The doctrine of obedience to authority in Romans 13:1–3

The doctrine of obedience to authority in Romans 13:1–3 gives divine sanction to earthly hierarchy, joining religious belief to the structures that govern work, family, and parish life. The novel presents it both as an official rationale for obedience and as a scriptural framework whose meaning is challenged by dissent, intimate devotion, and the burdens of human choice.

Parish and Household Authority

In 1840s Ljuder, the dean Enok Brusander and Sheriff Lönnegren represented spiritual and worldly authority; Lieutenant Sir Paul Rudeborg stood foremost in birth and wealth, while Per Persson represented the parish on the county council. The narrative explicitly links these four governing figures to Romans 13:1–3. Its language makes their offices more than social arrangements: power is represented as coming from God, so the established order appears to possess sacred legitimacy.

The same hierarchy enters ordinary instruction. Robert recites that parents and masters hold power as God’s servants, charged to care for those beneath them, and names the chain of superiors from the King and Governor through the sheriff and dean to Aron of Nybacken, the farm servant’s master. Each authority watches a different part of a servant’s life: the sheriff keeps him in service, the dean examines his religious knowledge, and Aron oversees his labor and wages. The catechetical lesson thus makes obedience both a doctrine and a practical map of surveillance and control.

This teaching belongs to a parish system designed to cultivate religious conformity. The church law of 1686 prescribed reading instruction so children could encounter God’s laws, while the royal Resolution and Order of January 12, 1726, was invoked to protect Christian unity from dangerous new ideas. Annual examinations tested faith, and unmarried parishioners were questioned about reading and fined for nonattendance. Religious education, parish oversight, and civil authority reinforce one another: submission is taught as belief, measured as conduct, and backed by institutional discipline.

Dissent and the Limits of Church Authority

Danjel Andreasson’s religious renewal exposes a conflict within the principle. After experiencing what he understands as the Spirit’s call, he resumes Åke Svensson’s teachings, leads Bible talks at home, prays during farm work, and welcomes neighbors. His practice also changes household life: he abandons distilling and drinking, shares his possessions with poorer people, and gives shelter and provisions to outcasts. For him, religious authority is not confined to ordained office; it is a direct obligation to follow Christ as he understands the Bible.

The dean answers with the institutional claim that no one may minister without being called and ordained according to church law. He orders Danjel to stop preaching, warns that continued activity can bring a civil fine or imprisonment on bread and water, and states that a third offense may bring two years’ exile. Danjel refuses to retract, arguing that the dean cannot grant divine grace or exile him from God’s kingdom. The exchange turns on rival interpretations of authority: the dean invokes the church’s lawful jurisdiction, while Danjel treats obedience to God as prior to the clergy’s command.

The dispute also reaches into marriage. Inga-Lena worries when Danjel leaves the larder unlocked, especially after thieves take pork and flour; she secretly locks it to protect the household’s food. Yet the scriptural injunction that a wife submit to her husband troubles her conscience. After prayer and what she experiences as spiritual rebirth, she accepts Danjel’s religious judgment, and he returns to the marital bed. Here authority is not merely public law: it shapes private conscience, material security, and the terms of married life.

Belief Practiced Beyond Official Institutions

When the Åkians gather for Communion at Danjel’s table, their faith gives them a community outside the parish church’s sacramental boundary. They believe that Christ’s suffering has redeemed them and that faith has made them new, cleansed of sin. Though excluded from the church’s altar, they hold that Christ may be present wherever believers gather—whether in a byre, woodshed, or barn. The scene sets formal religious authority against a lived faith sustained through shared ritual and mutual conviction.

The doctrine’s language of submission also informs quieter accounts of providence. Nils Jakob’s Son accepts his disabling injury without bitterness, believing that God had foreordained the stone’s fall and his loss of footing; to question the Creator would, in his view, be presumptuous. Kristina likewise interprets the chain of events beginning with her childhood fall from a swing as guided by God, since it led to her meeting Karl Oskar, their marriage, and their life at Korpamoen. These beliefs make contingency legible as divine direction, though they arise from distinct experiences of injury, marriage, and family.

Storm, Providence, and Human Responsibility

At sea, Danjel turns to the Bible during a violent storm and finds reassurance in Psalm 93: the Lord is mightier than the waters. He tells frightened passengers that God is with them aboard the brig Charlotta and reads the Gospel account of Christ calming the tempest. Yet the narrative distinguishes his restored confidence from the passengers’ experience: those incapacitated by seasickness cannot be comforted by the lesson, and the storm does not simply cease in response to scripture. Faith sustains Danjel, but the scene leaves the limits of religious consolation visible.

Karl Oskar’s reckoning over the emigration brings the question of authority and providence into direct contact with choice. He recognizes that he persuaded Kristina and took his wife and children across the sea, accepting responsibility for the decision; as he holds Kristina’s cold hand, he feels overpowering regret for the price of what he has done. Set beside Nils’s acceptance of a foreordained accident and Kristina’s providential reading of her past, Karl Oskar’s remorse makes human agency impossible to dissolve into a simple appeal to divine order.

Across these episodes, Romans 13:1–3 is more than a defense of obedience to officials. Its claim that authority is ordained by God gives coherence to parish discipline and household hierarchy, while the novel tests that claim against dissenting conscience, embodied suffering, and responsibility for consequential decisions. The doctrine can authorize submission, but the characters’ differing encounters with scripture reveal that obedience itself depends on who speaks for God and how belief meets lived experience.