Our Father who art not in Rome
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Our Father who art not in Rome
Originally the right of the father, or as the Romans called him, the Pater Famillias, was absolute and beyond the government’s jurisdiction, for the power of government lay in the hearts and hands of the free man. The Greeks had brought in different ideas from their contact with the east, which were filtering into Judea with the introduction of an Hellenistic philosophy.
In Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus it was preached that the children were not the property of their parents but rather the property of the State.332 It also called for the collection of all gold and silver so that iron could be used as money. It also preached a central system of welfare and food distribution financed by compulsory taxes collected into a common government-controlled treasury. Land was to belong to the State,333 and everyone was required to pay a use or property tax on the land, or that property would be taken from them and given to another. Was this the way of God’s kingdom and His righteousness which we were told to seek?
Youngsters were removed from the family at an early age and trained up to follow the directions and teachings of the State. At one time the word Pietas represented the “Sense of Duty” that each child owed his natural father. When he was born, the child was traditionally laid at the feet of his father. If the father picked him up it was an act of ritual acknowledgment of the child as his. In the same manner, civil birth registration was the official laying of a child at the feet or footstool of the Patronus of the State, the Pater Patriae.
In the original government of Israel, the authority to govern remained in the hands of the People through the family unit represented by the eldest member. The Elders, or Patriarchs, held the power of government called by the Romans, Patria Potestas.. Men like Cain, Nimrod, Pharaoh, and Caesar assumed a national office of the Father of the State.334 To obtain their benefits, one needed to pray to these substitute fathers on earth.
Persecution of Christians was more often the result of provincial regulations, called mandata, rather than Empirical decrees, decreta. But it is clear that public policy and the structure of the Roman system came into conflict with Christian practices and beliefs. Persecution of Christians under Emperors like Antoninus Pius was uncommon and advised against under Trajan and Hadrian.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus had been a priest at the sacrificial altars of Roman service and was an eager patriot. He had a logical mind, but his stoic philosophy was tempered with gentleness and benevolence, by making it subordinate to a love of mankind. His ‘Meditations’ is still revered as a literary monument to a government of service and duty. It has been praised for its “exquisite accent and its infinite tenderness” and “saintliness” being called the “gospel of his life”. They have been compared by J. S. Mill in his Utility of Religion to the Sermon on the Mount. Like many of the emperors of Rome, he was loved by the people. Yet, with all his benevolence, administered justice, and reforms, he often mistrusted the Christians who he subjected to systematic and official persecution.
The record of persecution of Christians under Marcus’ loving, tender, and dutiful public service was greater than any other period of Roman history. What was wrong with Christians? Religious freedom was guaranteed in the Roman constitution. No Christian was persecuted for singing in Church, praising the Lord, or believing in Jesus. It is what that belief changed in the Christian outlook and activities that brought them under suspicion, if not outright conflict with Roman policies. Their independence and success could make aspiring world dictators or Emperors nervous. But their efficient system of self governance absolutely terrified them.
Christians were bound together in a system of unity, strength, and efficiency that often alarmed those governing a central power bound by pride, pomp, and pricey beneficence. The Christian community was not interested in the benefits of the authoritarian State. Independent responsibility, a duty to love their neighbor, and a trust in God and His kingdom at hand took all their application, attention, and allegiance.
When Christians had needs, they went to Church and their living stone altars like Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, and the public servants of the Kingdom of God.335 They did not pray at the altars of Rome or Herod. They knew the Lord hated the Nicolaitans, and would not apply to the Father of Rome or the Pharisees of Jerusalem, nor sacrifice and eat at their tables of Qurban or Corban336.
It has always been an option for the people to apply to a State for an enfranchised citizenship. Fathers of Rome could register their children in a political abdication of their rights and responsibilities as fathers. This was essentially a threefold process of Novation, Tutor, and Qurban.337 This freeing of the young from the custodial authority of their parents was called manumissio.338 The State, as Benefactor and Patron (In Parentis Loci), in turn accepted them as subject citizens. This had always been a voluntary process, but eventually some form of membership in the Roman Civil Family became compulsory by exclusion.
Marcus Aurelius required everyone to register the birth of their children with the Secretary of Treasury or Provincial Registrars within 30 days or suffer the penalty of law. The Roman system was in debt and decline. It needed more collateral and contributing investors, human resources, to the corporation of the State. Human resources were in demand. Those who refused were at risk of persecution.
“And call no [man] your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.” Mt. 23:9
Christians could not apply to the Father of the State without denying Christ’s command. The gratuities and benefits of that gentile government were from authoritarian Benefactors who compelled contributions.
The “union and discipline of the Christian republic”339 had “gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman Empire.”340 That republic may have been recognized for the citizens of Judea by the proclamation nailed to the cross by the Proconsul of Rome, Pontius Pilate, but when citizens of other nations began to follow suit, those governments began to blame their failure on that loss.
Jesus came that we might be saved. We are not saved simply because He died, but also because we repent. Where we haven’t forgiven, we must now forgive.341 Where we did not obey, we must now seek to obey. Where we departed from the path, we must now make straight the way of the LORD that we might receive the benefit of His grace. We should have one Father to pray and apply to and no other.
The word sin is from the Greek hamartia and hamartano which can be defined in the Greek as “to be without a share in”. Grace is from the Greek word charis which means a given benefit. If you sin you have no share in the benefit for you have left the path and gone out of the presence of God. Like Cain, who went out of the presence of God and built a city-state to become gods to the people within it, the grace of the Father in heaven was not available. No matter what we do we cannot earn the grace of God so that He must give it to us. Grace is never owed or earned but it is the granted gift.
“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Matthew 7:21
If we do not do those things that Jesus says, our faith in Him is a lie. We must do more than say “Lord Lord.” If we do contrary to His will we are Antichrist. We must learn to live without coveting our neighbors’ goods, either individually or through the agency of institutions which we create with our own hands. To be partakers in such covetous praxis, we ourselves become tyrants and will receive our just rewards. The purpose of godly government is to strengthen the character of men by the practice of virtue in faith, hope, and charity, binding only by love and sacrifice.
It is clear the Church lives by charity and the liberty of Christ, but from its beginning there have been men professing to believe in Christ that sought the social welfare of benefactors who exercise authority one over the other. From Judas to Constantine, from Ambrose to tax-funded Faith-Based socialism, men have undermined the gospel of the kingdom and gone under the control of benefactors who exercise authority one over the other.
Sodom was destroyed because it failed to strengthen the poor in the midst of its affluence.342 It is not the receiving of charity that strengthens the society, but the choosing to give. It is those bonds of love that bind the fabric of society in a durable weave of faith and hope.
“Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin: That walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion. For his princes were at Zoan, and his ambassadors came to Hanes.” Isaiah 30:1.
Zoan means a “place of departure” and Hanes is the word for “grace has fled”. We were told by God never to return to Egypt where we were in bondage, being forced to give twenty percent of our labor to the government to protect us from famine and misfortune. Time and time again men return to systems343 where they have no real choice in charity. This covetousness nature makes men a resource of men who would be gods of men.
“Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public. If you are caught committing such crimes in detail you are punished and disgraced; sacrilege, kidnapping, burglary, fraud, theft are the names we give to such petty forms of wrongdoing. But when a man succeeds in robbing the whole body of citizens and reducing them to slavery, they forget these ugly names and call him happy and fortunate, as do all others who hear of his unmitigated wrongdoing.”344
Footnotes
332“Each child belongs to the state.” William H. Seawell, U. of Virginia.
“The primary control and custody of infants is with the government” Tillman V. Roberts. 108 So. 62
333“The ultimate ownership of all property is in the State: individual so-called ‘ownership” is only by virtue of Government, i.e. law amounting to mere user; and use must be in accordance with law and subordinate to the necessities of the State.” Senate Document No. 43 73rd Congress 1st Session. (Brown v. Welch supra)
334“And call no [man] your father upon the earth” :Mt 23:9 published by His Church
335Acts 6:5 “And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch:”
336“And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death: But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free. And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.” Mr 7:9-13
337Korban, Corban and Quarban are all sacrifices on the altars of governments. They may be forced or voluntary.
338“The patria potestas could not be dissolved immediately by manumissio (manumission), because the patria potestas must be viewed as an imperium, and not as a right of property like the power of a master over his slave.” Unterholzner, Zeitschrift, vol. ii p. 139; Von den formen der Manumissio per Vindictam und der Emancipatio.
339Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
340Rousseau and Revolution, Will et Ariel Durant p.801. fn 83 Heiseler, 85.
341 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Matthew 18:35
342Ezekiel 16:49 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
3432 Peter 2:22 But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog [is] turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.
344Plato’s Republic 344a-c. Lee translation, Penguin Books, 1955, p.73.
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