Questions about Christian Nationalism

The mainstream media and Christian organizations and leaders paint Christian nationalism as at best an error to be avoided and at worst a devilish enemy to be opposed. If you have never heard a word in its defense, please consider the following questions.

Jesus taught that the family as we know it will not exist in heaven (Mark 12:18–27). Does that mean there is no such thing as a Christian family?

Similarly, we can expect no schools and businesses as we know them in heaven. Are “Christian school” and “Christian business” thus misnomers?

There will be people from “every … nation” in heaven, but nations as we know them will not be there. Does that mean there can be no such thing as a Christian nation in this life and it is therefore wrong to attempt to build one?

The message Jesus began to preach is called “the gospel of the kingdom” (Matt 4:23; Mark 1:14). A kingdom is a community of communities—villages, towns, whatever. My church is striving to build one of those “villages”—a fractal, if you will, a part of a whole that has all the characteristics of the whole.

A kingdom has someone in charge; in our case, it is the God who made heaven and earth. The subjects of the kingdom have a way to access the one in charge; in our case, it is through Jesus and his death on the cross. Kingdoms have laws; ours begins with prohibitions against taking life or property, betraying trust, and besmirching reputation and goes on to commend grace, mercy, and compassion. Kingdoms bring due consequences for violations of those laws—here the fractal analogy breaks down because congregations and their networks deal with issues different from those of the larger polity, but in both cases, “we do this; we don’t do that”; the smaller units should deal with issues in consideration of the welfare of the larger units. Finally, a kingdom needs an ultimate goal; ours is eternal life with our creator, redeemer, and sanctifier.

Christian nationalism is simply the idea that the gospel affects not only individuals and congregations but whole societies. Jesus has commissioned his people to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matt 24:19); he said that “repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations” (Luke 24:47). The title of my church’s in-house publication, Spreading Branches, alludes to the idea that the gospel benefits societies—nations—that befriend it (Matt 13:32; cf. Dan 4:12, 20–21). My own view is that by “nations” he meant any group of people “that calls us us and them them,” not the current nation-state, with flags and a privileged few who lord it over those who cannot defend themselves (Luke 22:25). Either way, though, the gospel is to affect society, even people who do not believe.

Any community in which life, property, trust, and reputation are safe is by nature—by definition—just. Justice uninterrupted leads to peace, and peace to prosperity. Is that not what we want for our children?

Cotton Mather famously lamented that godliness—sincere devotion to Jesus for who he is—gave birth to prosperity and the daughter killed the mother. No society is perfect, and what happened to Mather’s society will eventually be true of any society that travels the road of godliness. But is it an insult to God to try to build, maintain, or reclaim such a society?

Christian nationalists are often accused of wanting “political power for its own sake.” What does that look like in measurable terms? Can our brethren in much of the world be forgiven for wishing and praying that God would grant them enough political power to have relief from the persecution and run-of-the-mill chaos they—and other innocents—are currently suffering? What evidence is there for the charge that Christian nationalists’ goal is to become the privileged few who push nobodies around? Or is the goal to bring due consequences to murderers, thieves, frauds, and slanderers so that innocent people can “live a quiet life, and to attend to [their] own business, and to work with [their] hands” (1 Thess 4:11) and spread the gospel?

If wanting to see not only our homes and churches but our society at large characterized by justice and peace is a good thing, then Christian nationalism’s specific imperfections, not its goals, are the proper objects of criticism.

Tetranomy in Action I: Abuse by Church Staff

 

Does anyone among you, if he has a matter against someone else, dare to go to court before the unrighteous and not before the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if by you the world is judged, are you unworthy of the most insignificant courts? Do you not know that we will judge angels, not to mention ordinary matters? Therefore, if you have courts with regard to ordinary matters, do you seat these despised people in the church? I say this to your shame. So is there not anyone wise among you who will be able to render a decision between his brothers? But brother goes to court with brother, and this before unbelievers! Therefore it is already completely a loss for you that you have lawsuits with one another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? But you wrong and defraud, and do this to brothers! (1 Corinthians 6:1–8)

Now if your brother sins against you, go correct him between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take with you in addition one or two others, so that by ⌊the testimony⌋ of two or three witnesses every matter may be established. And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses to listen to the church also, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matthew 18:15–17)

Tetranomy (from tetra, “four,” and nomos, “law”) is my term for a social order in which everyone is bound to respect his neighbor’s life, property, trust, and reputation. Everyone is bound by the sixth through ninth commandments: Do not kill. Do not commit adultery (i.e., fraud). Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. No exception is given in Exodus 20, the rest of the Torah that follows, or any of the summaries in the New Testament (e.g., Mark 10:19; Luke 18:20; Rom 13:9). No one is allowed to violate his neighbor’s physical life, the property that makes that life possible, the trust that enables societies to function, or the reputation that underlies trust.

The problem, of course, is that not everyone lives that way; in fact, nobody lives that way all the time. So what is to be done when the laws are broken? Isn’t some coercively funded agency needed to “administer retribution on the wrongdoer” (Rom 13:4)?

I have answered that question at length beginning here. I would like to present in this post a hypothetical situation that demonstrates how the tetranomic solution to the abuse of parishioners by church staff is superior to the conventional statist alternative. (I have dealt with a similar real-life situation here.)

In this scenario, X, a youth group leader, is accused of having sexual intercourse with Y, an early-teenage girl, after grooming her for years, luring her into a compromising situation, threatening her when she refused his initial advances, and finally forcing himself on her when she resisted. Y has told her parents, who have apprised the head pastor of her accusation. The pastor now has a choice between trying to settle the matter in-house or going to the police.

Before we go any further, we need to establish that 1 Corinthians 6:1–8 and Matthew 18:15–17 apply to this situation. Anyone who would say that Y’s father does not self-evidently “[have] a matter against someone else” needs to come up with a better definition of that phrase that does not include this case. Was Paul talking only about lawsuits, or can we reasonably induce the principle that Christians are sinners who will sin against and thereby damage each other from time to time and lawsuits in the “unrighteous” courts are an example of the wrong way to deal with such sins? To limit Paul’s argument to lawsuits looks to me like limiting “thou shalt not commit adultery” to intercourse and not to, say, bait-and-switch marketing. No, Paul’s words apply to our scenario because he was laying down a principle that applies to any situation in which one Christian is seeking restitution for a sin committed against him by a Christian brother.

Jesus tells us how to deal with a brother—any brother—who sins against us: We are to keep the matter between us if possible. If that fails, we take the matter before “one or two others” who have the wisdom to advise but no power to enforce. If that also fails, we go “to the church,” which I take to refer to the church leadership first and the congregation second. (The Greek term originally referred to any group of people who held regular formal meetings, so it could refer to any regular meeting of Christians from a handful to a throng.) The “one or two others” would have been laymen, so “the church” in a Presbyterian system would be the session (perhaps through the pastor), who would either appoint a committee to hear both sides and render a judgment or do so as a full board. Some churches might take “to the church” to mean that they need to call a meeting of the whole congregation (which I hope would be open only to adult communicant members). Either way, the meetings at that point would have the goal not only of finding the truth but also of setting the terms for the parties to be reconciled. Once the dispute has passed the “one or two others” stage, any party who refuses to allow the dispute to go “to the church” or to submit to the judgment rendered is to be treated “as a Gentile and a tax collector,” not as a church member.

Gentiles (and, presumably, tax collectors) “lord it over” their neighbors (Luke 22:25)—their relationships are determined by power, not by justice or compassion, and Jesus tells his church that those who refuse to submit to the decisions of the church are looking to have the dispute resolved by power, not by justice or compassion, in which case they are to be excommunicated (i.e., have their membership revoked) and allowed to seek their fortunes from the state.

Some would say Romans 13 gives the father no choice but to go to the police: rape is a crime, and prosecuting crime is the state’s responsibility. But this raises two questions. First, who decides what is and is not a crime? Is a crime whatever the state says is a crime? This is a subset of the “render unto Caesar” question: Is anything Caesar puts his name on legitimately his? Does he have the right to put his name on anything he desires? In this case, if he puts his name on Y in the name of protecting her, does she primarily belong to him or to her parents? If she belongs primarily to Caesar in this case, how can she not now be subject to Caesar’s guidelines for education (e.g., Islam, Christianity, atheism, critical theory) and conscription for whatever purposes Caesar has in mind for her (e.g., Est 2:2–4)?

Second, what are the likely consequences of this action? The first is that the church and X will get their names in the paper. If X is married, his wife will bear shame before everyone who can identify her. If he has children, they will become objects of ridicule in school and wherever else word travels. If he is convicted and jailed—and if he cannot raise bail before trial—his household will have no breadwinner, and his wife will be essentially widowed and his children orphaned while he is incarcerated, and his ability to find employment once he is released will be severely hampered. And this is if he confesses when he is first confronted or is acquitted by the court!

If he denies the accusation, the prosecution will go through church records with a fine-toothed comb and interview anyone he thinks will be able to strengthen his case. Any defense lawyer engaged by X will be looking for any fault in the accusation that will enable him to win an acquittal. Y will then become a tool for the prosecutor and an enemy to be destroyed by the defense, both in pursuit of their careers. The execution of justice and the welfare of the victim will be secondary at best.

If God truly is the God of justice and of the afflicted, there has to be a better way for Christians to handle this kind of horrible situation, one that brings glory to him alone and provides a greater opportunity for justice. There is, and it involves the church acting as the church.

How can the matter be settled in-house? First, we need to define our phrase settle the matter. It does not mean that X says, “I’m sorry,” and that’s it. The damage has been substantial, so the restitution needs to be substantial. Any satisfactory resolution has to be just that—satisfactory to the victim and the church adjudicators and ideally one the perpetrator agrees is just and even merciful. The primary aim must be to fulfill justice—the question of mercy has to wait until a just solution has been defined and plans made for its implementation—but if “mercy triumphs over [just] judgment [i.e., justice]” (Jas 2:13), the question of mercy will need to be addressed eventually.

Any solution rendered by imperfect adjudicators will be imperfect, but that is no more true for an adjudication by a church than for one by the state. If no one will be satisfied with any solution, not even one provided by the state, perhaps it is better to think of an optimal solution. The optimal solution restores the victim’s personhood and restores the perpetrator to Christian fellowship and to the victim as much as is humanly possible. Is such a course of action more likely from a group of men selected by the congregation for their commitment to Scriptural faith and practice or from those who “[do] not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to [them]” (1 Cor 2:14)?

Of course, any resolution will probably give the victim less than she would like to receive and cost the perpetrator more than he would like to pay, but both are welcome to weigh the likelihood that the state will serve them better and act accordingly.

So the question is now, How can a just course of action be decided upon? According to Matthew 18:15–17, the process should involve as few people as necessary. If Y’s family confronts X and he confesses and is willing to cooperate with the terms Y’s family sets, who else needs to know? If Y were my daughter, I would expect X to resign from his post and pay for any counseling Y needed. I would want X to be kept accountable, and I would ask church leaders to be part (or all) of the process, which would likely include provisions beyond resignation and counseling (e.g., restricted access to church facilities). According to 1 Corinthians 6:1–8, these men should be up to the task; if not, the congregation should be dissolved.

If X makes restitution and submits to the other disciplinary measures imposed by the church leaders, what could be better? But what if he doesn’t?

As noted earlier, if my conversation with X yields no fruit, then I take “one or two others” to listen to both sides and give their unofficial opinions of the merits of our arguments and recommendations for ways the matter can be settled without it going any further. If that doesn’t work, I take the matter up with the church leaders. They appoint a committee to hear both sides, ask questions, and render the best official verdict and terms of resolution they can. This is crucial: the church leaders are redeemed sinners, and their decision will be imperfect. But they are (in Presbyterian circles, at least, though in any congregation that elects its leadership) “as good as it gets,” and those who ordain their leaders covenant before God to obey them. So, if X refuses to abide by their decision, he is excommunicated from the church, 1 Corinthians 6 no longer applies, and I am free to take the matter to the police.

However, if I do so, the horrible consequences of requesting state intervention listed earlier would ensue, so the church leadership would be acting reasonably if they were to beg me not to do so and to try to work out another solution. They might agree to take on my daughter’s restorative care by paying for counseling or whatever and take on the responsibility of keeping track of X to make sure he doesn’t get into positions where he can repeat his offense. Or they might decide that my daughter has not provided enough proof for her accusations to overcome reasonable doubt and consider the case closed.

Either way, if I refuse to accept the church leaders’ decision and take the matter to the police, I am excommunicated, and I will have to live with whatever the state provides.

But if tetranomy becomes the law of the wider society and if X refuses to listen to the church or if the church chooses to close the case, there will be no police for me to turn to. Then what?

I assume that tetranomy can become the law of the wider society only through a bottom-up process by which affinity groups become large and strong enough that the state withers away. Specifically, given the choice between taxing their neighbors to finance schools, parents will choose to vote against school levies and the politicians who support them—and win the elections—and they will work alone or with others to build what they consider the optimal education systems for their families. If God blesses their efforts, tax-funded education becomes obsolete. Again, people will vote against the one-size-fits-all healthcare bureaucracy necessitated by tax funding, and it will be replaced by voluntarily funded institutions. They will keep watch over each other’s property and deal with malefactors, obviating the need for career police and military. They will take care of those in need, obviating the need for tax-funded provisions for retirement and unemployment. In short, they will form communities. Some communities will be expressly Christian; others will not. Different Christian communities will have different requirements for entry (e.g., policies on alcohol or beach apparel) and offer different benefits (e.g., grief counseling or firearms training). The hope is that the Christian communities will work so much better than the secular versions that people will be drawn to Christ (1 Pet 3:15) and God will crush Satan under their feet (Rom 16:20; Mal 4:3).

If the wider society devolves into chaos before coercive institutions can be supplanted through the ballot box, then viable communities will of necessity be established by force of arms. The results in that case would probably share many authoritarian characteristics with the state they replace and therefore be inferior to an order established through peaceable supplanting. We can be sure, however, that whatever institutions emerge will be as satisfactory as they are voluntary, and we can hope that they will make establishing voluntarism a goal.

For now, we should strive to build congregations that see that their members’ needs are met—spiritual first, then (in no particular order) physical, educational, health, nutritional, and relational. Part of meeting their spiritual needs is keeping them out of the kind of situation in our scenario. But sinners gonna sin, so second best is learning how to deal with the problems that come up without recourse to “the unrighteous.”

Our scenario neglected a crucial relationship that was damaged by X’s attack on Y: his relationship with his wife. He committed adultery against her. Adultery is a capital offense in the Torah. How does a congregation deal with that or with murder, the ultimate capital crime? Dealing with sexual abuse in-house is currently illegal, but it can be pulled off by competent church elders—and should be. Executing capital offenders is a different matter, if for no other reason than the impossibility of keeping it hidden. I will explore a possible strategy for dealing with capital offenders in part two of this series.

The Universe: It’s God or Magic, Christ or Chaos, Anarchy or Tyranny

My wife has noticed, often in exasperation, that with me, things are either black or white. It’s true—I like to join until there is only one split. You are either alive or dead. You are either standing on top of the cliff or you have fallen over it. You are either innocent or guilty.

So it’s natural that I split the question of cosmology into two alternatives. Either God created the world, or it is the product of magic. Either societies submit to Jesus, or they become chaotic. Either everyone in society is subject to the same laws, or the powerful do as they please with the weak. We will consider those issues in order.

Either there is a conscious being—a god, a creator—outside the universe available to our five senses, or there isn’t. If there isn’t, then it follows that we and all other tangible objects are the result of mindless processes. Furthermore, the question of why anything exists at all is meaningless: If there is nothing outside the universe, it could not have come into existence for any purpose, so it has no inherent meaning. But we’ll get to that later.

The question of the origin of the universe can be answered only one of two ways. Either everything has always existed, or there was a beginning.

If it has always existed, existence is either static or changing. Since we see motion, which is change, we can discount stasis. So we’re left with an ever-existing universe that changes. Are those changes directional or cyclical? While the climate cycle and the life cycles of everything from insects to empires point to cyclicality, statements like “History never repeats itself, but it does rhyme” and “We never cross the same river twice; not only does the river change, but we become different people in the meantime” cast a shadow on strict cyclicality.

One might also point to the observation that the universe seems to be expanding at increasing speed. If the universe’s history were a series of big bangs, expansions, and contractions to a black hole, we would expect that it would be expanding but the speed of expansion was slowing down. (That is, unless we are still in a phase analogous to that in which a bullet accelerates to its maximum speed, in which case we would need to find a source of the energy driving that acceleration.)

This leaves us with a history that spirals, sort of like a slinky that goes left and right on the floor and up and down over the furniture at a speed that is currently increasing. Maybe the increase in speed will diminish and eventually become negative, the speed itself will decrease to nothing, and the universe will eventually contract again and the process will repeat. But this is a maybe that cannot be proven and seems counterintuitive. So let’s look at the possibility that there was a beginning.

Where would the beginning of that slinky be? And how did it come into existence? That brings us back to the question of the creator. If there was no creator, then everything came out of nothing for no reason. From nothing came everything, including the time by which the history of everything is measured. Not only is this magic, it’s even better than magic: a rabbit has sprung from the empty hat without the agency or desire of a magician. Let us call it capital-M Magic.

Scoffing naturalists score a touchdown when they point out that creationism of any stripe is a convenient solution to the problem of existence. But I’d like to argue that they ultimately lose the game because they can provide a viable alternative neither to that problem nor to any of the problems that follow from it. Not only is the god answer convenient, it’s the only answer that doesn’t evaporate as we look at it closely.

Let’s look at the implications of naturalism’s closed system. Not only do we have the physical universe coming out of nothing for no reason, we have order coming out of randomness for no reason. For what reason should some subatomic particles bond to form hydrogen and some uranium? For what reason should some amalgamations orbit around other amalgamations that themselves become part of discreet structures with complex internal and external relationships?

It depends on what is meant by “reason,” I suppose. The easiest type of reason for scoffers to dispose of is that of consciousness. If there is no conscious being outside the natural system, then it came about for no reason. It is the result of no conscious intention. It simply exists: whatever is, is. Touchdown again.

Then there are reasons that are the bailiwick of physicists. For example, one can posit that in a random explosion some particles end up being closer to each other, thus forming heavier elements, and others being farther apart, thus forming lighter elements. Fine, but for what reason would all combinations of, say, eighteen protons and electrons (and whatever else is in there) be a gas (argon), while all combinations of fewer particles, thirteen, be a metal (aluminum)? For what reason aren’t some combinations of eighteen a metal and some of thirteen a gas? From what I can see, the answers to each question raise questions that require answers that assume that the universe is more, not less, complex than we know.

I don’t read molecular physics, but if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on the horse that says the processes are more complex than anyone has figured out rather than that they occur willy-nilly. Complexity coming from randomness for no reason we can state definitively: Magic.

How does lifeless material produce living beings? Great minds have tried for centuries to reproduce the process—and they can produce, as we are finding to our horror, destructive organisms—but they cannot produce totally from dead matter anything that fulfills the traditional definition of life by being able to both metabolize and reproduce. If the process were random, reverse engineering it should be easy, but everything we learn about living beings points to them being incomprehensibly complex both internally and in relationship to their environments. Similar to—or perhaps a corollary of—complexity from randomness, life from death is either a gift of some god, or it’s Magic.

Sometime after the first living beings appeared by Magic, so the story goes, some of them stopped gaining nutrition from lifeless matter and started consuming other living beings. Now, when I was a kid, we acknowledged cows and pigs and deer as conscious beings, so we thought of hunting and butchering as killing. But plants, we thought, had no consciousness, so we had no trouble with eating apples or cabbage or mushrooms. But science, never settled, has cast a shadow on that view: it seems that plants from mushrooms to trees (including cabbage?) actually communicate with each other, at least within species, so they are not the unconscious organisms I thought they were in my youth. How much the cells of the meat of an apple suffer when I eat them (or when the apple simply rots on the ground) I don’t know, but whatever consciousness the first organism to eat another organism had was probably matched by the organism it ate. So sentient beings began consuming other beings that were in some sense sentient.

As time went on, organisms became more complex, and so did the organisms they ate. As species diversified, the diets of most became specialized. This specialization was purely practical: X “knew” through Magic-endowed cognitive processes (experience? instinct?) that Y had been endowed (by Magic) with something that, if X consumed Y, would benefit X and enable it to metabolize and reproduce.

Metabolism and reproduction: more Magic.

Now we get into the uniquely human question of morality. Note that the question whether X should (in the moral sense) eat Y was not, shall we say, on the table before the appearance of homo Sapiens. When a tyrannosaur attacked a hadrosaur, the outcome was equally moral whether the hadrosaur escaped or the tyrannosaur ate it. The same cannot be said about a virgin’s relationship with a rapist or a merchant’s relationship with a shoplifter. Even the terms used in the previous sentence speak to the importance we place on morality—it is an important part of what makes us human.

But where did this sense of morality, the idea of should, come from? What evolutionary benefit came with the idea that we should not kill those who stand between us and what we need or desire? One can argue that it is simply an extension of pragmatics—human life is better in society than in isolation, and respect for others’ lives and property makes society possible. But that doesn’t explain people forgiving and even adopting their enemies (as in the biblical examples of Saul’s adoption of Agag and Evil-Merodach’s adoption of Jehoiachin).

At best, it simply kicks the can down the road: Where did the idea of society come from in the first place? Even once sexual reproduction (more Magic, whether it’s a bug or a feature) became part of the picture, society wasn’t inevitable. Koalas mate like welfare mothers—slam, bam, thank you ma’am, and Dad disappears.

Society and compassion coming from individual self-preservation at any cost: more Magic.

Either that or the system has been constructed by something outside it. I find the latter explanation more plausible. (Only the Abrahamic religions attribute the material world to a supernatural creator, I will follow their assumption that there is only one god, most often named simply God, and I will also follow their exclusive use of masculine singular pronouns.)

The most important question after whether God exists is whether he is perfectly good. Though few would find absolutely nothing good about the material world, fewer still would consider it perfectly good. Reasonable people see suffering and death and infer that the God who created the universe is less than perfectly good. To avoid harm, so the thinking goes, we have to find ways to get and stay on his good side, such as incantations or child sacrifice or burnt animals or fasts or self-flagellation or boring convocations or the giving of alms. And maybe, just maybe, he’s like people in that we can go against his will and get away with it if we don’t get caught or we patch things up in time. But even if he has made his requirements known so clearly that we can be sure we have met them, we will always have the nagging fear of being betrayed in the end. And, of course, if we know we has not lived up to the requirements, we live in fear of being condemned by justice or whim.

One way of avoiding this fear is to make up a god who accepts us the way we are, period. Whether such a god would treat sadistic torturers and murderers differently from their victims is not addressed definitively by any of the Abrahamic religions’ sacred scriptures, so one man’s view is just as good as another’s.

But what if God really is perfectly good and hates anything that goes against his desires? What if he has revealed all we need to know about him somewhere and any of our ideas about him or desires or words or actions that do not comport with what he has revealed are not just errors but offenses against him? What if our default setting is to be at war against him?

To fall short of the requirements of a perfectly good God is to deserve what that God considers just recompense. He sets the terms—we don’t. The Christian God says we all have fallen short of his requirements and so deserve eternal punishment. The only way to escape that punishment is to enter into a covenant with him mediated by the blood sacrifice of his Son Jesus, which is done by believing that Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth and that God raised him from the dead.

Simple assent to those facts, however, carries with it life-changing implications. The war does not cease when we realize we need to change sides. The pardon for sins is free, but it will eventually, at least potentially, cost us everything we valued when we were God’s enemies. Jesus, God’s Son, gave up everything of his for us, and so he has the right to ask us to give up everything we consider ours for him—guilty pleasures, innocent pleasures, comfort, reputation, even life—everything.

People become like the gods they worship, and those in covenant with God through Jesus show evidence of that covenant by being like God and treating as holy what God calls holy, beginning with a devotion to truth. There is only one God, and he is not only primarily good but also invisible. His ways are better than our ways, and so we cannot claim his endorsement of anything he has not specifically endorsed. We are to set time aside to focus on our relationship with him and to honor those people who have graciously given us the benefits we enjoy. We are to consider all human life holy, including the property that makes life possible, the trust that makes society possible, and the reputations that make trust possible. As individuals take on these characteristics, the societies they form will also take them on. Such societies will be characterized by respect for—and reverent treatment of—life, property, trust, and reputation.

Societies composed of people who worship imperfect gods whom they must placate and can manipulate, on the other hand, are essentially wildernesses in which hadrosaurs and tyrannosaurs play their hunger games. Truth and others’ lives, property, trust, and reputations are worth preserving only if they serve the needs of the individual or collective. And the bar of the god’s approval and disapproval is always just a bit lower than the individual or collective can jump.

This, then, is our choice: Christ or chaos. Either we take Christ as king as revealed in Scripture, upholding the holiness of all life, property, reputation, and trust and prescribing, again through Scripture, the responses for violations, or we have the chaos of life, property, trust, and reputation up for grabs by the rich and powerful—that is, tyranny.

Not sure the connection holds? OK, you tell me: Is Christ honored in any sense more in your society today than twenty years ago? Are life and property safer? Can you think of a society in which the answer to one of those questions would be yes but the other no?

What does a Christian society look like? The first answer, of course, is that is would be imperfect; it would be, after all the product of imperfect people. So perhaps the proper question is what Christians should aim for their societies to look like.

Let me suggest that the answer is found in Romans 13—no, not the first seven verses, but the next three:

 Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another, for the one who loves someone else has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are summed up in this statement: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does not commit evil against a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

The fulfillment of the law, the fullness of Christian love, consists of reverence for life, property, reputation (“You shall not bear false witness” being subsumed under “any other commandment”), and trust. Note that property is part of that: “You shall not steal.” Stealing is taking what belongs to another by direct action, deceit, or extortion. Extortion is giving a person a choice between obedience or worse suffering: “Do as I say or I’ll kill you.”

Taxation is extortion by another name, and those who would extract taxes are by definition acting as though they are above God’s law. They are without exception those with power over their defenseless neighbors. Any Christian who advocates for a tax-funded body “to keep order” is thus sowing the seeds of that society’s destruction by making the most powerful people in the society exempt from God’s law. The combination of human nature—which, as noted earlier, is at war with God—and the perverse incentives inherent in exemption from God’s law is practically an engraved invitation to tyranny and chaos.

So the choice is clear. People live under either the beneficent reign of Christ or under the tyranny of chaos. And the choice matters only in a universe made by a perfectly good God.

Evangelicals might have further questions: What about Romans 13:1–7? Is that not God’s word? What about “Render unto Caesar” and “Honor the king”?

I have addressed these questions at length. I discuss Romans 13 here, “Render unto Caesar” “here, and “honor the king” here.

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.