"Principalities and Powers"

[A brief excerpt from my book on engaging power abuse]

[Walter] Wink[1] proposes that “’principalities and powers’ are the inner and outer aspects of any given manifestation of power. As the inner aspect they are the spirituality of institutions, the ‘within’ of corporate structures and systems, the inner essence of outer organizations of power. As the outer aspect they are political systems, appointed officials, the ‘chair’ of an organization, laws.”[2] He arrives at this conclusion by surveying and analyzing the whole range of New Testament usage of the language of Power with corroborating support from the contemporaneous literature. He concludes that the Biblical writers employed interchangeable terms of Power which can refer either to the visible or invisible aspects of any given manifestation of Power, or even both together, as the context required.[3] The language employed indicates that, in the Biblical view, the Powers are both visible and invisible, both earthly and heavenly, both spiritual and institutional.[4] Wink notes the following:

The clearest statement of this is Col. 1:16 which should have been made the standard for all discussions of the Powers: “For in him [the Son] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones (thronoi) or dominions (kyriotētes) or principalities (archai) or authorities (exousia) – all things were created through him and for him.” The parallelism of the Greek, ably rendered here by the RSV, indicates that these Powers are themselves both earthly and heavenly, visible and invisible.[5]

                In this view, the Biblical thought is that there is a spirituality behind (or within) physical manifestations of power. Behind every ruler, behind every nation, behind every administrator, institution, church, and pastor, there is a spirituality at work.[6] The Powers possess simultaneously both an outer, physical manifestation and an inner, spiritual essence, or gestalt corporate culture, or collective personality.[7] The spiritual Powers, specifically, then are not to be understood as separate “heavenly entities” but as “the inner aspect of material or tangible manifestations of power.”[8]  They do not have a separate, spiritual existence independent of their material counterpart but are inextricably connected to the physical.[9] In this sense, there is no matter-spirit dualism but one united, indivisible reality in which both the physical and the spiritual exist co-dependently.[10] These Powers must manifest themselves physically, become embodied and institutionalized, in order to be effective. However, it is the inner, invisible spirit that provides the Power with legitimacy, regulation, and compliance.[11] Every business, corporation, club, organization, school, government, denomination, and church have this combination of both outer and inner, visible and invisible, physical and spiritual. The Powers are both spiritual and institutional.

Importantly, these Powers are not fundamentally bad but the good creation of a good God. However, all of them have fallen into corruption, having turned towards idolatry, becoming more or less evil in intent.[12] It is when a Power turns towards idolatry, placing its own will above that of God’s, however consciously or unconsciously, that the Power becomes demonic.[13] In John Howard Yoder’s analysis of the fallen Powers,

[W]e find them seeking to separate us from the love of God (Rom. 8:38); we find them ruling over the lives of those who live far from the love of God (Eph. 2:2); we find them holding us in servitude to their rules (Col. 2:2); we find them holding us under their tutelage (Gal. 4:3). These structures which were supposed to be our servants have become our masters and our guardians.[14]

“Demons” are the psychic spiritual Powers emanated by organizations, institutions, individuals or sub-aspects of individuals whose energies are bent on overpowering others in a radical rejection of and idolatrous estrangement from God.[15] And in all its manifestations, the demonic is simultaneously spiritual and physical, invisible and visible, heavenly and earthly, inner and outer.

Wink notes the two seemingly contradictory views of the origin of the demonic. One view sees the demonic as stemming not from a flawed personal psyche but from oppressive power structures. The other, while acknowledging the contribution of such structures and systems, nevertheless sees the demonic as the consequence of the breakdown of individual personal development.[16] “The one sees demons as outer, the other as inner.”[17] Wink states that both positions are correct, but only in tension with the other.[18] While the alienating structures and ideologies of institutional power can have profound social influence upon the individual, it cannot explain why some people of similar systematic oppression become dysfunctional while others are able to transcend their environment to live productive lives.[19] Nevertheless, the individual and society are linked, with the spirituality of the one affecting the spirituality of the other. They have a unity that runs deep. The unity of the inner and outer demonic and its influence upon the individual and institution run even deeper. As Wink notes,

The social demonic is the spirit exuded by a corporate structure that has turned its back on its divine vocation as a creature of God and has made its own goals the highest good. The demonic is not then merely the consequences that follow in the wake of self-idolizing institutions; it is also the spirit that insinuates itself into those whose compliance the institution requires in order to further its absolutizing schemes.[20]

These fallen, corrupted Powers, these demonic institutions and the individuals they mutually influence, all manifested in idolatrous businesses, corporations, governments, institutions, churches, leaders, administrators, pastors, laws, and constitutions, down through history, creating the ethos and Zeitgeist of the age, come together as both an inner and outer reality in the person of the Satan.[21] He is the interiority of an idolatrous society at fundamental odds with its Creator. He is the corporate personality of the world as the sum total of all humanity’s evil down through history.[22] He is “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4), “the archetypal representation of the collective weight of human fallenness, which constrains us towards evil without even being aware of it”, and “the symbol of the spirit of an entire society alienated from God.”[23]

This interpretation of the Biblical understanding of the Powers is neither to ignore nor to willfully reject the portrayal of some of those Powers (specifically the demonic and the satanic) as having personalities. If we are to take the Scriptures seriously, we need to accept that the Biblical conception of the demonic and the satanic Powers entails something approximating the human personality. We need to recognize that these Powers have a very different kind of ontological reality in which emergent personality oscillates with the ethos of corporate institutions. These Powers are not merely reducible to the products of human thoughts and actions, but are malicious systems with a semi-autonomous, gestalt reality.[24]

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[1] Wink, Walter. Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1984), Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1986), Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), and The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium (New York: Double Day, 1998).

[2] NTP 5.

[3] Ibid., 118.

[4] ETP 3.

[5] NTP 11. Also, 1 Cor 2:6-8 and Col 2:14-15.

[6] He further notes concerning the various terms of Power, “The most frequent usage was for human incumbents-in-office, but there was also a pervasive awareness of the ways power is organized, which required a more abstract or structural usage of the terms. Thus archai could represent, like archontes, persons-in-roles, magistrates, governors, elders, and kings-in-office. But it could also denote the office itself, or the power the office represents. Thronos too seemed to emphasize not the occupant of the ‘seat’ of power but the ‘seat’ itself as the symbol of continuity, perpetuity, legitimacy, and popular consent. Kyriotes … seemed to point more to the sphere of influence or territory ruled by a kyrios than to the ruler as such. Exousia … most frequently denotes the legitimations, sanctions, and permissions that undergird or authorize the use of power … dynameis pointed more specifically to the situations or forces by which power is imposed. But all these could also be applied as the need arose to spiritual powers, good and evil” (NTP 101).

[7] NTP 104; UTP 2; ETP 3.

[8] NTP 104.

[9] Ibid.,105-106.

[10] UTP 2.

[11] NTP 5; 106; UTP 4. See also Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1994), 142.

[12] NTP 104.

[13] Ibid., 5.

[14] Yoder, 141.

[15] UTP 59; NTP 104-105.

[16] UTP 41-42.

[17] Ibid., 42.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid., 42-43.

[21] Ibid., 25.

[22] Ibid., 24.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Wink himself is somewhat ambivalent on the subject of the personal nature of the “demonic”. While he prefers to think of Powers as impersonal entities, he knows of no sure way of settling the matter (PTB 27-28).