Should we pay taxes?
Why did Christ’s answer so silence his enemies, and what does it mean for us today?
Why did Christ’s answer so silence his enemies, and what does it mean for us today?
Editor’s Notes
Are we obliged to pay taxes towards a government that enacts immoral and unjust “laws”? Or that is openly tyrannical?
The following consists of Father Coleridge’s commentary on the section of the Gospel read on the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost.
We sometimes hear the Gospels at Mass without any sense of where they fall in Christ’s life. Works like Coleridge’s can help us appreciate the growing tension behind episodes like this – as well as make us wonder why the Church places this reading where she does.
This episode falls within Holy Week, during his final public teaching before the Passion. According to St Matthew’s Gospel, and Fr Coleridge’s ordering, it immediately follows the Gospel for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Our Lord was facing mounting hostility from the Pharisees, the priests, and their allies. It comes after several parables, each of which were devastating indictments of Christ’s enemies. He exposes their hypocrisy – as well as establishing the divine source of even civil and temporal authority. Our Lord distinguishes between lawful obedience and idolatrous submission, and provides the basis for the Church’s teaching on political order, conscience and resistance to tyranny.
The episode reveals how the faithful must navigate unjust or pagan rule – elements of which are very familiar to us today. We are to fulfil our temporal duties, while giving absolute loyalty only to God. It also prefigures the Church’s later sufferings under worldly powers and her trust in divine justice—“Vengeance to me, I will repay, saith the Lord.”
The Question of Tribute
Passiontide, Part I
Chapter VI
St. Matt. xxii. 15—22; St. Mark xii. 13—17; St. Luke xx. 20—26; Story of the Gospels, § 138.
Burns and Oates, 1886.
(Read at Holy Mass on the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost)
The plot against Our Lord
The three first Evangelists tell us that after the parables in which our Lord had spoken so openly against His enemies, the Chief Priests and Pharisees, the latter withdrew from openly molesting Him in His teaching, as they clearly discerned that His purpose was to expose and attack them.
They did not dare, especially as the time of the great feast was drawing on, to risk open violence against Him. He was safe whenever the people were present, who at all events held Him as a prophet. The Chief Priests had not at all abandoned their intention of putting Him to death, but they were afraid to execute it in the face of the multitude.
There was one power in Jerusalem greater than their own, and this was of course the power of the Roman Governor. Our Lord’s enemies, therefore, hit upon a plan which would, as they hoped, give them an opportunity of bringing Him into collision with this power.
Ever since the annexation of Judæa to the province of Syria at the time of the deposition of Archelaus, the question of the lawfulness of paying tribute to the foreign rulers of the country had become more pressing. Even under Herod and his son, who were nothing more in truth than the delegates of Rome, it must have been in the minds of zealots among the Jews that they were a free and holy nation, and ought not to pay tribute to any but a sovereign of their own nation, and that Herod could only be called such in a very lax sense indeed.
The question of the day
But when, in the course of time, the Herodian kingdom came formally to an end by the dethronement of Archelaus, and the appointment of a Roman Procurator, the subjugation of Judæa became still more undeniable, and no pretext was left for considering them subject to a king of their own.
We hear of the insurrection of Judas of Galilee about that time. That insurrection was quenched in blood, and it must have been evident to sensible men that the nation was not on the whole inconsiderately governed by the Romans, and that a state of things was in possession which implied a tacit acquiescence in their domination.
Still, there was the theoretical question, which seems to have been agitated from time to time in the Pharisaical schools, and probably there were always some to maintain the stricter view, by which it was considered even unlawful to acknowledge the supremacy of Cæsar by paying him taxes.
This question, then, the Pharisees determined to put to our Lord. They hoped that He would be unable to answer it either way without danger to Himself. An answer against the lawfulness of paying tribute to the Romans would bring Him under the notice of the Governor as a supporter of insurrection. An answer in favour of the practice might alienate from Him the favour of the people, ever jealous of anything that seemed to touch their national rights and their notions of independence.
How it was put to Our Lord
All the three Evangelists tell us of this plot.
‘Being upon the watch, they sent spies, who should feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of Him in His words, that they might deliver Him up to the authority and power of the Governor.’
This is St. Luke’s account. The other two mention the particular persons who entered into this plan.
‘Then the Pharisees going consulted among themselves how to ensnare Him in His speech, and they sent unto Him their disciples with the Herodians.’
That is, the religious party, the men who were sticklers for the strict observance of the Law, and who were consequently opposed by the laxer sort of men, ready to go all lengths in concession to their pagan masters, leagued together with these last on the subject of a question which was constantly argued between them, as if it was to be settled by reference to our Lord Whom they hoped thus to endanger either in His life or in His popularity. They came to Him with words full of flattery and adulation.
‘And they asked Him, saying, Master, we know that Thou art a true speaker, that Thou speakest and teachest rightly, and carest not for any man, for Thou regardest not the person of man, but teachest the way of God in truth. Tell us, therefore, what Thou dost think, is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Cæsar, or not? or shall we not give it?’
The Evangelists seem to have been careful to preserve the very words in which these insidious questioners laid the snare which they were setting. They were clever men of the world, in their own conceits, like the orator Tertullus in the Acts, who began his charge against St. Paul before Felix with complimentary sentences of the same sort.
They thought, perhaps, that they would easily outwit the simple, meek, truthful preacher from Galilee, little deeming that in Him dwelt all the wisdom and the majesty of the Godhead, and that they were trying to deceive One Who read the thoughts of their hearts before they rose to their lips,—One Who knew with what intention of malice they asked the question, how false were all their compliments about His truthfulness and disregard of human respect, how false, too, the desire which they alleged of hearing from Him the way of God in truth.
His answer
‘But Jesus, knowing their wickedness, their vileness, considering their guile, said to them, Why tempt you Me, ye hypocrites? Show Me the coin of the tribute, show me a penny that I may see it. And they brought it to Him. They offered Him a penny.
‘And Jesus saith to them, Whose image and superscription is this? They answering Him, said to Him, Cæsar’s. And Jesus answering said to them, Render therefore to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God's. And they marvelled at Him. And they could not reprehend His word before the people, and wondering at His answer, they held their peace.’
This answer of our Lord, which solved the question to the confusion of the questioners, contains the whole general doctrine which was afterwards drawn out by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, and in that to St. Titus.1
It was not the object of our Lord, as it seems, to draw out the doctrine in full, in this place, for the question was not put honestly, but only in order to entrap Him. The Romans had been practically the rulers of Judæa since the troubles which ended the reign of the Asmonæan dynasty. It might be an abstract question whether they had rightfully acquired their sovereignty, but they had at least been long in undisputed possession, nor was there the slightest practical opposition to their rule.
But our Lord does not go into the question of title at all. He takes the plain obvious fact of the political condition of Judæa as a subject province to Rome, and implies that that is enough for the obligation of conscience.
In the next part, Fr Coleridge explains how Christ’s teaching reveals the divine source of civil power – and that our civil rulers, no matter how imperfect or even evil, are God’s ministers.
The Question of Tribute
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1 Romans xiii. 1—7; Titus iii. 1.