AbstractRomans 13:1–7 teaches absolute submission to constituted authorities, for which reason some Christians argue against challenging government orders or policies. There are problems with this position in view because of the fact that not all governments can be validly said to have been constituted by God; it is also clear that sometimes government policies do not only neglect, but also actually violate the rights of the people. Employing the exegetical study and analytical approach, this article examined the passage in relation to Nigerian Christians’ attitudes to social activism. The study revealed that in Romans 13:1, Paul made a general statement that does not necessarily preclude exceptions. The examination of the passage in its historical context also showed that Paul must have been influenced by the benevolent nature of the contemporary Roman government. Paul might have written differently if he wrote after 62 CE when Nero began his repressive policies. Hence, this text is interpreted out of context, if it is given a general application. Such an application would also contradict the teaching of the Bible to confront social injustice. The passage is applied to Nigeria, assessing what ought to be the attitude of Nigerian Christians to social activism, given particularly the prevalent economic inequalities in the country.

AbstractThis paper employs post-colonial hermeneutics to read Romams 13:1-7. The usage of post-colonial hermeneutics is largely to open up critical, emancipatory discourse by undoing narratives that are mainly colonial and oppressive. The approach does this by teasing out imperial and colonial features in a text and reconstructing them. The main problem is to redress the anomaly that imperial and colonially generated reading process mainly from the western context has caused and is still causing in the worlds that they annex and control by perpetuating those reading. Specifically, the paper tries to identify the relationship between colonization and nation building as it interplays in the text. Decolonization is put forward as an alternative and some implications are drawn for contextual democratic nation building in Ghana.

AbstractThis study is an attempt to develop and illustrate an ethos of responsible interpretation for Romans 13: 1-7 within the broader context of an 'ethics of historical reading' and an 'ethics of public responsibility' in New Testament scholarship. It is argued that an ethos of responsible interpretation of the New Testament 'compels' the interpreter to take reading seriously. This implies that the implications of the liguisticality, literariness and rhetoricity of the text, as well as the social phenomena of the world created by the text, 'must' be honoured and studied with all possible methodological sophistication and rigour. This has to be done since it forms the means through which the 'otherness' of the text is manifested. Such a study has to precede any inferences about the possible relation between the literature of the New Testament and text-extrinsic matters such as God, society, history or the self. Hierdie studie is 'n poging om 'n etos van verantwoordelike interpretasie van die Nuwe Testament te ontwikkel en te illustreer binne die breëre konteks van 'n "etiek van historiese lees" en 'n "etiek van openbare verandwoordelikheid" in die Nuwe-Testamentiese wetenskap. Daar word geredeneer dat 'n etiek van verantwoordelike interpretasie van die Nuwe Testament die interpreteerder "verplig" om die lees van die teks ernstig op te neem. Dit impleseer dat die teks as linguale, literêre en retoriese verskynsel asook die sosiale verskynsels van die wêreld wat deur die teks geskep word, gerespekteer moet word en met alle moontlike metodologiese noukeurigheid en sofistikasie bestudeer moet word. Dit moet gedoen word omdat die "andersheid" van die teks ondermeer via hierdie verskynsels uitdrukking vind. Sodanige studie moet enige aansprake oor die moontlike verhouding tussen die literatuur van die Nuwe Testament en buite-tekstuele sake soos God, samelewing, geskiedenis en die mens voorafgaan.

AbstractThe volumes in this series investigate early Christian literature in the context of Mediterranean literature, religion, society, and culture. The authors use interdisciplinary methods informed by social, rhetorical, and literary approaches to move beyond the limits of traditional literary historical investigations. The studies presuppose that Christianity began as a Jewish movement in various geographical, political, economic, and social locations in the Greco-Roman world. Botha contends that a socially responsible, reading of the Bible must include at least four approaches: linguistic, literary, rhetorical, and social-scientific. He examines each of these approaches theoretically, and then applies these methods to a reading of the obedience to authorities passage in Romans 13:1-7. The book will be of particular interest to students of biblical exegesis, New Testament, and the book of Romans.

AbstractRomans 13:1-7 has remained a challenge for interpreters throughout the history of the New Testament. A previous study investigated the actual readings of the passage during the political transition in South Africa. The present article is a follow-up study and examines readings in the post-1989 period. Political events and the rise of empire studies deeply influenced the reading of the passage. Certain types of reading continue, but there is also a marked increase of ‘realistic’ or ‘pragmatic’ readings. The article concludes with some future perspectives.

AbstractThat the interpretation of Romans 13:1-7 has been integral to much theological discussion in South Africa for over a decade is no accident. Having abandoned its previous biblical bases for support of apartheid ideology, the white Dutch Reformed church, in common with the state, and certain fundamentalist missionary groups, often connected with the American religious right, have pointed to this passage and its parallels as the ultimate sanction for enforced submission to present power relations. Liberationist and black theologians who signed The Kairos Document of 1985-86 castigate such use of the passage as an aspect of idolatrous "state theology." Their approach is to relativize its applicability by reference to situational and total biblical context. In contributing to the debate, Walter Wink argues that the passage forbids only violent, not non-violent opposition to the state. This view is criticized, and yet another approach proposed, based on the hypothesis that Romans 13:1-7 is part of an overall redaction of the Pauline letters connected with the Pastoral Epistles. A hermeneutical method similar to that of black theologian, Itumeleng J. Mosala is applied to the passage to identify a "kindred struggle" among Christians of Asia Minor in the earlier second century.

AbstractRomans is the text most frequently used to legitimise authoritarian rule. These theses argue that a democratic system is more in line with the intention of Romans 13, because both the sin of the ruled and the rulers are controlled. Under democratic presuppositions Romans 13 legitimises the overthrow of an illegitimate government, subject to the other criteria of the ‘just war’ theory.