You say:

“So, if someone says, “That practice is barbarous & unjust because it sparks fear”, Paul’s comment disagrees. JMR and Frank agree on that.”

I say:

Just so.

You ask: Does Paul’s comment imply that there was no injustice in Cicero’s practice of executing men accused of treason without a trial?

I say:

No.

Another question is:

Does Paul’s comment imply that there was no injustice in Cicero’s practice of executing men accused of treason without a trial?

Paul’s commands can be used to justify the death penalty in cultures with the wealth of Rome, but not to justify all forms of execution.

I must be unclear, so let me try again.

Paul commends the use of the sword by the Romans. I agree.
Paul commends the government of Rome making evil doers fear punishment. I agree.

This does not logically entail commending every use of the “sword” by the Romans or every means that the Romans used to induce fear.

For example, suppose the Romans dipped evil doers in pitch and burned them alive at parties. This is a use of the “sword power” and it is fearful, but that does not mean that Paul commends it.

What might Paul mean?

Paul could have in mind the sort of execution he in fact received as a Roman citizen. His head was cut off by a sword. Leaving aside the injustice of convicting Paul who was NOT an evil doer, the means of his execution were licit for an evil doer given the means available at the time. It is certainly fearful.

So Rome was able to use the sword to cause fear in evil doers (when they had good judges) without torture.

They also tortured people and if you were a non-citizen treated you like dirt. Christians refused to treat the “other” that way.

I see nothing Paul said for which I have not accounted (Rome still has a sword and evil doers should fear it as a pain in the neck) with the added bonus that I have not made Saint Paul tolerant of torture.

Paul’s definition in Rom 13 includes the use of the sword to punish evil-doers, and includes making them fear the outcome of judgment. JMR’s clearly does not.

If JMR can reconcile what he has said here with what Paul said in Rom 13 — given those two foundational issues — I’d be willing to read it and stand corrected.

Lunch is over in my office. Will be back later.

Your argument against me seems to be that if Paul says bad guys will be a afraid of government, that this sanctions all Roman practices (or even most of them).

This seems a bad argument for this reason. A wicked man may fear the government without fearing torture. A wicked man may fear loss of liberty or the death penalty. In short, many things are fearful (and even very unpleasant) that are not torture. What has Paul said government should do:

1. punish evil doers
2. bring fear to evil doers.

Now Paul has also not given us a philosophical treatise on HOW to do this. We could punish evil doers (for example) by throwing them to lions. This certainly would produce fear, but I would suggest that no Christian magistrate would or could justly use that MEANS. By just, government should make crime pay and put the fear of God and man into evil doers, but that does not mean the government can do ANYTHING it wishes to produce this.

In fact, the necessity of Paul’s statements makes sense only when one recognizes that reasonable Christians thought rebellion or disdain for government justified by the evil actions of the Romans. Paul makes it plain that government (even imperfect government) is a better than no government and should (in this context) be obeyed (though see Locke for Christian thoughts on exceptions to this). It is NOT bad (says Paul) that the government has the sword and is a terror to wicked men.

That does nothing to justify government being a terror to good men (persecution) or to all the ways the government is terrible.

Romans used practices on prisoners so awful that I cannot describe them on this family blog. They make anything done at Abu Ghraib look like Sunday School. Was Paul commending that?

Christians have said “no.” Empowering the state to torture is not part of the English conservatism of Burke. It is foreign to the development of Christian social theory and politics. It is bluntly regressive.

Great question.

I think JMR is reading into Paul something Paul never says — namely, that somehow the way Rome implemented justice was lacking because the results of judgments under the various magistrates was too bloody or too severe.

Here’s what Paul says in fact:

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. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing.[ESV]

JMR’s minimalist view of Paul’s endorsement here falls apart pretty quickly — because Paul sees justice and judgments as things to fear. It’s right to fear the magistrate — becuase he’s an instrument of God’s wrath on those who are lawless.

In that, the Roman government for all its warts was very clearly enough. Is it the end and last form we should abide by? Not hardly — becuase JMR is right about this much: the Christian magistrate knows things the non-Christian magistrate does not. I have said as much already in another thread.

But what the Christian magistrate cannot do is overturn or overthrow what God has established government to do among men as Paul lines out here.

We need to do that because we have to distinguish between what the Government’s responsibility in wielding the sword (for example, capital punishment) and its abuse of that power (the holocaust, soviet labor camps, etc.) in order to rightly define what we’re talking about before we say something like, “the government should not torture.”

Me walking around my neighborhood should not torture anybody. Period. But I am also not invested with a metaphysical responsibility to maintain justice and a proper fear of judgment in a society — and “government” is.

We are guided by our ideals, but live in the “real world.” This means accepting that nobody (including our leaders) are perfect and that they can make bad decisions without becoming illegitimate. It means accepting that in practice we will fall short (and may have to fall short) of our ideals due to frailty.

It does not justify intentionally doing an evil and then saying, “Well, I live in the real world.”

You keep confusing Cicero’s philosophy of justice and Roman rule of law with the actual implementation and practice. Romans thought that doing x, y, and z would good and encourage justice. They were wrong.

That does not mean that overthrowing Rome (given the realistic options) would have been better or that their ideals were wrong. God gave Rome the right to execute justice. Sometimes they did it well, sometimes badly. A citizen at the time had to recognize that doing it badly did not give him the right (as an individual) to revolt. It did not mean he had to commend crucifixion and other tortures.

An ancient Roman was preferable because he was better than his non-Roman peers in this way: the rule of law.

He was not better (always) in is practice. He often did remarkably awful things in working out his ideals.

Rome was great for its time and we owe it much, but we have learned a thing or two about the implementation of justice since. The Jesus thing helped a good bit.

Are you saying that Paul’s comment is tacit approval of Roman methods? We can’t say their methods really were barbarous and unjust, because Paul said they were able to exercise justice even with their methods?