Theological Journal – August 12 Lee Camp: Scandalous Witness (10)

 PROPOSITION 10 Hostile Forces Have a Role in the Unfolding of History

The church is politically realistic. The powers ruling the world play a significant role in the unfolding of history.

Yet at the same time the church is called to live according to its own politic. But this doesn’t mean the church has nothing to say to the powers that be

What are the “principalities and powers” the New Testament speaks of?

-spiritual: that is, not reducible to material or empirical reality

-sociological: they are intermingled and sometimes even identified with empirical realities

-enemies: these spiritual powers and not their sociological manifestations are the church’s enemy

Four additional observations:

-created for good; “we need economic structures, language, common moral norms, shared social commitments, and the like to have flourishing human communities.” (Kindle Loc.1633)

-often overreach: in their role as agents of good, they control for themselves and become agents of oppression. “All that is good and beautiful gets co-opted at best, corrupted at worst, into ploys of the dominions.” (Kindle Loc.1658) Things meant to enhance human life rather control and diminish it. The presence of these powers in the New Testament means it is finally more realistic (in touch with the true reality of the world) than typical liberal or conservative views which believe we are in control. Sin is a fundamental power, one that breaks relationship with God, with reality, and becomes a death-dealing taskmaster.

-even rebellious as they are, God uses theses powers. For example, the state is to keep the peace wo the church may do its work unhindered. When it does this, God uses it for his purposes, though it often doers not do this.

-created good, these powers can be redeemed. They will serve their role to enable flourishing human life.

Why Christians aren’t anarchists:

-we should value and celebrate even the relative and occasional goods the powers provide.

“Instead of hitching our wagon to any particular partisan horse, then, the Christian community is called to practice the sort of pragmatic realism embodied in scripture itself.” (Kindle Loc.1695)

-destroy “the Man” and there will always be others ready and eager to step into that role. There will be no utopia until the kingdom comes and death is destroyed.

“The fundamental social and political posture of the New Testament is that “the end of history has been inaugurated, but until its final consummation there are many who still live according to the ways of death. In the midst of this real and often perverse pursuit of the ways of death, the powers – even in their self-centered and perverse grappling after power – still serve a useful function, because the powers themselves often have something at stake in staving off chaos.” (Kindle Loc.1703)

God uses such a balance of powers to keep evil and chaos at bay.

This understanding allows us to reject fantasies like evil (e.g. war) can ever destroy evil.

So what must the church do in a world like ours? That depends a lot on when and where we live. But 9n any place and at any time the church is mandated to show the powers the wisdom of God (Eph.3:10) – “the public goods and sociopolitical relevance of the way of Christ.” (Kindle Loc.1718)

“We must be more realistic in acknowledging the pervasive nature of fallen structures of power, which may be made manifest as much in socialist bureaucracies as in global capitalism, as much in Stalin’s mass murder as in the West’s wars in the Middle East. Simultaneously, we must be more rigorous, insisting what neither Milton Friedman nor Karl Marx will insist: that the good news of the kingdom of God has already triumphed over the forces of war and death and imposition, and that we too shall love and serve in the same ways as our Christ.” (Kindle Loc.1729 -1733)

Our politics are ad hoc, each issue at a time, non-partisan.