passage merely promotes a survival strategy of conforming behaviour.3 Others have seen Paul as wishing to sound positive because of suspicion that he was disloyal.4 Yet others have argued that the underlying idea is the restriction of Rome’s authority, since it is a provisional institution and fundamentally not of divine nature.5 I would suggest that, although such points have some validity, the attempt by these writers and Richard Cassidy to remove the tension between positive and negative comments
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