The saga that passes for my ongoing review of "Law and the Bible: Justice, Mercy and Legal Institutions" (InterVarsity Press 2013) continues. You can read my next most recent post here. This one surveys Chapter 8--Living as Christians Under Civil Law: The New Testament Letters, Law and Politics written by David Smolin and Kar Yong Lim. The juxtaposition of Smolin, an American Christian in a majority-Christian country and Lim, a Malaysian Christian from a majority-Muslim state, provides ample opportunity for cross-cultural comparisons of what constitutes biblically-grounded justice. Smolin's Jewish background also enables him to see more clearly than most Evangelicals the dark side of Western Christendom.
The Smolin-Lim resolution of the Romans 13 "problem" has more to offer than that of Nichols-McCarty in the preceding chapter. Instead of relativizing the injunction "let everyone be subject to the governing authorities" in light of an alleged pervasive antinomian spirit spirit at large among the Roman Christians, Smolin and Lim take care to analyze this challenging text in light of its particular context. They look to Paul's immediately subsequent command to "Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect; then respect; if honor, then honor." Given the actual state of governing in the Rome of Paul's day, many contemporary readers have overlooked the negative implication of the commands: that none of the quartet of taxes, revenue, respect, and honor need be paid to those to whom they are not owed!
Space prevents me from further developing the Anti-imperialist take of Smolin and Lim. Suffice it to say that this approach to the New Testament corpus is well-regarded by others and is well-developed by Smolin and Lim. And it should also be noted that their are other, non-conscience-bound reasons why taxes and revenue if not the appearance of respect and honor should be paid. Prudence and avoiding scandal are two suggested by Thomas Aquinas.
Smolin and Lim go on to address several other current issues but I'll leave them to the perceptive reader. For what it's worth, Chapter 8 joins the first four chapters as a very good reason to buy this book.
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