Christianity vs the TPA
Archbishop Justin Welby has stressed the need for more tax.
Those God botherers at the Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) have responded as follows:
The TPA tweet is from Matthew 17: 21 (King James version). It’s useful to put it in its slightly wider context, namely verses 15 to 22:
Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him [Jesus] in his talk.
And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men.
Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?
But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?
Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.
And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?
They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.
When they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way.
The idea that Jesus’s words are an exhortation to some kind of distinction between religious and secular authority is, as the Bible experts might say, utter bollox.
To be clear then.
Jesus has been confronted by Pharisees and Herodians, two groups with very different attitudes to Caesar, who have cooked up a plan for “how they might ensnare him in his talk”
They try to do this by asking him a really tricky, politically sensitive question: “Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?”
A bit of bible era history. ‘Tribute’ here refers to the relatively new poll tax imposed by Caesar, one denarius, which had to be paid in Roman coinage. This coinage carried the image of Caesar, and was therefore objectionable to the Pharisees for its idolatry.
Jesus therefore is offered the choice between support for idolatry in appeasement of the Pharisees, or support for law-breaking, which would annoy the Herodians a lot.
Jesus spots the trick, calls for a penny of the tribute money, and makes very clear he’s referring to Caesar’s image on the coin (v. 19–20) before he responds..
“Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” is not, therefore, an exhortation to distinction between the secular and the religious: it is quite the reverse. It is telling Caesar how far up he can stick his secular power, reflected as it is in his image-laden coinage, and that it’s God that counts.
The bible study group at the TPA might also do well to remember that, just the day before this bit of bother with the Pharisees and Herodians, Jesus starts a bit of bother in the temple:
And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,
And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves (Ch. 21: V.12–13).
Consistent with the Caesar tribute episode, Jesus is attacking — physically in this case — the way in which the 1st century state backs those with financial power.
Jesus is not on the TPA’s side on this. He’s on Justin’s.
