Are the archons in Rom 13 demons too?

[Giuseppe]

Romans 13

13 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.

6 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. 7 Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

If here the archons are demons, they are watching over the souls of the dead people and their attempt to ascend to the upper heavens via the archontic realm. Paul is meaning that the demons, even as killers of Jesus, are still doing the will of God by prohibiting the free access to upper heavens and imposing "taxes" to pass.

The implication is that for Paul the sheol (as temporary place of the souls of dead people) is in the archontic realm.

So in the original Ascension of Isaiah we can infer where is the Sheol (where Jesus is said to be crucified): in the archontic realm.

[neilgodfrey]

Should we assume that Romans as we know it is what was originally penned by one claiming the authority of Paul? Winsome Munro in Authority in Paul and Peter: The Identification of a Pastoral Stratum in the Pauline Corpus and 1 Peter offers some arguments that Romans 13:1-7 was a later addition to that letter. It was part of a subsequent effort to bring the epistles into conformity with good old conservative Roman values of pietas and gravitas.

[yalla]

F.F.Bruce in His Tyndale NT Commentary on Romans states, with reference to Rom 13.1-7, 'in the present context the 'powers' appear to be human rulers rather than angelic powers" but notes that Oscar Cullman in his book "Christ and Time" opts for the reference being to both angelic and human powers.

[Bernard Muller]

Rom 13:1
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

Rom 13:2
Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.

Rom 13:3
For rulers [archons] are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval,

Rom 13:4
for he is God's servant for your good.

I do not see here how 'archons' can be imagined to be demons.

Cordially, Bernard

[Giuseppe]

If I remember well, prof Price

Many scholars take this section to inculcate servile obedience to secular government in the interest of bourgeois Christianity. This interpretation is based on understanding “archons” and “authorities” as earthly governments, and “every soul” to denote “every individual.” Read this way, the passage does seem Catholicizing in vocabulary and conception and would be later than its context. There is nothing particularly implausible in such a reading. But if one translates it as I do, then what we are dealing with is a Gnostic text, a preface to secret information such as is attributed to
the Risen Jesus in numerous works like the Pistis Sophia. There Jesus tells the initiate what to say during one’s heavenly ascent (at death) to successfully pass by the vigilant archons manning the ramparts of the spheres separating the world of God from this sublunar mudball. As for verse 6, in Gnosticism one pays the successive planetary archons, in the course of one’s journey back to the Godhead, upon exiting their respective spheres. One does so by setting aside the elements originally
derived from each sphere (physical, ectoplasmic, astral, etheric, psychical). Such preparatory exercises represent, in Schmithals’s view, which I am adopting here, a decadent, second-stage Gnosticism. In the real thing, the simple realization of one’s divine selfhood was enough to catalyze instantaneous satori. One had no need of secret handshakes and magic words.

(from The Amazing Colossal Apostle)

I think that it is a plausible reading.