And yet, I know lots of folks who have some problems with this claim. The vision of a battle against all the manifestations of evil is exciting, but some issues need to be resolved if the warfare worldview of God at War is going to be palatable to some Christians (like myself).
These questions swirl around how Boyd tries to explain the origins of evil. Again, in the warfare worldview creation, at a deep structural level, is in revolt, warring against God. God isn't controlling everything. The situation is more chaotic, unpredictable, fluid and free. The vision here flirts with dualism, something that Boyd wrestles with and we'll have to wrestle with. And yet, the benefits of shifting toward this dualism is that evil is fully extracted from the actions and character of God. God is no longer seen as the ultimate cause of evil. God is that which opposes, resists and fight evil. That is something I think Christians like myself can get on board with. Death? God is waging war against that. Disease? God is waging war against that. Injustice? God is waging war against that.
Just to be clear: I think God opposes, resists and fights evil in all its forms.
And yet, this shift toward dualism -- good against evil -- creates some theological pressures given the belief that God created the world. Specifically, how did this evil come about?
According to Boyd, the origin of evil is to be found in the rebellion of angelic beings exercising their free will. Creation is structurally corrupted and infected because there was an angelic fall from grace, a fall the pre-dated human history.
And, let's be honest: There's an appeal here, even a theological one. Theologically, the benefit of that view -- an angelic fall that corrupted and now oppresses the world -- is that it draws a bright line between God and the forces of evil waging war against God. The practical upshot of this theological move is that it sets up a theology of revolt for the church. When we walk out the door we will encounter evil -- deaths, diseases, injustices. This is a given. And God is whatever is opposed and in opposition to that evil. Simple as that. So to join the fight you join in the Kingdom of God, you join up with the resistance movement to fight and rage against evil in all its satanic manifestations.
And yet, in order to accept that simple vision, there's something that goes along with it: The literal existence of demons and angels.
It's at that very moment that Boyd's vision gets hard for me to swallow. The theology of revolt is exciting and energizing, but it rests upon some metaphysical assumptions that many will find difficult to accept.
It doesn't have to be that way, though. I think there are other places we can turn: Walter Wink and William Stringfellow, specifically. No doubt that Boyd is going to disagree with this move (i.e., Wink, Stringfellow et al.) and strenuously object. He's aware and appreciative of Wink's work, but Boyd ultimately rejects Wink's attempt to describe, for example, the demonic as the "interiority" and "spirituality" of power arrangements. Yet that's the direction I think is the most fruitful. So, I want to lay out exactly why I think that's so. I think we can use people like Wink and Stringfellow to retain a robust theology of the demonic and the satanic in order to create a theology of revolt acceptable to Christians.
Wink's analysis in Naming the Powers is the best source for thinking about these things. What follows is a summary of his work.
The phrase archai kai exousiai -- translated "principalities and powers" -- occurs ten times in the New Testament. In the gospel of Luke, the only occurrences of the phrase in the gospels, the pairing "principalities and powers" occurs twice. In both occurrences the phrase refers to human political institutions:
Luke 12.11The other eight occurrences of archai kai exousiai occur in the epistles:
"When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say ..."
Luke 20.20
Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies, who pretended to be honest. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor.
1 Corinthians 15.24One notices a couple of things about these passages. First, there are times when the language of the powers is referring to "spiritual" agents (e.g., Eph. 6.12). And on other occasions the power is clearly human, generally a political power (e.g., Titus 3.1). But most of the passages tend to blend the two. For example, Colossians 1.16 clearly refers to both visible and invisible powers, powers in heaven and on earth.
Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.
Colossians 1.16
For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.
Colossians 2.10
... and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.
Colossians 2.15
And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
Ephesians 1.21
... far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.
Ephesians 3.10
His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms...
Ephesians 6.12
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Titus 3.1
Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good ...
The other thing that one notices is that the language of the powers often occurs in longer lists. In the New Testament these lists include: Chief priests, rulers, people, scribes, synagogues, kingdoms, thrones, angels, authority, glory, majesty, dominion, life, and death. What we see in these lists and associations related to the powers is the continued conflation of the physical and the spiritual.
In any conversation about angels and demons this insight is critical. Too often, church people latch onto Ephesians 6.12 to justify fanciful notions of "spiritual warfare". No doubt, Ephesians 6.12 is singling out "heavenly" powers. However, we cannot understand this language without coming to grips with how conflated, mixed and blended the physical is with the spiritual when the biblical writers refer to "the powers". That is, the notion that angels/demons are disembodied spirits, disconnected from physical manifestations of power and authority, is a distortion of the biblical understanding. As we've seen, the notion of power, even demonic power, is much more closely aligned with politics than with anything we find in the fictions of Hollywood or Frank Peretti novels. If you want to imagine a demon think of City Hall. Don't think of the Exorcist.
But that might lean too far the other way, too close to the demythologizing position. The "spiritual" or "demonic" isn't wholly collapsible into the political or physical manifestations of power. That's why I think Niebuhr ultimately got it wrong.
So we're trying to thread a needle here. And I think Wink's work helps us make some progress. We've observed that the biblical language of the powers is a lot more fluid and broad. "The powers" encompass both the physical and the spiritual, invoking them together. In short, no conversation about the demonic can occur without a conversation about a physical manifestation of power, very often a political power.
That seems easy enough, but it leaves open some very real questions: Where did evil come from in the first place? And why is God not stopping it?
Those are questions that'll take a couple of days to work through. So tomorrow ...