This interpretation (the one offered above) doesn't really make sense, and I've always felt uncomfortable with it (though I still think its better than modern evangelical nonsense that suggests absolute, slavish obedience to all "rulers" in most cases, and I'll explain why in a sec.) The problem is that I can't really buy it myself. erowe1 made an excellent attempt at trying to argue a view similar to this, but I still can't really believe it. The fact that, while God clearly doesn't APPROVE of kings (per 1 Samuel 8) and the office is one that is clearly easy to abuse, its also clear through the OT that there is no intrinsic problem with holding such an office, which is really problematic from an ancap point of view.
I'm becomming more and more convinced (at the risk of upsetting some people here... my conscience is bound primarily by scripture) that this passage is actually teaching minimal government. The reasons for this are not exclusively in the text itself, though the text is important, but also some philosophical issues with ancap, taken to their logical conclusions.
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, 4for 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. 5Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience.
The civil magistrate is God's servant for your good. I understand the Calvinistic temptation to say that this is simply predestinarian, because I took this position myself, but the problem is that I couldn't really believe it. The passage is saying that the magistrate is carrying out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. That's his role as God's servant. And if you do what is good, he'll leave you alone. This, in my mind, rules out the predestinarian approach. It also rules out, and makes it impossible for me to accept, the common evangelical view that all that are commonly thought of as "the government" is in view here. The United States government punishes people for non-evil actions all the time. If you buy a gun, there's nothing evil about that action, but the State will nonetheless come after you in some cases. The "civil magistrates" in the United States are no longer wielding the sword correctly, per this passage. They are no longer acting as God's servants, but as tyrants and oppressors. The same is true for most governments throughout history. The only ones I can say with certainty to have not done so were some OT Israelite kings (I would argue that some of the details of how OT kings were supposed to wield the sword on an entirely covenant people are different from how an NT Christian magistrate would do so in a covenant including only professing believers and a society with a mixture of coventally connected and non-covenentally connected people, but that doesn't change the fact that there is a legitimate sword-wielding ministry that God commanded to exist and that there is a proper way to do it that is honoring to God); I'm not actually certain that a single ruler has actually done this since Paul penned the letter in question, though there are probably a handful that did.
It gets even worse from an ancap point of view when you look at the next part:
6For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. 7Pay 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.
Now, I understand that there are a lot of questions that could be asked here, and I'm not going to answer them all tonight, mostly because I don't have all the answers. Can "taxes" be levied at any level, or is it something that one is simply expected to voluntarily contribute (much like tithes)[I'm leaning toward the latter unless/until I can find any actual Biblical MANDATE for coercive taxation]? At what point does a sword-wielder cross the line between a flawed minister of God who makes a few bad calls and a tyrant? (While I don't know the answer to that one, I think 1 Samuel 8 gives us some ideas. I also think its clear that a government who tries to claim 10% or more, or a government that predominately punishes the good or rewards the evil, is clearly crossing the line). What evils exactly should be punished by the government? (This is a big one, but I tend to think that first of all you'd need a theonomic justification from the OT, and second of all it would have to be something that isn't now under the jurisdiction of the church, which I think would rule out basically anything but violence against person or property, but I'm still working on this.) What the heck happened to FreedomFanatic? (OK, I can answer that one. I let evangelical overemphasis and twisting of a good passage blind me to the fact that the passage actually exists)
You also have 1 Peter 2:17 with the command to "honor the Emperor". Keeping in mind the discussion of Romans 13 above, I think we can say that this is saying to honor the principle of a just civil magistrate that actually follows Romans 13. But from an ancap perspective, how in the world do you deal with this? You really can't. My reaction when reading it was essentially, "why should I respect any ruler?" The very idea of a just ruler, a concept that exists in the Bible, really doesn't make sense from that perspective.
Really, Chris Cantwell is more consistent than most other ancaps. He is very consistent about the fact that there is no such thing as legitimate authority, and that anybody can pretty much punish any NAP violation. I feel that this is an untenable Biblical position (and no surprise, Cantwell is an atheist.) There's no way to fit it with Romans 12:19 at all. Most Christian ancaps sort of almost border on minarchism anyways... the difference is almost trivial. I asked a friend recently how much a king has to actually do before he "counts" as a king. His response: "FF, if you're even asking that question, you're talking about minarchist kings." He was right. I can't really consistently, exegetically defend the idea that there is NOTHING that qualifies as a legitimate civil authority, ordained by God, and still deal with the fact that OT monarchs are given advice by God other than "step down" and that some of them were seen as good.
Now, this isn't to say monarchy is the ideal form of government (I don't believe it is, per 1 Samuel 8) but I think any form can be moral provided it keeps itself strictly limited to the function of wielding the sword of justice. WHAT the government does is more important than what FORM is takes.
Furthermore, Murray Rothbard and Walter Block were/are more consistent than most Christian ancaps when it comes to child's rights and so forth. It is unlikely that an ancap justice system would actually wield the sword on behalf of the unborn (even ignoring the fact that nobody has the moral right to wield the sword, which is theologically problematic) yet the Bible talks a lot about justice for the oppressed. I don't think its impossible for justice to be an economic product, nor do I think that it wouldn't "work" per say, but I think its somewhat immoral. Some would protest here by saying that what's immoral for one person is immoral for another. While I think this is typically so, the very existance of the family contradicts this idea. This is where Rothbard gets consistent (pretty much letting children choose their family) and most Christian ancaps get inconsistent.
Pacifism is a position I reject, but its tenable. There is no ministry of the sword, its been abolished. Minarchism is also a tenable position. The State wields the sword, its extremely limited (and, I think Romans 13 is telling us to obey legitimate rulers, not tyrants), but only the State has the right to use it (Under normal conditions.) But anarcho-capitalism kind of has this awkward middle ground where there's the sword, but nobody really has the "right" to use it. More and more this is striking me as theologically problematic.
I don't approve of the current government AT ALL because it is going far beyond its VERY limited Biblical mandate to wield the sword of justice. It murders civilians, it controls the economy, it runs infrustructure, it redistributes wealth, it wages wars overseas, it tortures people, it passes laws against acts which are not evil or, even if sinful, have no Biblical precedent to be criminal, etc. all undefendable functions of government Biblically. Romans 13, often twisted by statists to justify their indifference if not outright hostility to freedom, actually strictly limits the power of the civil magistrate. A properly running civil magistrate would reward the good by allowing them to live in peace, and enabling the rest of Christian society to preach the gospel without having to worry about tyrannical leaders, or a tyrannical mob, preventing them from doing so.
I suspect I'm going to get a few happy responses to this post and a lot of angry ones. If anyone is going to use this post to bash Paul or Christianity in general, they're welcome to do that but I probably won't respond all that much especially if the responses are vitrolic. You're welcome to your opinions, but I'm not really posting this for the benefit of atheists. I will doubly ignore you if you pretend I'm supporting tyranny while ignoring the fact that the position I'm taking is still at least as libertarian (if not more) than the positions Ron Paul has publicly taken.
This post is primarily for the benefit of my Christian brothers (ancap or not) to discuss. I'm hoping Sola_Fide, if he still reads the forum, will address it one way or another, and that erowe1 will do so as well, as well as any other Christians here, especially Reformed Christians (note that "especially" does not mean "exclusively", and I'm primarily saying that because the hermaneutics used will be similar). It hurt me to write this post because I like anarcho-capitalism, but I think it leads to too many problems theologically, and I think consistent ancap leads to positions more like those that someone like Chris Cantwell is taking than positions like erowe1 would probably take now, or like I would have taken a few days ago before I really decided I needed to deal with this.
Well, I'm done for now. Will discuss more later.
)