What Kind of Loyalty do we owe the government?

Paul absolutely did write it.

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. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. 6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. 7 Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

What you're suggesting, besides a denial of the authorship of the Holy Scriptures, is historical nonsense. Romans 13, as written is all the earliest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, including the Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus. Romans 13:1 is right there in the Greek,

Πᾶσαψυχὴἐξουσίαιςὑπερεχούσαιςὑποτασσέσθωοὐγάρἐστινἐξουσίαεἰμὴἀπὸθεοῦαἱδὲοὖσαιἐξουσίαιὑπὸτοῦθεοῦτεταγμέναιεἰσίν·

No scholar worth their salt has provided any evidence that Romans 13:1-7 is an interpolation, which is why scholars like Dr Craig C. Hill and Dr. William B. Littlejohn agree it's nonsense.

https://bradlittlejohn.com/2010/09/30/2010930romans-131-7-an-interpolation-html/

 

Unless you were there to overhear Paul dictating it though, you nor any other scholar can be CERTAIN that in Rom.13, these were words spoken by Paul, all we can be sure about is that whoever wrote Revelation clearly states that the Beast was given 'authority' and 'power' by the Dragon, (which is Satan), not God. So the author of Revelation disagrees with the author of Rom.13.

I am not wasting time discussing the inns and outs of whether Rom.13 is an interpolation or not. No one knows for sure. By believing it is, you are exercising FAITH, not certainty. Paul was not the only person to speak or write New Testament Greek. Having it in the Greek does not prove a thing. Neither does having it in all the manuscripts prove the certainty of anything either. Paul dictated his letters and not a single original now exists. They are all copies and even the originals were not all penned by Paul himself, (apart from a very few passages), but by his scribe. 1 Cor.16:21, Gal.6:11, 2 Thes. 3:17, Phil.1:19.
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Have I said anything untruthful? Read it carefully!

If nothing untruthful has been written then why would truth be forbidden in this website?

Notice I am merely asking questions, not contradicting an administrator.

 

I may have sailed very close to the wind, but I don't think I have actually made any derogatory statements about Scripture, certainly not an erroneous one, and I have not taught anything, certainly not taught anything untruthful.

I have left a theological conundrum for others to think about though, should they wish to exercise their minds over the matter of which scriptural assertion is correct. Rom.13:1-3 or Revelation 13.1-7.
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The Book of Job clearly portrays God as sovereign over even Satan himself and all his servants, which is why Christ tells Pilate that even he would have no authority if not for God allowing it.

You made an assertion and have no evidence (beyond your own dislike of the obvious lessons from Romans 13). The scholarly consensus is that Paul wrote Romans 13. Romans 13:1-7 is in all our earliest manuscripts. There is literally no evidence from your assertion. You are the one making an assertion about a text. You need to support it. There is no manuscript discrepancies or contradictions with other texts. There is no early Church Father saying Paul did not write Romans 13. The early dating of the manuscripts (the 2nd and 3rd centuries) are critical because of the painstaking copying process of the era (most of our ancient histories that are considered credible are usually from copies dated several centuries, the fact that the earliest complete codices all contain them is a devastating blow to your interpolation thesis).

Lastly you make another ridiculous and ahistorical assertion. Paul didn't speak Greek? The New Testament was written in koine Greek, which was a form of common Greek from Attica that was used all across the Empire. It was the lingua franca of the area. Paul was a Roman citizen from a Hellenistic Jewish community (Tarsus), probably spoke Aramaic as well (due to his familiarity with it in a few of his epistles) and also naturally spoke Hebrew due to being a Pharisee who studied the Law.

Lastly we have from the authority of Saint Luke in Acts 21:37-40a

And as Paul was to be led into the castle, he [Paul] said unto the chief captain, May I speak unto thee? Who [the captain] said, Canst thou speak Greek? Art not thou that Egyptian, which before these days madest an uproar, and leddest out into the wilderness four thousand men that were murderers? But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city: and, I beseech thee, suffer me to speak unto the people. And when he had given him licence, Paul stood on the stairs, and beckoned with the hand unto the people. And when there was made a great silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue...

Paul was a highly literate, well educated man in an era of massive cultural diffusion from the Roman empire, of which the common language was (koine) Greek. The fact you so freely assert ahistorical claims about Paul, language and the text makes it obvious that there isn't really a good reason to denigrate Paul's authorship of Romans 13 at all but rather this is ideologically based.

 

A difficult passage admitted by most scholars, for various reasons. However you are making an unwarranted assumption when you accuse me of disliking what plainly appears in scripture, apparently Pauline theology, which needs to be understood contextually and with reference to everything else Paul wrote. Not yanked out of context and pressed into service to support corrupt eathly government.

I have not made an assertion about a text. I actually wrote, in answer to your belief that the passage is DEFINITELY Paul's words, that they MIGHT not be. You can offer no evidence which will settle the matter with certainty, and I can only point out the fact that the passage contradicts Revelation 13 concerning the power and authority granted the Beast by the Dragon, not by God. Indeed, the Beast then abuses the authority given him to vilify and blaspheme God and kill God's Saints.

This Revelation passage probably has great relevance to the debate concerning whether ALL earthly authority is instituted by God, since it is also likely that the immediate target of this revelatory apocalyptical passage is probably one of the Caesars who persecuted the Church and murdered many saints. A Caesar who almost certainy took the reigns of power sometime AFTER Paul's death. So Paul never experienced the corrupt debauchery of such blasphemous dictatorship and violent persecution of God's Saints.

I can't imagine how you managed to get the peculiar notion that I think Paul could not speak or understand Greek. Where did you get that false idea from? Nothing that I have written should have led you to such an idiotic conclusion. Paul spoke more languages than almost anyone else. He said so himself. 1 Cor.14:18.

On the contrary, it is your unquestioning support of Biblical Inerrancy which is ideologically based. I am merely discussing the text, it is you who seems to be pushing a particular Theological stance in order to assert the literal authority of the text and therefore impose your interpretation upon everyone else, who does not necessarily believe the Bible to be 'inerrant' but DOES believe it to be INSPIRED and contains all the information mankind needs to be assured of salvation. (Which is actually what the Bible says of itself). 2 Tim.3:16. The Bible says nothing of itself being 'Inerrant'. Though undoubtedly containing God's message to mankind, the Bible does not even claim itself to be 'The Word of God'. That Title is exclusively reserved for Jesus the Christ. John 1:1-5.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

I wrote: "Paul was not the only person to speak or write New Testament Greek."

A plain enough sentence I would have thought. With the meaning that Romans Chapter 13 being written in Greek is not evidence that Paul must have written it. In fact Paul wrote very little of anything in any of his letters. Paul's writing was too large so would have been impracticable. Gal.6:11.
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1. The difficult in interpretation does not mean you can accuse the Scriptures of not truly being the Scriptures.

2. The earliest manuscripts have it. You are implying that someone later came in and changed it. Prove it.

3. It's not "Biblical inerrancy" (interesting, do you believe the Scriptures can err?) to say that all the evidence & scholarly consensus points to Saint Paul writing Romans 13.

4. Either you are making an assertion ("This text is a later interpolation") in which case you need proof. There is no proof. I on the other hand have the earliest manuscripts, the documentary evidence and scholarly consensus. You do not have such proof but rather your desire to not be bound by Paul's command her.

5. Or you are not making an argument in which case there is zero point to the discussion. Romans 13 says what it says. If you want to argue that a piece of the recognized canon of Holy Scripture should be deleted, make that case, but there isn't any evidence for it. But in reality what you will likely do is continue this motte-and-bailey tactic where you want to dismiss Paul's command on the basis it isn't actually Holy Scriptures but then retreat to the much easier to defend position that "Well no one's saying he didn't." It's the same old song and dance which is incredibly boring.

The Holy Scriptures in Saint Paul's thirteenth chapter in his Epistle to the Romans makes it very clear, in line with the Old Testament and the New: God sets up authority. He does so for His own sovereign reasons. There are limits to earthly authority as they are secondary which means they do not have the right to command believers to sin or forgo His truth. However Christians do not have some modern Lockean right to reject any government to which they do not "consent" to. There are many throughout centuries who do not like this hard teaching and thus cast aspersions on Paul or make up absurd and fantastical interpretations in order to avoid the plain teaching of it, but that does not actually negate its plain teaching.

 

Pray show me where I have written such an accusation. John 18:23.

I implied nothing of the sort. It could easily have been in the original, and yet still an interpolation not intended by Paul. We don't know. We only believe it is not an interpolation. We are not omnicient.

Your assertion, with no irrefutable evidence to support it as a certainty, that Chapter 13 of Paul's letter to the Romans was actually dictated and recorded exactly as Paul dictated it, is tantamount to a belief in Biblical Inerrancy. This is an 18th century North American innovation not espoused by the church until its appearance in the USA. The Bible is Inspired and Sufficient but not Inerrant, only God is Inerrant.

VI. Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation.
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.

You do not have the original, neither does anyone else. You will not find that I have used the word 'later' in what I have written concerning the passage in question. Carefully read what I have written before accusing me of thinking, writing or 'desiring' things I have not. If I am mistaken about it, quote the sentence I wrote so that I can see it for myself, and accept that you have proved me wrong.

Once again you make unwarranted assumptions. I have not at any time suggested that Rom 13 be 'deleted' so stop putting up straw men to knock down just to make your argument seem more plausable.

According to the text of Rom.13 there are no limits to earthly authority. If you think it allows any wriggle room of that sort you are not reading what it says.

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. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience.

Were the Nazi Reich, Pol Pot Commare Rouge, Japanese Emperialism, Islamist Caliphates etc, etc a terror to good conduct or to bad? Think about it. No wriggle room - no authority except from God. All servants of God? For everyone's GOOD?

Was what they did and still do, 'carrying out God's wrath on the wrongdoer'? Were 6 million Jews 'wrongdoers' then?

If you seriously believe that to be true I suggest you become an ISIS Islamist and 'carry out God's wrath' on some poor, persecuted Christian 'wrongdoers', who won't capituate meekily and 'be subject' to all their oppressive Islamist demands. It would seem you have a duty and an obligation to do what God has appointed and you seem to believe God has appointed THEM.

I look foward to reading your apollagetic disertation explaining exactly in what way these self styled 'earthly authorities' were and are no terror whatever to 'good conduct' as practised by loyal followers of Christ. Just as I look forward to your explanation of the legitimacy of the rule of the Anti-Christ as an 'authority' instituted by God, (there being no authority EXCEPT from God), to murder God's Saints and Blaspheme God and all of the inhabitants of Heaven. Who presumably were 'OPPOSING' the Beast, by not offering due respect and worship as demanded by him.

And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.

I can hardly believe that for you these passages pose no problem at all. They are a source of considerable difficulty to most other rational people. Perhaps you can explain them to me and reconcile their apparent differences.
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Tiffy, do you believe that the Bible forbids borrowing a book from a friend, a tool from your neighbor, or money from a bank?

 

I think that 'believing' a book or a library of books to be an oracle of forbidden and permitted deeds, and then thinking that you must obey it is idolatrous. Deut.4:23.

I think also that the Bible is clear on the most serious offences we are capable of in order to convince us we need a Saviour, not in order to regulate our soujourn on earth. Lev.5:17.

Our guidance now comes from The Holy Spirit, not primarily from a book. Acts 16:6.

How do you interpret the meaning of the word usury in todays world? Ex.22:25. Ex.22:25 KJV.

Is there a difference, do you think, between a fair rate of interest on a loan, and an extortionate rate of interest clearly designed to entrap the borrower into increasing debt? Is there a difference between a Bank and an unregulated Money Lender?

As for borrowing and lending, if Jesus recommended it and allowed it, then I have no qualms. Matt.5:42. Ex.22:14.

 

It seems (as usual) completely and utterly useless to discuss this with you Tiffy as it is futile to engage with motte-and-bailey tactics.

You want all the argumentative benefit of having proved (or concluded) that Saint Paul did not write Romans 13:1-7 (that is, to say that what is considered Holy Scriptures is not Holy Scripture. Magically the only texts that you seem to believe are interpolations are the ones you disagree with), without having to do any of the work of proving it is an interpolation. As such there is no actual argument to contend with but rather insinuation and innuendo. (For the record, believing Romans 13 is not an interpolation is not 18th century inerrancy but rather a common belief in the canon, common to all Christians* prior to the modern era. The rise of inerrancy was a reaction to the modern claim that Scripture was anything but.)

Given that there is no reason to reject Romans 13:1-7 from the canon, we will proceed.

The text, put in its context is quite simple. All the hysterics and histrionics of the above post aside, there's not much to respond to here. Romans 13 does not command us to obey a command to commit Nazi war crimes, throw Jews in prison, kill our middle class Cambodian neighbors, etc...Paul is explaining a few things;

1. God has set up earthly authority and it exists purely by His pleasure. We see this is eminently true when Christ tells His own state murderer (Pilate) that he only possesses authority insofar as He allows Pilate. We see God raising up evil nations that are used in His providence (ex. Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Rome) only to later punish them as He sees fit. It's a clear refutation of the "Christian" anarchist doctrine.
   
2. The Christian's basic duty is to be a good subject/citizen. We see this in the Psalmist's command to "Fear God, honor the king." Peter lays this command out in 2 Peter 2:13-25 when he says we ought to be "subject for the Lord's sake" to governing authorities. (No doubt Tiffy will come across a newfound sneaking suspicion, based on evidence seen by no one, that 2 Peter 2:13-25 is also "thought by some" to be a "later interpolation."). Lastly even Christ Himself tells people to pay their taxes to a foreign dictator who has violently conquered them.
   
3. It does not cancel out a Christian's first duty. Our first obedience is to God. As kings/governments derive their authority only by God's sovereign pleasure, they do not possess the authority forbid Christian duty (worship, tithes, the sacraments, etc...) or command sin (to abuse, to kill, etc...). Paul and Peter were repeatedly thrown in prison, do not cease preaching Christ and yet do not call for some overthrow of the emperor. Another good example were the Egyptian midwives who disobey Pharaoh's command to kill infants yet do not work for Pharaoh's overthrow.
   
4. Lastly there is the teasing out of the start of a Christian political theology, what is authority, from where it is derived and what ought it do and not do (forbid evil, command good and not do the opposite).

To sum it up Paul (in conjunction with other texts in both Testaments) shows us what authorities are, what they ought to do and where their authority comes from. None of this violates our first duty and loyalty (to God), which means all of the histrionic examples of becoming ISIS caliphate or Japanese "emperialist" apologists most obviously do not apply.









*Also common to the scholarly consensus today that Paul did write Romans and that Romans 13:1-7 is not a later interpolation, something that would show up in differing manuscripts and fragments. As it doesn't it's like suggesting that the earlier chapters of Caesar's Gallic war are actually written by someone else, a proposition that has no weight as it has no evidence.

 

You set Romans 13:1-7 and Rev. 13 in opposition to one another. You ask which is correct, and you seem to think that both cannot be correct. In order to reach this conclusion that the two scriptures directly contradict each other, one would have to take both as entirely unconditional statements. I asked what you thought of borrowing because Romans 13:8 says, "Owe no man any thing, but to love one another." But is that a completely unconditional statement? Of course not, because we know there's nothing wrong with borrowing a book or something. (By the way, Matt: 5:42 tells us it's ok to lend, but says nothing about borrowing; Exodus 22:14 does not address the morality of borrowing.) My point is this: you're starting from the theologically incorrect premise that the Bible is filled with contradictions, whereas most of us start from the theologically correct premise that all scriptures harmonize when understood in proper context. One important point to keep in mind in Bible interpretation is that not all statements are unconditional absolutes, because they are qualified by surrounding verses, by other things penned by the same writer, by knowing the social context, etc, etc.

It seems evident to me that Romans 13:1-7 was written as a general proposition and not as an absolute, iron-clad principle for which no exceptions would exist.

Acts 16:6 does not say that. Although the Holy Spirit guides us, He does not guide us in a way that is inconsistent with or contradictory to the Bible. Because our spiritual "hearing" is often addled and it's easy to "miss" what the Spirit is telling us, it always behooves us to seek out confirming scriptures. Anyone who thinks they have progressed beyond the Bible in their walk with the Holy Spirit has deceived himself and is in peril of being further deceived by seducing spirits (I am not saying you have done this, but please be on your guard).

 

"Owe no man anything, but to love one another" is an unconditional statement. there is nothing added to the statement which implies conditions of any sort. To say otherwise is eisegesis, (reading ones own meaning into the actual text). Just as "All authority comes from God and must therefore be obeyed" can't be eisegetically interpreted as "All authority except evil regimes like ISIS are instituted by God and therefore must always be obeyed except when they command you to do something wicked". That is simply not what 'Paul' wrote.

Where we agree, is that unconditional Biblical statements of this kind are 'balanced' by other 'unconditional' Biblical statements elsewhere which need also to be taken into consideration in order to arrive at the truth. This is why a text taken out of context is often merely a pretext.
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Are you sure that 'balancing' isn't just another word for 'conditioning?'

 

On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, no.

I was just making the point that the entirety of the scriptures, the whole canon, is the overall context in which any specific text must be read. There are many apparently 'unconditional' statements in scripture which if taken as absolute, unexagerated and unconditional statements, can become misleading enough to be almost diametrically opposed to the original intention of the author, be that either God or the human agent who penned it.

What would we make of the unequivocal statement that, "One of their own prophets, a Cretan has said, "All Cretans are liars", if we fail to understand the context in which it appears, both in its immediate quotation within a deliberately paradoxical riddle and its overall Biblical context within the Pauline corpus?

It actually makes the point that the statement that "All Cretans are liars", itself cannot possibly be true, otherwise the Cretan prophet must have been telling the truth, and he was a Cretan, so was not then a liar, proving his own statement false. Tit. 1:12. The Bible is not simply a book of rules and regulations which we must follow. It is a complete compendium of everything of importance to our salvation that God wants us to know. It is therefore both simple to understand at the importantly basic level and increasingly complex and comprehensive as our understanding of it increases.
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I will skip over replying to your polemic, it would just waste my time. So let’s move on. The author of Rom.13 is quite unequivocal in stating that ALL authorities are instituted by God. ALL authorities govern for the GOOD of their subjects. ALL must be unquestioningly submitted to. ALL only punish the wicked and ALL are no threat whatever to the righteous.

Experience alone tell us that, if taken literally, this is at least an exaggeration and at most not what history has actually witnessed.

You however do not believe what the writer has written and choose to ‘interpret’ his words as if they carry all sorts of excluding caveats. Your caveats simply do not exist in the text. They are entirely your own amendments to the author’s unequivocal and absolute statements.

Your summation is erroneous. In fact the author of Rom.13 does not tell us what authorities AUGHT to do. He tells us where their authority comes from, yes, but tells us also what they ALL actually DO, i.e. ONLY punish the wicked and are NO TERROR to the righteous, and makes no bones about either of those assertions.

I invite you read it yet again and try to find a single case of (obey the authorities ‘unless they tell you to do something wicked’). In fact the author does not envisage any possibility of an ‘authority’ enforcing anything other than God’s will, because he says they are ALL God’s Servants, punishing the wicked, always to the benefit of the submissive ‘righteous’.

True there are other passages written by Paul which have a much more equivocal attitude to the earthly authorities, much more akin to your own sensibly nuanced interpretation of a proper christian attitude to legitimate authority, (which nevertheless often opposed the preaching of The Gospel and hindered Paul in his mission on earth), and indeed even murdered The Christ, yet pragmatically Paul still requires obedience to them by Christians in all matters of ethical conduct, and requires us to pray for them that their rule may be effective and just. Though Paul never incites rebellion, in fact Paul’s general theological position is more that the ‘authorities’ are as ‘reprobate’ and in need of ‘Salvation’, as are the rest of mankind. There is nothing whatever anywhere in Paul's theology exempting political 'authorities' from repentance and faith, Acts 26:22-29, and nothing suggesting that it is remotely possible under any circumstances to be a 'Servant of God' without repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Something that very few 'authorities' actually qualified at, either then or now. Whether Rom.13 was written by Paul or not is not really a question we can ever get an answer to without asking him ourselves. What we can do though is apply Paul's theology found in all his other letters and this one, and ask this question:

"How is it that all authority in Rom.13 are servants of God, yet most are still unrepentant sinners, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world"? Eph.2:12

Those other Pauline passages though seem rather to make Rom.13 stand out and appear uncharacteristic of Paul, not often prone to tacit exaggeration, more likely to make it blatantly obvious, See Gal.5:12, 2 Cor.11:16. Rom.13, with no preamble, no segue to the following material and wedged incongruously between otherwise unrelated material, much about the chapter causes much puzzlement to this day.
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Rom.13 is a difficult passage to fit into the general theology of St Paul because of its unequivocallly stated assertions that all authority is in effect 'legitimate', 'God instituted', and harmlessly unthreatening to the just.

Compare that to Col.1:16, Col.2:15, Eph. 6:10-20, or Rom.8:38, where authority is conflated with the rule of Satan and the world rulers of this present darkness are included along with the spiritual forces of evil which invisibly motivate them. The Christian is called upon to resist them all, but that call is not to revolution, rebellion and sedition, it is to prayer, truth, faith, courage and fortitude even in the face of persecution. ( Paul Revere / George Washington, take note ).

There is not the slightest hint however in Ephesians that the secular, - (but they were not actually secular, are they, with the emperor considering himself a 'god') - Roman authorities being thought to be 'Approved by God', and no threat at all to the righteous. Paul's advice in such a situation is that we must take as our 'spiritual weapons' the whole armour of God, (not physical force of arms), in resisting illegitimate, (fallen authorities which themselves oppose the Christ, even murdering the one they should be servants of Col.1:16, 1 Cor.2:8), which 'rule in this present darkness'. The church's peculiar calling, (according to Paul here), is to discern and engage both the structure and the spirituality of oppressive institutions. But to do it with the Armour of God. Which may appear to them to be meek submission, but actually is not.

The word used for 'Authority and authorities' in Rom.13 throughout is 'Exousia' and this Greek word specifically refers to the legitimations and sanctions by which power is maintained; (an abstract concept rather than a reference to actual office holders). The word 'Archon', meaning an authority is, on the other hand, used without exception in the New Testament to refer to an actual incombent-in-office. 'Arche' can indicate the office itself, or an incombent of the structure of power, (government, kingdom, realm, dominion). Other Greek words describing 'powers' and 'authority' appear throughout the New Testament, each denoting certain specific aspects of the phenomenon. As Christians we are in various degrees of spiritual conflict with all of them, depending on the extent of their opposition to Christ and HIS Sovereignty.

Therefore an uninformed reading and application of Rom.13 can easily lead to almost a total refutation of most of Paul's theology as found in this and all his other epistles. It should have a (scriptural health warning noted in the margin) similar to the way cigarette packets have to have a Government health warning printed on them, to warn the consumer to think before use.
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You are starting from the grammatically incorrect assumption that there are no contradictions anywhere in scripture. Most can be reconciled by further study of the totality of scripture but explanations as to their reconcilability do not render them non-contradictions. By definition if two opposing unconditional statements are compared and each contradicts the other, they are contradictory because they contradict one another and contain no qualifying clauses. The contradictions can be explained, but they will forever remain contradictions unless someone takes it upon themselves to re-write the statements or remove them from the scriptures, (not something that the author of Revelation recommends.)

I warn every one who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if any one adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if any one takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

Why do you think the author of the last book in the Bible felt he had to write that? Could it be because so many of the other books before it had suffered from exactly that problem, here and there? I can't imagine any other reason he would have included it. Certainly not to prevent anyone doing what nobody had ever tried to do, or got away with, in the first place in any of the other books. Wouldn't that have just been a waste of time, ink and papyrus?

But where do you get the evidence on which you base your assumption? Not from the passages themselves, certainly. They are unconditional statements, with no qualifiying clauses whatever.

Your assumption is correct, but your reasons for assuming it are in no way based upon the texts in question. The author of those texts therefore never envisaged you interpreting the text in the way you now do because the author just wrote the unequivocal statements without any awareness of you, your assumptions or how you have formed them.
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