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.
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