" Ver. 1. Let every soul, or every one, be subject, &c.[1] The Jews were apt to think themselves not subject to temporal princes, as to taxes, &c. and lest Christians should misconstrue their Christian liberty, he here teacheth them that every one (even priests and bishops, says S. Chrys.) must be subject and obedient to princes, even to heathens, as they were at that time, as to laws that regard the policy of the civil government, honouring them, obeying them, and their laws, as it is the will of God, because the power they act by is from God. So that to resist them, is to resist God. And every Christian must obey them even for conscience-sake. S. Chrys. takes notice that S. Paul does not say that there is no prince but from God, but only that there is no power but from God, meaning no lawful power, and speaking of true and just laws. See hom. xxiii. Wi."
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/210223.htmFor there is no power, he says, but of God. What say you? It may be said; is every ruler then elected by God? This I do not say, he answers. Nor am I now speaking about individual rulers, but about the thing in itself. For that there should be rulers, and some rule and others be ruled, and that all things should not just be carried on in one confusion, the people swaying like waves in this direction and that; this, I say, is the work of God’s wisdom. Hence he does not say, for there is no ruler but of God; but it is the thing he speaks of, and says, there is no power but of God. And the powers that be, are ordained of God.
When the Bible speaks of maintaining obedience to authorities, it is talking about the office. God did invest humans with the responsibility of exercising dominion over his creation in his name (Genesis 1). And God did invest government with the authority to implement laws that uphold his will and punish transgressors. So yes, God did establish the authority of the office that men like Hitler and Stalin held. That doesn’t mean that these men did not sinfully pervert their authority by transgressing God’s law through murder and tyrannical rule. We owe our obedience to the authority of the office of government to uphold God’s law in the world. We do not owe our allegiance to men who pervert their office by ordering us to violate God’s law. We see this at work in the apostles who gladly obeyed the civil laws while disobeying the ruling authorities who ordered them not to proclaim Christ crucified (Acts 5) which they had been specifically commissioned to do.I’m confused about the “ The authorities that exist have been established by God.” what about the dictators and all those people like Hitler and Stalin? I haven’t really studied this verse. Looked at a random post, thought it was neat idea.
That being said, a ruler can act in a way that is so manifestly harmful to the common good, and the peace and unity of society, that sedition is justified–and in that case, it isn’t really sedition, but rather the ruler is the one guilty of sedition as St. Thomas notes in the Summa:“He Who gave dominion to Marius, gave it also to Caesar, He Who gave it to Augustus, gave it also to Nero, He Who gave it to Vespasian, father or son, most benign emperors, gave it also to the most cruel Domitian; and that it may not be necessary to recount every instance, He Who gave it to Constantine the Christian gave it also to Julian the Apostate.”
A tyrannical government is not just, because it is directed, not to the common good, but to the private good of the ruler, as the Philosopher states (Polit. iii, 5; Ethic. viii, 10). Consequently there is no sedition in disturbing a government of this kind, unless indeed the tyrant’s rule be disturbed so inordinately, that his subjects suffer greater harm from the consequent disturbance than from the tyrant’s government. Indeed it is the tyrant rather that is guilty of sedition, since he encourages discord and sedition among his subjects, that he may lord over them more securely; for this is tyranny, being conducive to the private good of the ruler, and to the injury of the multitude.