Do we have duties towards unjust rulers – and are they still God’s ministers?
Christ upheld the authority of civil rulers – not because they are just, but because their power came from God.
Christ upheld the authority of civil rulers – not because they are just, but because their power came from God.
Editor’s Notes
Are we obliged to pay taxes towards a government that enacts immoral and unjust “laws”? Or that is openly tyrannical?
In this piece, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How Christ’s words reveal that civil authority is divinely instituted, and ordered for the common good.
That resisting tyranny must, in many cases, be left to God, who judges rulers and restores justice in due time.
Why even unjust power may bind in conscience – until it claims what belongs to God alone.
He shows us that political duty and fidelity to God are not opposed – but must be rightly distinguished.
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 benefits of civil government
The coinage of Rome was current in Judæa, as the coinage of the acknowledged sovereign. The fact implied that the Jews lived under the protection of the Roman arms, and, as far as they were imposed on them, of the Roman laws. The Romans kept the peace for them, administered the laws, or allowed them their own laws as far as they saw fit. They were the ministers of God, as St. Paul says, serving unto this purpose. They protected life and property, they secured the citizens their social rights, and chastised outrages and violations of the law.
In return for all this, they exacted tribute. Those who profited by the peace which they secured, the protection against lawlessness, the administration of justice, the security of the family and the home, which were the results of their dominion, had duties in return to discharge towards them. Thus our Lord says, ‘Render,’ give back ‘to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’
The time came in the history of the Church when Cæsar asked more than belonged to him, and interfered with the rights of God. Christians could not give in to such demands, they suffered tortures and death in consequence, but they did not rebel. They left their cause to God, Who is the Supreme Author and Ruler of society, and in Whose hands it lies to remove kings and emperors, kingdoms and empires.
The importance of the doctrine
Our Lord knew how momentous for the welfare of society and the Church, which requires nothing but peace to carry on her beneficent work in the world, were to be the questions which are involved in the duty to the civil ruler, who receives his power from God.
This was not an occasion on which it would have been suitable for Him to lay down the whole details of the doctrine, but He summed it up in the epigrammatic form with which we are so familiar, which contains in itself the elements of the whole truth.
He spoke once again, in the course of His Passion, a few words on the same subject, in vindication of the Divine origin of human government, the responsibilities of those in whose hands it rested, and the consequent iniquity of those who divert it to an unjust use: ‘Thou shouldest not have any power against Me,’ He said to Pilate, who was boasting of his power to crucify Him and to release Him, ‘unless it were given to thee from above.
Therefore, he that delivered Me to thee hath the greater sin,’1 his sin of injustice in itself is enhanced by his using for his malicious purpose a power which came from God. It is God Who has conferred on men the right by which they govern others, and it is He, therefore, Whose power is abused when a conscious wrong of oppression, or the like, is committed.
Here, as far as we know, our Lord left the matter of the rights of the civil governor, and His words became the text by which the Apostles were guided in their teaching. St. Paul, having laid down the duty of living at peace with all men, as far as is possible, adds, ‘Let every soul be subject to higher powers,’ using the same word which our Lord used to Pilate, meaning ‘authority.’
‘For there is no power but from God, and those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore, he that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God, and they that resist, purchase to themselves damnation. For princes are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil.
‘Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same. For he is God’s minister to thee, for good. But if thou do that which is evil, fear, for he beareth not the sword in vain. For he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil.
‘Therefore, be subject of necessity, not only for wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. For therefore also you pay tribute, for they are the ministers of God, serving unto this purpose.’2
The passage of St. Paul
In this famous passage St. Paul repeats three times over that civil authorities are the ministers of God.
No doubt those for whom he wrote had many complaints against the rulers under whom they lived. He was writing to a Church composed, almost equally, perhaps, of Jewish and Italian Christians, and yet he makes no mention of the modern principle of nationalities.
And our Lord, when He was laying down the principle before us, knew well enough how many thousands of the children of the Church, and others outside the Church, in every generation, were to be ground down under injustice and tyranny, for which in the course of His Providence, He meant ample redress to be exacted.
The history of the world is the history of the succession of…
Empires, on their way
To ruin; one by one,
They tower, and they are gone,
… each ‘giant form’ in the series, as it were, eating up its predecessor for unfaithfulness in its Providential trust and for cruelty to its subjects.
‘I will repay’
It is the same with royal houses and dynasties, the chastisement of whose misdeeds against the Church and mankind falls often, as we see, on innocent generations, who have to expiate the sins of their ancestors.
God does not leave any evil of this kind unavenged, even here below. He brings about redress and chastisement in due time, and by instruments of His own choosing. In our own generation the world is full of the fragments of dissolved empires and the heirs of dethroned dynasties and houses that were once royal. ‘Vengeance to me, I will repay, saith the Lord,’ and the remedy is far safer and more full of mercies when it is left to Him, Who never fails in His promise, ‘I will repay.’
But the times and seasons, the instruments and means, of this repayment are in His hands, and His Providence works out His Will in these matters with infinite justice and mercy, with the highest wisdom and the tenderest consideration for the good of all.
The Question of Tribute
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St. John xix. 11
Rom. xiii. 1-6