In case you're wondering, I haven't forgotten about "Law and the Bible: Justice, Mercy and Legal Institutions" (Robert Cochran, Jr. & David VanDrunen, eds., IVPress 2013). You can pick up with my most recent previous post here. I'll skip Chapter 6 for now and make some observations about the following chapter, Civil Law and Civil Disobedience: The Early Church and the Law by Joel A. Nichols and James W. McCarty III. Nichols and McCarty begin by doing a good job of answering many modern American Evangelicals and followers of low-church traditions who don't believe the early Church had law. Indeed, it did. The Christians described in Acts and as commanded in some of the Epistles immediately began to develop both internal "constitutional law," church "administrative law," and "ecclesiastical procedure." The appointment of deacons, the deliverances of the Jerusalem Council, Paul's admonitions to the Corinthian believers, and, most of all, the centrality of trials in Acts, are developed to show how the early Church was not only "lawful" from an internal perspective but how that very lawfulness represented an implicit threat to the established Roman order. In other words, the Church was an alternative polis in a state where Caesar thought he was Lord.
The Church's lawfulness was not an end to itself but it was an example of the Church's political existence and provides a framework for its ambivalent relationship to the primary polity of the day, the Roman Empire. As Nichols and McCarty observe,
Suffice it to say that most Evangelicals--certainly most of a conservative bent anyway--are not familiar with either of the resources to which Nichols and McCarty turn, The Kairos Document and the work of Byers Naudé and the Christian Institute of Southern Africa. The authors turn to these resources to address the case of civil disobedience.
Most Evangelicals begin with the text of Romans 13.1-2 ("Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.") and conclude that there is a strong moral presumption in favor of submission that can be rebutted only under exceptional circumstances.
Following their favored texts, Nichols and McCarty urge on their readers a far weaker presumption of moral obligation to obey laws principally by relativizing Romans 13. In their view, Romans 13 is directed not to Christians qua inhabitants of the Roman Empire but to antinomian Christians who rejected the claims of the civil authority toute court. Antinomian behavior was a problem that was addressed in 2 Thessalonians 3.6 ff but is nowhere suggested as a problem in Romans. The obvious risks of selective and even arbitrary relativization of biblical texts should make us wary of deploying it without close textual support.
My criticism of the argument of Nichols and McCarty is not to say that I disagree with their conclusion. Conservative Evangelicals historically have too often exalted submission when they found themselves and their social views reflected in the laws. One hears much less about "subjection to the authorities" now that the shoe is on the other foot and thoroughgoing secularism is coming to dominate the legal landscape. The precise contours of the line between morally-driven submission and civil disobedience is difficult to draw, which is why study of the book of Esther and the casual disregard she and Mordecai show for Persian law may prove more useful than imagining antinomians in Rome.
The Church's lawfulness was not an end to itself but it was an example of the Church's political existence and provides a framework for its ambivalent relationship to the primary polity of the day, the Roman Empire. As Nichols and McCarty observe,
We do not believe that Acts counsels a full bifurcation of Christians' lives as citizens of a civil state and citizens of God's community. ... We do believe that [the trial narratives reveal that] ... when there is a conflict between the civil state and God's will, the latter trumps and Christians must actively follow God even if it means disobeying the civil state.Few contemporary American Christians would disagree with this statement. The answer to the next question Nichols and McCarty address might create some controversy: Under what circumstances is there such a conflict that Christians must actively disobey their civil government? In other words, how broad is the scope of civil disobedience? Apostolic disobedience to a command not to preach about the resurrection of Jesus is an easy case but what if the civil authority mandates by sanction of law a social structure that implicitly offends the Gospel's ethnic leveling?
Suffice it to say that most Evangelicals--certainly most of a conservative bent anyway--are not familiar with either of the resources to which Nichols and McCarty turn, The Kairos Document and the work of Byers Naudé and the Christian Institute of Southern Africa. The authors turn to these resources to address the case of civil disobedience.
Most Evangelicals begin with the text of Romans 13.1-2 ("Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.") and conclude that there is a strong moral presumption in favor of submission that can be rebutted only under exceptional circumstances.
Following their favored texts, Nichols and McCarty urge on their readers a far weaker presumption of moral obligation to obey laws principally by relativizing Romans 13. In their view, Romans 13 is directed not to Christians qua inhabitants of the Roman Empire but to antinomian Christians who rejected the claims of the civil authority toute court. Antinomian behavior was a problem that was addressed in 2 Thessalonians 3.6 ff but is nowhere suggested as a problem in Romans. The obvious risks of selective and even arbitrary relativization of biblical texts should make us wary of deploying it without close textual support.
My criticism of the argument of Nichols and McCarty is not to say that I disagree with their conclusion. Conservative Evangelicals historically have too often exalted submission when they found themselves and their social views reflected in the laws. One hears much less about "subjection to the authorities" now that the shoe is on the other foot and thoroughgoing secularism is coming to dominate the legal landscape. The precise contours of the line between morally-driven submission and civil disobedience is difficult to draw, which is why study of the book of Esther and the casual disregard she and Mordecai show for Persian law may prove more useful than imagining antinomians in Rome.
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