Greek: Πᾶσα ψυχὴ ἐξουσίαις ὑπερεχούσαις ὑποτασσέσθω, οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ἐξουσία εἰ μὴ ὑπὸ θεοῦ, αἱ δὲ οὖσαι ὑπὸ θεοῦ τεταγμέναι εἰσίν. 2 ὥστε ὁ ἀντιτασσόμενος τῇ ἐξουσίᾳ τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ διαταγῇ ἀνθέστηκεν, οἱ δὲ ἀνθεστηκότες ἑαυτοῖς κρίμα λήμψονται. (Romans 13:1-2 SBLGNT)
ESV: "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."
NWT 2013: "Let every person be in subjection to the superior authorities,a for there is no authority except by God;b the existing authorities stand placed in their relative positions by God. Therefore, whoever opposes the authority has taken a stand against the arrangement of God; those who have taken a stand against it will bring judgment against themselves."
In what sense have the "governing authorities" been instituted or placed in their "relative positions by God"? Does Jehovah directly appoint every king on earth and directly remove every king? See Daniel 2:21.
We know from specific biblical examples that Jehovah has directly placed some rulers in their positions and he has deposed some. However, is Paul saying that's always the case?
One objection I've had to reading the text this way is that it's hard to see how God placed rulers like Nero or the biblical Pharaoh of Egypt in their relative positions. These men were wicked and even persecuted God's people or blasphemed the name of Jehovah. How could he have placed such men in their relative position? Yet God permits wickedness and also uses the wicked to accomplish his purpose.
Ralph Earle adds this observation about Romans 13:1: "Here the primary emphasis is on the authority of governments to rule. It should not be inferred from this passage that all rulers are chosen by God, but rather that all rule is divinely ordained. Goverments are set to enforce law. Since most people will not be ruled by love, they must be ruled by law. That is inevitable in an imperfect world" (Earle 204).
Romans 9:17 is interesting but not really sure how to interpret it?
ReplyDeleteI did some research on Romans 9:17 years ago and found some interesting points in Ralph Earle's book on word meanings and in Emil Brunner's "Dogmatics" (volume I). But see also https://fosterheologicalreflections.blogspot.com/2011/02/does-god-send-delusions-2-thess-211.html
ReplyDeleteHave you read Rotherham's treatment on these kinds of verses?
Rotherham appeals to Bullingers - "idiom of permission" (idioma) which seems to be totally ignored by papers such as https://stpaulcenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/JBL-Ezek-07-2004.doc.pdf . (I already gave you this link for other purposes).
ReplyDeleteThis is also the verse which Rotheram has highlighted as a prime example.
(From my perspective of Hebrew I would understand it as referring to laws that were "not functional" rather than "not good". By the time of Ezekiel this would be entirely true and predictable - due to locational and environmental differences).
Although, I am not saying that the phenomena does not exist in some form.
The idiom of permission seems to best explain the case of Pharaoh and the instances where Jehovah supposedly does something/causes something, yet the action seems to be immoral or morally improper. Furthermore, we know that Exodus speaks of Pharaoh hardening his own heart too.
ReplyDeleteIf you checked out the blog post I referenced, you saw that Theodore of Mopsuestia speaks of "Concessionem Dei quasi opus eius." Compare 2 Samuel 12:11; Jeremiah 8:10; 2 Thess 2:11-12.
I also see no reason to doubt that the bible writers worked with concepts of good/evil and good/bad. Function can exist alongside ontos like it does in Aristotle.
Job 2:10 worth of note.
ReplyDeleteIn concrete terms I think of functionality as "good" is rather abstract as demonstrated today in the assessment of quality.
Google "What does good look like?"
It would be interesting to research what "good" and "bad" possibly mean in Job 2:10. While I'm not denying the ancient Hebrews possibly tended to concretize their language (or use concrete terms), they also had the potential to think abstractly and express such abstractions. Furthermore, it's hard to understand how they took a completely functional approach to goodness and badness. The Bible says Jehovah is "good," and he declared everything he created to be good (Gen 1:31). Is that only in a functional sense, but not ontologically/ontically?
ReplyDeleteI think about ethics quite a bit: it does not seem that a good action should be defined purely in functional terms, but at least in principle, an act might be good in itself. When Israel declared God to be good, it also seems they were not thinking only in terms of his functions.
A critical review of John's Walton's idea of function in the OT. See http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2015/03/review_of_john_h_waltons_the_l.html
ReplyDeleteThe creation being good. Could this be saying that everything was completely functional - it all worked?
ReplyDeleteIs the reviewer in you last link an anthropologist? It seems to me that both sides are making unsupportable arguments. But isn't it put forward by many that state and religion had no divide in antiquity? Perspectives could have been very different to today but we cannot access that thinking and what it meant.
Isaiah 45:7 is in need of consideration along with Exodus 20:21.
ReplyDeleteEcclesiastes 7:16 may be demonstrating the difference between what we might call functional and that which Jehovah has set in place.
eg.
A manicured lawn may seem "good" to us & aesthetically pleasing but this would never exist in nature. Compare the lawn to a wildflower meadow or a prairie with all the diversity and abundance. We are forced to realize that the lawn is not so great. The book of creation again tells us what is good.
Good is functional.
The taste of the fruit tells us how good it is, as our body detects the nutritional profile.
On Romans 9:17, here's some thoughts:
ReplyDeleteRomans 9 does not tell us that God hardens every evil human; it only informs us that He hardens whom He will. I believe that God hardens Pharaoh's heart in a sense by permitting circumstances to occur that result in Pharaoh ultimately hardening his own heart. These points are detailed in Rotherham's _Emphasized Bible_ and Gesenius' Hebrew grammar.
The Complete Word Study: New Testament also makes this observation on Romans 9:17:
"It is not that Pharaoh was 'beyond' the help of God's mercy, nor that God made him wicked, but simply that God withheld his mercy and left him to his own wickedness" (page 522).
Ex 8:15, 32; 9:34 show that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.
Ralph Earle also points out that Paul does not say Esau or Jacob or Pharaoh were predestined to life or eternal damnation. God only foreknew that Jacob would take precedence over Esau or He knew aforetime that Judas would betray Jesus. But God did not predestine Judas' actions and He did not decree eternal damnation for anyone before the creation of the world.
One could define everything in terms of function like Gen 1:31, but I don't see why. Or why define Jehovah that way? Why say his goodness is limited to functionality? One problem is proving that Genesis contextually has function in mind; secondly, one has to demonstrate that the exegesis is even a possibility, considering the time of writing and culture. Was the writer truly saying that God saw everything he made and observed that it all worked? Did that include Adam and Eve? But my bigger concern is with divine goodness equaling functionality. Why not view divine goodness as a quality or think of creational goodness as a value, even if we include functionality?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if the reviewer is an anthropologist or not, and while some states may have not divided the sacred and secular, what justifies us in making that claim of all ancient states? Israel did make such a divide anyway. It also sharply distinguished between kings and priests, even if the kings were religious. I believe that we can access ancient thinking/culture to a degree.
Good has to be more than functional if you accept the testimony of scripture since the trees in Eden were both pleasing to behold and good for food (Genesis 2:9). This good aesthetic aspect of trees was something natural that God had created; we cannot simply reduce aesthetics to functionality. Some thinkers have divided goods in terms of intrinsic, instrumental, and mixed goods. Goods are mixed in the sense that they serve some utility, but they also have intrinsic value. Pleasure is a good that is not merely functional. There is good health, good food, and even the Mosaic law was intrinsically good--not just functionally/instrumentally good. God is good: there is no evil or badness within him. No moral depravity. That is more than function or instrumentality. So is love and many other things.
ReplyDeleteI don't see how Exod 20:21 bears on the subject at hand. And in what sense does God create light/darkness or peace and evil? See Insight on the Scriptures, et al. The darkness of Exodus 20:21 is not moral darkness but that same gloom mentioned in 1 Kings when Solomon dedicated the first temple.
ReplyDeleteThe darkness is part of the imagery that later books utalise . It cannot easily be dismissed when one speaks of light and darkness.
ReplyDeleteWhat is "Limited" about true functionality?
ReplyDeleteThe complexity of true functionality in a truly resilient system is staggering.
The tree was desirable to the eyes. In any case , if you do not comprehend the 7 layers (min) of a working Forrest and how Forrest of a single tree type are highly vulnerable and unstable then how can you understand why we have "pleasure" from it. We relish the diversity as it is reselience.
ReplyDeleteWere the trees the only source of food? What makes fruit better?
ReplyDeleteGen 1:29.
2 Corinthians 6:14 also has to be taken into account regarding imagery.
ReplyDeleteTake an example of laughter:-
ReplyDeletehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter#Health
It has recognised benefits and is functionally "good".
Duncan, I did not dismiss your reference to darkness in Exodu 20:21, but we must read the verses in context and according to their standard usage. Contextually, it seems pretty clear what the darkness of Exodus 20:21 is. The prophets indicate that God also makes another type of gloom for the wicked. See Isaiah 60. But it helps to read these verses in context.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, we know that God has no moral darkness within him (1 John 1:5).
I think my actual comment was that we cannot limit goodness to function. Some things are intrinsically good and what's intrinsic is not limited to something's function, like an act being intrinisically good apart from its function.
A person may not understand why a forest brings pleasure to us, but that would not prevent someone from experiecing the pleasure. A painting might be pleasing to the eyes whether someone has thorough knowledge of aesthetics or not. We don't have to master Kant's third critique to appreciate beauty.
Maybe the trees in Eden were the only source of food. What else might they have eaten? I know that rotten fruit is not appealing to me, and then there's some fruits I don't like at all, even if they're in pristine condition. De gustibus non disputandum est.
I'm not denying the functional side of things, only saying that not everything is reducible to function, including God's goodness and human goodness.
See also https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/good-goodness/
ReplyDeleteFor some comparisons on the language of divine darkness, see Deuteronomy 4:11; 5:22; 2 Samuel 22:10; 1 Kings 8:12; 2 Chronicles 6:1; Psalm 97:2. But Zephaniah 1:15 mentions a different kind of darkness.
ReplyDelete"not everything is reducible to function" - I do not know that anything really is but that does not means that the functions are not their. We do understand the first law of themo dynamics so we can appreciate that there should no be single solutions to anything in the physical world.
ReplyDeleteIf the intellect does not understand all of the function I does not eliminate the function.
For a young child, food in the brightly colored package is very desirable. It might be pure junk. In nature the fruits have the brightly colored packages.
http://www.nutritionaustralia.org/national/resource/eat-rainbow
Just en example of function that we could call good but the junk food is bad. Both rely on the same function of desirability.
Golden mean is a visual key. (personally I find it hard to understand how anyone can immediately think that modern abstract art is good).
When I say everything is not reducible to function, I'm talking about God's goodness, moral acts, art work or wisdom. What I say is also not meant to deny functions in the world (thermodynamics or gravity), but only to say that the world's goodness is not purely determined by how well it functions. I believe in intrinsic or inherent goodness apart from the function of a thing, even if the thing might still have a function. For example, being a good person is not just a matter of functioning well: moral goodness is something intrinsic.
ReplyDeleteIt's yet to be explained how God's goodness is only functional and not intrinsic. However, I'm not arguing that if we don't understand the function of something, then we just eliminate X having a function. That is not my position.
Despite your observations on bright colored packages, and I agree in some respects with you there, I would contend that beauty is not merely (primarily?) functional. Plotinus has an interesting analysis of beauty, but the bottom line of his work seems to be that beauty is largely an intrinsic good--not simply a matter of function. And I'm talking about true beauty, not just some fancy marketing scheme.
We might agree on abstract art :)
Some say that intrinsic goodness makes happiness.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0197458005002769
I did not find the word "goodness" in the link, but it did talk about happiness. I emphasize that if goodness is intrinsic, then it's not purely functional. Intrinsic means "good in itself" or "good in and of itself."
ReplyDeleteIn ethics, deontologists say that acting for the sake of duty is a good thing independent of the consequences that a moral act brings about.