The Romans 13 Reversal: Who Are the 'Superior Authorities'?

For more than three decades, the Watch Tower Society taught that the "superior authorities" of Romans 13:1 — the powers Christians must "be in subjection" to — were not earthly governments at all, but Jehovah God and Jesus Christ. This reinterpretation, introduced under Joseph Rutherford in 1929, overturned the plain understanding held by Charles Taze Russell and every mainstream Christian commentator, and it became the theological engine for the Witnesses' famous stand of political neutrality. Then in 1962 the organization quietly reversed itself, returning to the very interpretation it had abandoned. The episode is one of the most cleanly documented doctrinal round-trips in Watchtower history — a teaching that began as A, became not-A for 33 years, and then returned to A — all while each position was presented as light from God. This article traces the full arc, quoting each stage from the Society's own publications.

The Text in Question

Romans 13:1 in the King James Version reads: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God." The New World Translation renders the phrase "higher powers" as "superior authorities": "Let every soul be in subjection to the superior authorities, for there is no authority except by God; the existing authorities stand placed in their relative positions by God."^[1]

For nearly two thousand years, the near-universal Christian reading — held by the early church fathers, the Reformers, and modern biblical scholarship alike — has been that Paul was instructing believers to submit to the governing civil authorities of the Roman state, paying taxes and obeying laws except where they directly conflicted with God's commands. The passage goes on to speak of rulers who "bear the sword," collect "tribute," and to whom one owes "taxes" and "honor" — language that maps naturally onto secular government and awkwardly, if at all, onto God and Christ, who collect no taxes.

The Watch Tower Society's journey through this passage moved through three distinct phases.

Phase One: Russell's Secular Authorities (Pre-1929)

The founder of the Bible Student movement, Charles Taze Russell, taught the conventional view. In the first volume of his Studies in the Scriptures, The Divine Plan of the Ages (1886), Russell wrote that the Gentile governments, "evil as these Gentile governments have been, they were permitted or 'ordained of God' for a wise purpose. (Rom. 13:1)."^[2] A few pages later he described the apostolic instruction directly:

"They taught the Church to obey the laws, and to respect those in authority because of their office, even if they were not personally worthy of esteem; to pay their appointed taxes, and, except where they conflicted with God's laws (Acts 4:19; 5:29), to offer no resistance to any established law. (Rom. 13:1-7; Matt. 22:21)"^[3]

Decades later, the organization would candidly admit this was where it started. In the May 1, 1996 Watchtower, in an article titled "God and Caesar," the Society acknowledged that Russell's era "correctly identified 'the higher powers,' or 'the superior authorities,' mentioned by the apostle Paul, as human governmental authorities."^[5] The word correctly is the Society's own — a striking concession about the position it was about to spend 33 years denying.

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Phase Two: Rutherford's "Jehovah and Jesus" Reinterpretation (1929–1962)

By the late 1920s, Joseph Franklin Rutherford — Russell's combative successor as president of the Watch Tower Society — had steered the movement into open hostility toward "the world" and its governments. Rutherford's rhetoric increasingly cast all earthly institutions of church, state, and commerce as parts of Satan's organization. Within this framework, the idea that Christians owed divinely ordained submission to secular rulers had become theologically inconvenient. If the governments of the world belonged to Satan, how could God have "ordained" them and commanded obedience to them?

The solution came in The Watch Tower of June 1 and June 15, 1929. The June 1 issue declared that the passage had been fundamentally misread:

"The instruction of the thirteenth chapter of Romans has long been misapplied. The improper application has really been the basis for the false doctrine of the 'divine right of kings' or rulers to rule and oppress the people. The apostle is, in substance, telling the members of the church that they should always be obedient to God, and that the motive for such obedience must be love for God and a delight in doing his will."^[6]

"Both of these scriptures have reference to the government, order and discipline in the organization of the Lord. Applying these words to earthly governments has been misleading and wrongful so far as Christians are concerned."^[7]

Timing and Motivation

The 1929 reinterpretation did not emerge from a fresh study of Greek grammar. It emerged from circumstance. As the Society itself later explained in the 1996 "God and Caesar" article, the change came "at a time when laws of various governments were beginning to forbid things that God commands or demand things that God's laws forbid," and so "it was felt that the higher powers must be Jehovah God and Jesus Christ."^[9]

That is a remarkable admission: the new interpretation was adopted because it was felt to be necessary given the political pressures of the moment, not because the text demanded it. The late 1920s and the decades that followed brought escalating collisions between the Witnesses and governments — over flag salutes, military conscription, door-to-door preaching bans, and Nazi persecution in the 1930s. A doctrine that removed any scriptural duty of submission to earthly rulers was tailor-made for a movement bracing for confrontation. Indeed, contemporaneous 1929 Watch Tower material used the reframing to justify refusing military service: "the Bible Students devoted to the Lord refuse to take military service, because they are true followers of Christ and must obey God's law."^[10]

The "Jehovah and Jesus" doctrine thus became a load-bearing pillar of Witness political neutrality (see [[political-neutrality]]). If the only "superior authority" a Christian owed subjection to was God, then refusing to salute a flag, bear arms, or vote was not civil disobedience toward a God-ordained power — it was simple obedience to the one authority that counted. The interpretation armored the organization for the very persecutions it was entering.

Phase Three: The 1962 Reversal — Back to Caesar

By the early 1960s, the doctrine had outlived its usefulness and had grown theologically embarrassing. The Society had by then produced its own New World Translation, and a careful rendering of Romans 13 alongside parallel texts made the "Jehovah and Jesus" reading untenable. Passages such as Titus 3:1 ("be in subjection to governments and authorities") and 1 Peter 2:13–17 ("be in subjection to... a king as being superior") clearly concerned earthly rulers, and Romans 13's talk of taxes, tribute, and the sword fit no other referent.

In two lengthy articles — The Watchtower of November 15, 1962 and December 1, 1962, both titled "Subjection to the Superior Authorities" — the organization reversed course and returned to Russell's understanding.^[11] The "superior authorities" were once again the secular governmental rulers. To preserve the neutrality that the old doctrine had justified, the 1962 articles introduced a new safeguard: the concept of relative subjection. Christian submission to the state, they explained, "cannot be total; it must be relative," yielding to government in civil matters but never where obedience to man would mean disobedience to God.^[12]

This let the Society have it both ways. It could concede the plain meaning of the text — governments are the superior authorities — while retaining the practical stand of neutrality by capping that subjection at the point of conscience. The post-1962 publications restated the secular reading without hedging. The 1963 book "Babylon the Great Has Fallen!" God's Kingdom Rules! affirmed that "God permitted the political authorities of this world to continue as the 'higher powers' or the 'powers that be,' which are 'ordained of God.'"^[13] The 1966 book Life Everlasting—in Freedom of the Sons of God was blunter still: "The expression 'superior authorities' means the political governments or authorities."^[14]

The Society's own 1996 retrospective completed the circle, describing the 1962 correction in its own words:

"The precise translation of the words used not only in Romans chapter 13 but also in such passages as Titus 3:1, 2 and 1 Peter 2:13, 17 made it evident that the term 'superior authorities' referred, not to the Supreme Authority, Jehovah, and to his Son, Jesus, but to human governmental authorities."^[15]

Timeline

• 1886 — Russell's The Divine Plan of the Ages teaches that the "higher powers" of Romans 13 are the Gentile governments, to be obeyed except where their laws conflict with God's.^[16]
• 1916 — The Watch Tower reaffirms subjection to "the worldly powers."^[17]
• June 1 & 15, 1929 — Under Rutherford, The Watch Tower declares the traditional reading "misapplied" and "wrongful," redefining the superior authorities as Jehovah God and Jesus Christ.^[18]
• 1929–1962 — The "Jehovah and Jesus" doctrine stands for 33 years and undergirds the theology of political neutrality, flag-salute refusal, and draft resistance.
• 1950 — This Means Everlasting Life restates the doctrine: the superior authorities "are the Most High God Jehovah and his exalted Son Jesus Christ."^[19]
• November 15 & December 1, 1962 — The Watchtower's two-part "Subjection to the Superior Authorities" reverses the doctrine back to secular governments, adding the doctrine of "relative subjection."^[20]
• 1963–1966 — Post-reversal publications confirm the superior authorities are "the political governments or authorities."^[21]
• May 1, 1996 — The Watchtower's "God and Caesar" narrates the whole round-trip, calling the pre-1929 view "correct."^[22]

What a 33-Year Reversal Reveals

The superior-authorities saga is difficult for the organization to explain away, precisely because it is not a case of refining a vague teaching or adding detail to an established one. It is a complete round-trip: position A held for over four decades, replaced by position not-A for 33 years, then replaced again by the original position A. Each of the three positions was, in its day, presented not as human opinion but as the understanding of God's spirit-directed channel.

Jehovah's Witnesses characterize such shifts as "new light" — the progressive brightening of truth described in Proverbs 4:18, "the path of the righteous is like the bright morning light that grows brighter and brighter until full daylight."^[23] But the metaphor of ever-brightening light describes a path that moves forward. It does not describe a light that brightens, then dims back to where it started. If 1962 was "new light," then 1929 was, by the organization's own later admission, darkness — and yet in 1929 it too was proclaimed as illumination and used to demand obedience from the rank and file (see [[new-light-rationalization]]).

The timing of both changes points away from divine revelation and toward human circumstance. The 1929 shift arrived exactly when the movement needed theological cover for confrontation with hostile governments; the Society itself concedes the doctrine was adopted because it "was felt" to be necessary under legal pressure.^[24] The 1962 shift arrived once the New World Translation's own careful rendering had made the old reading indefensible, and it came bundled with the "relative subjection" workaround that preserved the practical stand of neutrality regardless of which interpretation was official. In both directions, the doctrine bent to serve the organization's needs — first to justify defiance, then to restore textual credibility without surrendering neutrality.

For an Ex-Witness examining the organization's claim to be Jehovah's uniquely appointed and spirit-guided channel, the superior-authorities reversal is a textbook data point. It is fully documented in the Society's own literature — no critic's testimony is required. The Watch Tower called the secular reading correct, then wrong, then correct again, over a span in which the underlying Greek text never changed a single letter. What changed was the organization's situation. The passage that Paul wrote to counsel submission to Rome became, for a generation of Witnesses, a passage about submission to God alone — and then, just as authoritatively, became about Rome again. (See [[major-doctrine-changes]] for the broader pattern of documented reversals.)

See Also

• 'New Light': How the Watchtower Explains Away Its Reversals
• 'This Generation' — Six Contradictory Definitions
• Complete Timeline of Watchtower Prophecy Failures
• Did the Watchtower Claim to Be a Prophet? (Then Deny It)
• Major Doctrinal Reversals — Complete Registry
• Political Neutrality — Voting, Military & Nationalism

References