I spent a lot of time here talking about the New Testament notion of "the principalities and powers". Even this week, every post thus far has referenced them. So perhaps a little primer is in order.
The "powers and principalities" play a distinctive role in how I articulate sin and death. They are mentioned throughout the NT and contribute to a theology that places death (not sin) as the ultimate foe. Take a few minutes to read these texts: Romans 8.38-39; Colossians 1.16; Romans 13.3; 1 Corinthians 15.24; Ephesians 6.12.
At the heart of the powers and principalities in the NT is a theology of the Fall. Bonhoeffer is right (in his lectures on Genesis 1-3, Creation and Fall) to insist that our conceptions of the Fall shape our vision of Christian ethics. For Bonhoeffer -- and for me -- the Fall isn't just about human sinfulness, people doing bad things. The Fall points to the moral disorder of Creation and the resultant antagonism within Creation because of that disorder (see his Ethics).
The biblical view of the Fall in Gesesis 3 -- the view later affirmed by Paul in Romans 8 -- is of all creation's alienation from God. There's a rupture, a disorientation, of every relationship in created order. Sure, humans are fallen. But contrary to Augustine and Calvin, there's no reason to stop there. Cows, penguins, nations and institutions are all fallen, too. The NT short hand phrase for that fallenness is "the powers and principalities".
The biblical doctrine of the Fall means the brokenness of relationships among human beings and the other creatures, and the rest of Creation, and the spoiled and confused identity of each human being, within herself or himself.
The Fall, then, is less about sin as it is moral ambiguity. Christian ethics isn't about doing the pious thing. It's the struggle to be human, as God in Christ is human. Christian ethics is learning to become a human being in the face of the moral antagonism we experience from the principalities and powers, an antagonism that blunts, numbs, confuses, distracts, intimidates and demoralizes the conscience.
If Bonhoeffer and I are right, these powers and principalities are countless. According to the Bible, the principalities are legion in species, number, variety and name. They are designated by such multifarious titles as powers, virtues, thrones, authorities, dominions, demons, princes, strongholds, lords, angels, gods, elements, spirits. Terms that characterize are frequently used biblically in naming the principalities: "tempter", "mocker," "foul spirit," "destroyer," "adversary," "the enemy". And the invasion of these powers into everyday life as the incarnation of death is shown in their agency to Beelzebub or Satan or the Devil or the Antichrist.
Some of those seem quaint. But there are lots of modern principalities and powers, too. Just as fallen. Those modern ones include all institutions, all ideologies, all images, all movements, all causes, all corporations, all bureaucracies, all traditions, all methods and routines, all conglomerates, all races, all nations, all idols. We don't have to look far or hard. They're here and there, with marks all over our lives.
The Pentagon, the economy, Bank of America, Facebook, Ford Motor Co., the Episcopal Church. Capitalism, Maoism, humanism, Mormonism, astrology, the Puritan work ethic, science and scientism, white supremacy, patriotism, plus many, many more -- sports, sex, any profession or discipline, technology, money, the family -- beyond any prospect of full enumeration. The principalities and powers are legion.
And, make no doubt about them: They can have their own way. They're not inert. They have goals and, thus, intentions in the world, a "personality" if you will. One of the worst things Christians do is to deny their power. For all the ways Niebuhr and I disagree, on this much I think he is right. We struggle against systems of evil. (See Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society.)
Which leads me to the second common mistake Christians make about the principalities and powers: We think we can control them. We think we are "in change" of the powers when, in fact, quite the opposite is the case: The powers control us. Human beingsdon't control the institutions and ideologies of which they are a part. The institutions and ideologies control and dominate human beings. How so? The principality and power usurps the role of God, inserting and making itself the goal of human existence and the foundation of human worth and significance. Basically, the principalities and powers become idols and we, in serving the powers, engage in idolatry. We come to worship the creature rather than the Creator.
The principality, insinuating itself in the place of God, deceives humans into thinking and acting as if the moral worth and justification of human being is defined and determined by commitment or surrender -- literally, sacrifice -- of human life to the survival interest, grandeur, and vanity of the principality.
As their slaves, we become pushed and pulled by competing demands. It's a kind of demonic possession that we articulate but never name correctly.
There are those who actually define their humanity as nonhuman or subhuman loyalty and diligence to the interests and appetites of the principalities. There are many who are dumb and complacent in their captivity by institutions, traditions, and similar powers. There are persons who have become automatons. There are humans who know of no other alternative to a servile existence to the principalities. There are people who are programed and propagandized, conditioned and conformed, intimidated and manipulated, fabricated and consigned to role-playing. These are human beings who are demonically possessed.
Why? Because the powers and principalities are driven by death. Corporations and nations and other demonic powers restrict, control, and consume human life or order to sustain and extend and prosper their own survival. The principalities have great resilience; the death game which they play continues, adapting its means of dominating human beings to the sole morality which governs all demonic powers so long as they exist -- survival.
But, remember, these same principalities and powers are created. So they're subject to death. Thus, all the idolatrous service rendered to the principalities and powers ultimately becomes, in the long run, service rendered to death. Fighting for survival the ethos of every principality and power is the ethos of death. Death is the "angel" -- the morality and spirituality -- of every institution and ideology.
History is littered with examples. Corporations die. Nations die. Ideologies die. Death survives them all. Death is -- apart from God -- the greatest moral power in this world, outlasting and subduing all other powers no matter how marvelous they may seem for the time being. This means, theologically speaking, that the object of allegiance and servitude, the real idol secreted within all idolatries, the power above all principalities and powers -- the idol of all idols -- is death.
Don't believe me? Look at all our striving. It points to the real concern of the Fall: Human beings idolatrously serving the principalities and powers in the search of meaning and significance only to find that the moral reality behind the powers is death.
Which means human life -- outside grace -- is a striving after the demonic.
So what are we to do? What's the Christian alternative? That's where I want to turn tomorrow.