly. Reading and applying Scripture brings together a text (the Bible) and a reader (the individual's cognitive structures). For the accurate understanding and application of biblical passages, therapist and client need to examine textual matters and reader issues such as language, culture, and situational context, as well as personal and group presuppositions, expectations, history, and experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Industrialization is an economic concept which plays an important
part in determining the economic development of any country.
Through industrialization, countries are ranked as developed,
developing or not developed. Currently, the World Bank has ranked
Tanzania the low middle income country. Considering the Tanzania’s
development Vision 2025, this rank is a force towards a semiindustrial
Tanzania by 2025.
Indeed, the agenda of industrialization in Tanzania was emphasised
by His Excellence the late President Dr. John Pombe Joseph Magufuli
in his term of service. The late Dr. Magufuli used the Swahili phrase
“Tanzania ya Viwanda,” to emphasize and familiarize the urgent
need for Tanzania to industrialize in order to create jobs for millions
of young Tanzanians and build a modern economy for the country and
its people. His speeches, especially those which focused on
industrialization and industrial economy, have raised enormous
debates among scholars.
This book is a result of intensive and extensive researches on the
realistic nature of Tanzania’s industrialization agenda. It bases on the
domestic situational analysis of the past regimes before Dr.
Magufuli’s regime. The book covers areas of education, theology of
work, agriculture and rural development. These are the selected
strategic areas towards industrial economic development for Tanzania
during Dr. Magufuli’s regime. In addition, the book compares various
industrially developed and developing countries to attest this agenda
in Tanzanian context today. Also, the book looks at the way Dr.
x
Magufuli’s industrial agenda is spearhead by his successor Her
Excellence Samia Suluhu Hassan and the election manifestos (2015-
2020, 2020-2025) of the ruling party CCM. Simply put, the focus of
this book is on the fifth regime and its interest to revive Tanzania’s
industrial agenda.
Authors provide useful insights in this book on what should be done
to bring the agenda into reality. The arguments and recommendations
made by contributors of the book chapters are provocative thoughts.
Hence, the editors are confident that this book will be an invaluable
asset for the government policy makers, planners, researchers,
academicians and all other Tanzania’s economic development
stakeholders.
The title of this book clearly defines its focus--Tanzania’s initiatives towards industrialization. It is comprised of articles written by scholars in three major fields, theology, community development and education, each trying to answer the question whether Tanzania’s initiative towards industrialization is realistic. Several issues are addressed by each field in response to the stated question. In theology, issues regarding the efficacy of work and the responsibility of leaders towards their citizens are discussed. In community development, issues pertaining to the role of the agricultural sector towards industrial development and the relationship between industrial development and economic development of people at the grassroots are critically taken into account. In education, the role of primary education towards creating inquisitive people regarding the initiative to industrialization has been the major focus. However, the overall aim of the book is to create awareness and raise fruitful discussion on the possible opportunities and challenges facing Tanzania’s initiatives towards industrial economy as spearheaded by the fifth and sixth Tanzania’s administrative regimes. Therefore, this book is important to students and researchers grappling with tangible questions pertaining to industrial development in Tanzania and other developing countries. Moreover, it creates awareness to church and political leaders, policy makers, social activists and the wider Tanzanian community towards proper understanding of the concepts and processes of industrialization and sustainable development in general.
In this chapter, Richard Davis discusses the concepts of obedience and disobedience in relation to gender violence, exploring how Christian theological understandings of obedience, disobedience, and sin contribute to domestic violence and abuse. He argues that in majority Christian societies, such as his own location in the Pacific Islands, notions of obedience and disobedience are heavily influenced by faith and, in particular, understandings of sin. Particularly, in both domestic and political spheres, theological notions of sin-as-disobedience may influence the ways that disobedience and obedience are understood. This in turn reinforces the wholesale imperative for obedience—from both citizens and wives—while justifying violence in the event of perceived “disobedience.” Davis suggests that, by redefining the meaning of obedience/disobedience, and by considering sin within a more relational framework (sin-as-broken-relationships), Christians may be better placed to begin the much-needed process of tackling gender violence.
• African Readings of Paul - Paul's letters have been the least explored section of the Christian canon in Africa;
• African Patristic Readings of Paul - Oden, not denying that Europe and Asia contributed to the formation of Christian identity in the ancient world;
• biblical exegesis, as well, African thinkers - great contributors to the ecumenical discussion that developed during the Patristic period;
• For Origen, the Bible was something like the human body - which has (as Origen learned from Paul: 1 Thess 5:23) body, soul and spirit;
• rise of Islam in the seventh century - devastating North African Christianity;
• missionary readings of Paul in African contexts - Western missionaries, bringing the Christian faith to Africa, coming as readers and interpreters of the Bible;
• Colenso's belief that Zulu culture itself - how the Bible was translated into Zulu, reading the Bible through an African cultural lens;
• indigenous readings of Paul in Postcolonial Africa - center of Christian life in the modern world, shifting to the south in the colonial period;
• Paul and spiritual gifts: 1 Corinthians 12–14 - The New Testament figure of Paul, being, no stranger to religious experience;
• confessional-based hermeneutics - interested in matters of ethnicity, spiritual and political power, holiness, and issues related to mission, past and present
Several European philosophers have in recent years turned to the letters of Paul in search of a language to address the question of the political in the contemporary moment. Their question is how to mine the intellectual traditions of the West for resources to remake politics in the wake of certain undeniable post-Enlightenment impasses. Most of these thinkers focus their discussions on the most difficult, enigmatic, and singular of Paul's letters: Romans. They fearlessly deracinate the text from its familiar cultural terrain, cutting across historical distances and past countless shelves of biblical critique without looking back. On one reading, Paul emerges in each of these texts as the unhailed hero of his own story, each story reflecting uncannily their authors' own commitments and absorptions. But, of course, the fascination with Paul is more than a narcissistic indulgence on the part of philosophers dizzy and light-headed from their field's well-documented "turn to religion." At the same time, the overarching philosophical nostalgia for biblical origins invites a much deeper analysis of the often uninterrogated investments that undergird this particular expression of biblical afterlives. This essay offers some reflections on this philosophical trajectory on its own terms but attempts to consider the effort to reclaim Paul for arguments about universalism and messianism in relation to the emergence of the notion of global Christianity, a term that, with its empirical referent, operates on a wholly different register of engagement and critique. What varieties of work are performed by the categories of "universal" and "global" in these conversations? What political contestations go unnamed and untheorized in the process?
Most attempts to explain Romans 13:1-7 proceed from the premise that Paul is speaking plainly and directly as he recommends that Christians adopt a respectful and obedient attitude towards those servants of god, the Roman authorities. Historically, Christians have read the passage as an endorsement of all governmental authority, a conclusion which appears repugnant to most exegetes in the wake of the Shoah and similar government-sponsored atrocities. While some authors explain the passage away by supposing it to be an interpolation, others maintain that it becomes understandable only if one takes into account a very particular set of historical circumstances. Given that elsewhere Paul clearly condemns the lords of the age and their magistrates—most notably for the crucifixion of Jesus and their corrupt practises—a reading of his recommendation in Romans 13 at face value produces insurmountable internal contradictions in the Pauline corpus. When this passage is approached with literary sensibilities, another interpretive option presents itself. The following article proposes an ironic reading of Romans 13:1-7 based on an analysis of a set of internal textual clues (suggested by the theoretical work of Wayne Booth) and supported by recent research into the relations between the nascent church and the oppressive Roman Principate. © 2006, CanadianCorporation for Studies in Religion / Corporation Canadienne des SciencesReligieuses. All rights reserved.
In a context in which the significance of Scripture for everyday life is fading away, this article is an argument for the centrality of the Bible as the basis for a holistic understanding of reality and for an authentic Christian engagement in contemporary society. The argument is built on a twofold truth: the lordship of Christ over reality in its entirety and the public nature of the Gospel. More specifically, the paper offers an examination of Romans 13 with regard to the issue of the Christian relationship to the governing authorities. It argues that Paul offers solid theological ground on which he simultaneously legitimizes and limits the authority of the government, and presents an active and posi-tive involvement of the Christian in the world, advocating practices that are conducive to a meaningful and peaceful life in the society at large. It concludes that according to Paul's vision of redemption, the church, as the paradigmatic community of the new creation, is called to be actively engaged in society, to have a constructive, even if critical at times, relationship to the powers and structures of authority, confessing and witnessing the lordship of Christ over reality in its entirety, in the anticipation of the ultimate redemption of God's creation.
In a context in which the significance of Scripture for everyday life is fading away, this article is an argument for the centrality of the Bible as the basis for a holistic understanding of reality and for an authentic Christian engagement in contemporary society. The argument is built on a twofold truth: the lordship of Christ over reality in its entirety and the public nature of the Gospel. More specifically, the paper offers an examination of Romans 13 with regard to the issue of the Christian relationship to the governing authorities. It argues that Paul offers solid theological ground on which he simultaneously legitimizes and limits the authority of the government, and presents an active and positive involvement of the Christian in the world, advocating practices that are conducive to a meaningful and peaceful life in the society at large. It concludes that according to Paul’s vision of redemption, the church, as the paradigmatic community of the new creation, is called to be actively engaged in society, to have a constructive, even if critical at times, relationship to the powers and structures of authority, confessing and witnessing the lordship of Christ over reality in its entirety, in the anticipation of the ultimate redemption of God’s creation.
Just when 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 could become the first passage in the Pauline collection to be assigned interpolation status by the common consent of Pauline scholars, certain feminist scholars have resisted this assignment as an apologetic strategem against the feminist critique of biblical religion. More recent developments either connect the passage with 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 as part of Pastoral-type editing, or read it as a citation of what Paul's opponents were saying to refute them. By contrast, in reconstructing the part of women in early Christian communities, Fiorenza assumes the Pauline origin of the material, arguing that Paul did not intend to limit the charismatic freedom of all women, but blaming him for introducing a patriarchalizing trend into the church. The present article prefers to recognize the full negative implications of the passage, and its close relation to the Pastoral epistles. If taken as an interpolation, its context in 1 Corinthians 14 emerges as a clue to the kind of egalitarian, charismatic community it opposes.
Women and Religion: Papers of the Working Group on Women and Religion 1972-73
- Winsome Munro