Thursday, April 13, 2006
(8:05 AM) | Old - Doug Johnson:
Render and Submit
I grew up in fundamentalist Baptist circles, and for all my fondness of philosophy, theology, and radical political thinking, there is something about me that is still Baptist. For all the movements I've made intellectually, the Bible still functions as a powerful authority for me. What that means is something like Hans Küng's suggestion following Rahner in Infallible? (arguing against biblical and especially Papal infallibility - it lost him his license to teach from the Vatican) that the Bible is norma normans non-normata, the normer of norms not itself normed.Whether one takes Scripture as authoritative or not, there are two passages from the New Testament that have been especially influential in political history, and negatively so. In spite of Jesus' execution after the manner of political rebels and in spite of the radically subversive spirit of Pauline theology sensed by Taubes and others, two particular statements, one from the mouth of Jesus, one from the pen of Paul, have proved to be conservative bully whips ever since: "Render unto God what is God's and unto Caesar what is Caesar's" (Matthew 22 and parallels) and "Submit to the governing authorities" (Romans 13). I am thinking of writing an article under the title of this post eventually, working through the history of interpretation of these passages and ending with my particular exegesis of them.
There are any number of ways that more radical political Christians have dealt with these passages. My favorites are Barth's relinking of Romans 13 with the end of chapter 12 which includes a citation of Jesus' "love your enemies" and Dorothy Day's argument that once you give everything to God, there is nothing left to give to Caesar. Both readings, however, can be seriously improved upon by more careful attention to the details of the text. Anyone else have favorite interpreters of Render and Submit?
