Africa grapples with Romans 13

WASHINGTON, July 3 (UPI) -- As evangelical Christianity is becoming the dominant force in sub-Saharan Africa, the key New Testament passage dealing with the relationship between church and state has taken on paramount importance.

At last weekend's international conference titled, "The Bible and the Ballot Box: Evangelical Faith and Third-World Democracy," no other Biblical text came up more frequently than Romans 13:1-7, which reads in part:

"Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God ... Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed."

It's a troubling text because, depending on how you interpret these words, they might lead to the assumption that a Christian must not resist injustice.

At the conference in Potomac, Md., one presenter after another told the audience from five continents that in Africa this admonition by the apostle Paul had caused missionaries and old-style Evangelicals to take a quietist stance.

But this is changing, these scholars argued. They said that an African holism, which in the words of Oxford professor Terence O. Ranger "inseparably unites the 'secular' and the 'religious,'" always prevails in the long run.

"The question is... not whether Evangelical Christianity (in Africa) has been, is, and will be intensely 'political,' but how."

The issue here is by no means an exclusively African. The ugly ghosts of Christian quietism on the one hand and activist Christian enthusiasm on the other has haunted Europe especially in its darkest hours, the Nazi and Communist periods.

The operative term then was the same as in Africa now -- "two kingdoms," meaning a grotesque distortion of a Lutheran doctrine by that name. Its ghost, too, preoccupied the Potomac conference.

In reality, this doctrine describes God's two-fold reign in this world, where the Christian holds, in a sense, two passports. He is a citizen of the finite secular realm, where God acts in a hidden way.

Here natural reason is "the empress," according to Luther, and the governing authorities, though appointed by God, do not rule by the Gospel but by "the sword," the symbol of worldly power.

They need not be Christian as long as they act intelligently. It is better to have a "wise Turk than a foolish Christian" on the throne, Luther said.

But then there is also the infinite realm of the God revealed in Christ, of the Gospel, the Church, forgiveness, grace, faith and love. These two realms are not antagonistic to one another, as the doctrine's detractors would have you believe.

They serve each other. The secular realm assures good order so that the Gospel may be preached. And the spiritual realm admonishes and teaches secular rulers.

Far from preaching quietism, Luther called quietist preachers unfaithful pigs. "These are worthless, lazy preachers who do not tell the princes and lords their sins," he railed. "In some cases they do not notice these sins. They lie down and snore like swine, they take up the room where good preachers should stand."

Isabel Mukonyora, a Zimbabwean theologian, argued in an interview with United Press International that the pace of Evangelical growth on her continent has been too rapid for this kind of dialectical reflection to prevail in contemporary African theology.

She finds this troubling and fears that without theological depth the spread of evangelical -- and especially Pentecostal -- Christianity might in the end prove to be a straw fire.

History teaches us that while the bone-headed quietist misinterpretation of Romans 13, against which Luther thundered, proved disastrous, so did the utopian attempt of activist clerics to blur the distinction between the two realms.

Where this occurs, the devil is at work, said Luther. For Satan never ceases to "cook and brew the two realms together." In other words, the Church should speak up where secular rulers act contrary to Scripture. It should be a prophetic voice but not presume the duties of the state.

In Luther's rich language, a preacher "must grab into the princes' snouts but not interfere with their craft."

As the Potomac conference showed, Africa is far from immune from such interference by evangelical and other churchmen rightly rejoicing in their triumph. But Vinay Samuel, a Church of England canon who headed the Bible and Ballot Box project that was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, offered good news Wednesday.

"The problem has been recognized," he told UPI, "this is why we are churning out competent African theologians at an accelerated pace. We have already produced 15 African Ph.D.s." By "we," Indian-born Samuel meant the Oxford Center of Missionary Studies, an evangelical institution linked to the Universities of Leeds and Wales.

As a result, it is hoped that sophisticated Reformation and other doctrines on Romans 13 will give structure to the currently sometimes feral ferment of Christian growth south of the Sahara.

To this Luther aficionado, however, it is particularly gratifying that the Wittenberg reformer's often-maligned but immensely topical thoughts on matters of church and state will get a new hearing on what seems to evolve into the most Christian of continents -- Africa.

The Catholic Church IS the living authority of the New Testament she wrote every single word of.

I agree that the Universal (i.e., Catholic) Church was used by God to bring the Bible into the world...

But the private interpretation of many that the the Universal Church is centered in Rome, and is accoutable to the "authority" of the Pope, is a personal opinion found no-where in Scripture. Peter himself certainly did not believe any such thing, as Peter's most ancient biographers uniformly acknowledge.

History and the New Testament

Clement, the bishop of Alexandria (150 - 215 CE), who confirms in Outlines, Bk. VI: "Peter, James (bar Zebedee) and John, after the ascension of the Saviour, did not claim pre-eminence because the Saviour had especially honored them, but chose James the Righteous as Bishop of Jerusalem."
Eusebius (263 - 339 CE), Historia Ecclesia ii,23.4: ".....turned their attention to James, the Lord's brother, who had been elected by the apostles to the episcopal throne at Jerusalem."
Hegesippus (c. 100 - 160 CE), Bk 5: "Control of the Church passed to the Apostles, together with the Lord's brother James...."
Origen (185 - 254 CE), quoting early Josephus: "These things happened to the Jews in requital for James the Righteous, who was a brother of Jesus, known as Christ."
Josephus (37 - c. 100 CE), Antiquities xx: "So he assembled a counsel of judges and brought before it James, the brother of Jesus, known as Christ."
Clement: "When James the Righteous had suffered martyrdom like the Lord and for the same reason, Symeon, the son of his Uncle Clopas, was appointed bishop. He being a cousin of the Lord."
Eusebius: "A group of heretics accused the descendants of Jude...the brother, humanly speaking, of the Savior...on the ground that they were of David's line and related to Christ himself."

The ecclesiastical accounts of the primitive Jewish "Church" can be found in the writings of Eusebius and Epiphanius which themselves can be traced to the "Hypomnemata" of Hegesippus. Hegesippus apparently belonged to the Jerusalem Assembly, calling it "the Ekklesia" and was able to impart (according to Eusebius) a great deal of information not contained in the NT. In these accounts we learn that James (Y`shua's brother) was the first overseer ("bishop") of the Assembly ("Church") and following his death Simeon, the son of Alfai/Clopas (Joseph's brother and Jesus' uncle) was installed as overseer. This same information also came to Eusebius from another source. Since Hegesippus learned this from direct contact with the apostolic Jewish Christians and the yet living relatives of Y`shua, the historically careful Eusebius trusted the information. The choice of relatives of Jesus known as the DESPOSYNOI, "The Sons of the House," is in keeping with Jewish family feelings and practices and messianic principal. The Jewish followers of Jesus were not only misunderstood but actually slandered by Greek and Roman gentile Christians who, due to cultural differences, did not understand Jesus’ messiahship within the Jewish context. It would have been expected that Jesus’ closest male kinsmen would be nearest the "Throne" of the coming messiah. It is within this context that the discourse between Jesus and the Zebedee boys takes place (Mark 10:35). Salome, the mother of the sons of Zebedee (James and John) was Mary's sister (John 19:25), therefore Jesus’ cousins, James and John had expectations of dynastic privilege.... This dynastic succession of episcopacy is also suggested by Eusebius account of the descendants of Jude (another of Jesus' siblings) after their return from trial by Domitian as they stood "at the head of every Church." -- Jack Kilmon, History and the New Testament

Peter himself did not believe in "Petrine Supremacy"; rather, Peter reported to James (Acts 12:17) and Peter obeyed James (Acts 15: 13-22) and Peter deferred to James (Acts 21:18) and Peter feared James (Galatians 2:12). What kind of Petrine "Papacy" is this!!

In fact, not a single verse of Scripture suggests any kind of "Petrine Succession", and such a dogma was NOT the practice of the Early Church:

In the epistles (epitomes) attached to the Homilies, Peter calls James "the Lord and bishop of the Holy Church" (tw kuriw kai episkopw thV agiaV ekklhsiaV, to kurio kai episkopo ths agias eklhsias) and Clement addresses him as "the lord, and bishop of bishops (domino et episcopo episcoporum), who rules Jerusalem, the holy Church of the Hebrews and Churches everywhere excellently founded by the provinces of God, with elders and deacons, and the rest of the brethren." ~~ (GLIMPSES OF JEWISH CHRISTIANITY FROM THE END OF ACTS TO JUSTIN MARTYR (A.D. 62-150), J. Julius Scott, Jr, Wheaton College)

Your entire religious superstructure is founded upon an erroneous "private interpretation"... a Lie.

Interesting program, "Bible Thumper" as well as a thumbs up for not caring what people think! (After all, isn't "Bible Thumper" supposed to be an insult in today's society?)

You must have a hi-powered Palm device, my poor little Palm III doesn't have enough room for a program of this complexity. I do have "My Bible" on my Palm, and even though it doesn't have all the tools of "Bible Thumper", it works for me. I especially like the search feature, as it allows me to have a concordance with me at all times.

You might be a little disappointed to hear that I ordered the optional NASB for my Palm, even though the KJV was included at no extra cost. I still use the NASB for most of my Bible study, a habit that I developed many years ago. However, as you have noticed, I always use KJV when quoting Scripture on FR, and also include the KJV in my weekly church bulletins. I wouldn't dare getting into the pulpit without knowing what the KJV has to say about the passage I am expositing, as well as knowing the reason for any (rarely any) difference between it and the NASB.

Interesting program, "Bible Thumper" as well as a thumbs up for not caring what people think! (After all, isn't "Bible Thumper" supposed to be an insult in today's society?)

It's $25 and worth it. BibleThumper is made here in Nebraska so I can even be a nativist about it... Check out the Online Demo. It brings up a Java-powered Palm IIIc simulator and shows you how the progam works. Once you buy the program (the basic KJV Bible), you can install as many or as few of the extras as you like.

Man, am I hooked on this little thing. I've never used Bible study programs or commentaries or ebooks much on my computer but this PDA has really changed that.

You must have a hi-powered Palm device, my poor little Palm III doesn't have enough room for a program of this complexity. I do have "My Bible" on my Palm, and even though it doesn't have all the tools of "Bible Thumper", it works for me. I especially like the search feature, as it allows me to have a concordance with me at all times.

I've got a 16M Handspring Visor Pro, 33mHz Dragonball 68K processor and added a MemPlug CF expander to it and a 256M Sandisk flash cartidge (which I can also use on most any digital camera). I've got all that stuff I listed and a version of Word and Excel and tons of other stuff and it's still not half-full!!!!! The only drawback is that the external memory card isn't quite as fast as main memory but that generally means a slow launch of the program and then it runs at virtually full speed after that.

The good part is that these devices are getting cheaper and cheaper. An expanded one like mine will be less than $200 in a year or so (I paid $230 for my basic Visor Pro 16M a few months ago and it's already down to $200). I know of a sound Reformed Southern Baptist preacher in Florida who's writing a book on his (I suspect a Puritan biography). I just had to laugh when he used the phrase "Calvinistic Baptists, gun-toting, PDA-using!" in an email. I bet that sounds a little familiar to you. You'd like this guy and his church, I think. He's in sales in his day job and has the Mapopolis maps for his 10 county area in his Visor Prism w/128Mbytes.

You might be a little disappointed to hear that I ordered the optional NASB for my Palm, even though the KJV was included at no extra cost. I still use the NASB for most of my Bible study, a habit that I developed many years ago. However, as you have noticed, I always use KJV when quoting Scripture on FR, and also include the KJV in my weekly church bulletins. I wouldn't dare getting into the pulpit without knowing what the KJV has to say about the passage I am expositing, as well as knowing the reason for any (rarely any) difference between it and the NASB.

Actually, NASB is my #2. I only fault a few passages in it and I think the chances of fatal doctrine arising from NASB readings to be vanishingly small. And NASB is in some places easier to understand, in the Old Testament especially. If I could get the author to include it, I'd like to have NASB in my BibleThumper for reference. Naturally, I could not welcome the NIV, Living Bible, Good News Bible, etc.

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