Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible

Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible

All the earliest formulations of faith (an objective criterion for verifying what the first Christians considered essential) invariably mentioned the powers decisively. The early church accentuated the consequences of Christ’s victory over them (Cullmann 103, 192).

However, during Reformation times, misunderstandings by various apocalyptic sects caused Luther and Calvin to avoid the language of “principalities and powers.” Later scholars such as Schleiermacher reduced both the powers and God in the trend toward a noncosmic and subjective conception of Christ’s kingdom. Both avoidance and subjectivized reductions continue today. When theological discussions could not name the disastrous events of World Wars I and II in any other way than by restoring the vocabulary of “the principalities and powers,” three broadly influential leaders were Johann Christoph Blumhardt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Karl Barth. In contrast to Bultmann, who “demythologized” the concept of “the powers,” Barth showed that the apostle Paul himself was demythologizing his culture’s notions of hierarchies of intermediaries—and thereby Barth turned the modern hermeneutical problem on its head (Barth, Church).

Barth’s lecture fragments describe the powers as “spirits with a life and activity of their own, lordless indwelling forces, … entities with their own right and dignity … as absolutes.” Their reality and effectiveness are vague, paradoxical, incomprehensible; they are transitory and assume a variety of forms in different historical epochs, cultural circles, and individuals’ lives (Barth, Christian, 214–15).