Marginal Christianity

After character Lewis confesses that he had his own encounter with an eldil and has been “drawn in” to Ransom’s adventure, he confesses “Yet here we were both getting more and more involved in what I could only describe as interplanetary politics” (2656). And Ransom later says to character Lewis, “You are feeling the absurdity of it. Dr. Elwin Ransom setting out single-handed to combat powers and principalities. You may even be wondering if I’ve got megalomania” (2877). It seems fair, then, to claim that “interplanetary politics” and “powers and principalities” refer to the same thing St. Paul tells us that the church struggles against “principalities and powers” and not flesh and blood (Eph.6:12). ” Principalities and powers” are created good (Col.1:16) to establish and sustain the conditions that make and keep human life human and humane. They somehow fell and rebelled against God and each sought supremacy over the others and humanity. The result is the chaotic and intractable p...

4. What in the Heck are “Principalities and Powers”? A famous and influential New Testament scholar of the 20 th century Rudolf Bultmann wrote: “ We cannot use electric lights and radios and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the  New Testament ” ( The New Testament and Mythology, 4). Perhaps over-intoxicated with the achievements and potential of reason and science, Bultmann took earlier and more primitive views of the world as “mythological” and to be treated as such, that is, non-realistically, in terms of our modern view of the world. We must interpret figures like angels, demons, principalities and powers, and maybe even deities, which ancient peoples believed existed in reality, as symbols to say something we think important about our world. We cannot however take as reality in our rational and scientific understanding. If we agree with Bultmann and his dismissal o...

The World in Which Theology Works Theology addresses the drives, dreams, dynamics, and dysfunctions of human life but it does so in a shape bequeathed to them by a particular place and time. It cannot speak about sin, grace, hope, salvation, justice and the like generically. It must do so in inflections derived from the specific shape and location of those drives, dreams, dynamics, and dysfunctions. My argument is that we live in world of spiritual powers created by God for good but which have rebelled against God and hold creation in a death grip. Death is the chief of these powers. Satan’s powerful right hand (Heb.2:14). These powers keep creature and creation bound to futility and forever seeking their security and significance in the wrong places and against one another. In America the lethal roux (Baxter Kruger) that keep our cultural rapids boiling and roiling I call an I.C.E. Age – I ndividualism, C onsumerism, and E xperientialism.   Let’s see how this works out. ...