This is a helpful book in setting out different views on how to interpret the Biblical language about principalities and powers and the theologising about mission and ministry that are implied by the different viwes. I suspect that some readers will be surprised to discover how close some at-first-apparently divergent views are and to understand more clearly what the differences are. I think that one of the useful things about it is that it enables us to see clearly that many of the popular Christian ideas that tend to be associated with the term 'spiritual warfare' are not biblically based or not straightforwardly interpretations of the whole counsel of scripture. We see that a lot of the ideas being proposed and used as a basis for thinking are actually from myths and stories around at the times of Scripture's composition and collection but not actually in Scripture.
For me it is a helpful reference point in supporting and finessing my own thinking about corporisations and Christian ministry with/in them.
Notes and quotes
careful consideration has demonstrated that this common correlation is not a sign of Christianity’s inherent intolerance and proneness to violence but rather a sign of the fact that any religious or philosophical system can be used—and misused—for self-centered ends and political gains. Even the vast majority of the critics of Christian violence readily acknowledge that the original vision and movement inaugurated by Jesus was one of remarkable inclusiveness, principled nonviolence, and self-giving agapē-love. location 166
Some will grant that Christian monotheism is not inherently oppressive. But they will argue that it is the segments within Christian theism that traffic in spiritual warfare language that tend to become oppressive. The concern is that using the biblical language associated with “spiritual warfare” will lead Christians to embrace and imitate the whole range of biblical texts on “warfare,” including the intolerance and divinely sanctioned violence in the Bible itself. Even more pressing is the concern that Christians who take spiritual warfare seriously will reframe their own human enemies as “God’s enemies”—enemies who, perhaps, are today no less deserving of violent judgment than the Canaanites were in the time of the ancient Israelites. To the ears of many, “spiritual warfare” sounds uncomfortably close to the language of “holy war.” And holy war—with its “warrior God,” Yahweh, and its divinely authorized violence against the “enemies” of God’s people—is a common theme found throughout the Old Testament. Critics remind us that the Old Testament holy war tradition always included a component of “spiritual warfare.” As the Old Testament itself reveals, the Israelites believed that the spiritual and physical worlds were deeply interwoven, such that as they conducted war against human enemies, God and his angels led the way in the spiritual realm. location 172
Paul’s important statement that “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the . . . cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12 NRSV). Unlike every other known instance of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology, the version held by Jesus and much of the early church viewed the hostile forces they struggled against as composed entirely of spiritual beings—not fellow human beings. location 236
Paul Middleton has recently demonstrated, unlike other forms of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology, “[early] Christianity had no temporal outlet [i.e., they refused to identify human enemies and/or participate in earthly war and violence] . . . and so Christian apocalyptic war was conceived in wholly cosmic terms, with a cosmic enemy, a cosmic outcome and a cosmic stage on which martyrs lived and died: nothing less than cosmic conflict.” In fact, especially prior to its post-Constantinian affiliation with the Roman Empire, the early church was commonly known not for inciting intolerance and violence but for its spirit of inclusiveness, principled nonviolence, and what Middleton refers to as “radical martyrdom”—a willingness to die rather than do violence to others. location 248
the New Testament concept of spiritual warfare—rightly understood—not only does not contribute to these evils but goes even further by offering a vision of reality where, ultimately, no fellow human is recognized as “enemy” when viewed from a kingdom perspective. location 258
With regard to the nature of “demons” per se, most who hold to a traditional view today understand demons as equivalent to fallen angels. However, in both ancient Judaism and the early church, this was only one of two perspectives on this question. Other ancient Jews and Christians held that demons are the spirits of the deceased “giants” (the Nephilim) mentioned in Genesis 6:1–4, who were the hybrid children produced by sexual liaisons between evil angels (the “sons of God”) and human women. location 371
Note: makes me wonder if nephilim could be seen as corporisations in some (probably mythological) way?
Robert Guelich has made the case that the contemporary Christian fascination with spiritual warfare owes more to the imagination of Frank Peretti than it does to Jesus or the apostle Paul. location 420
Barth contrasts angels and demons to such a degree that he rejects the traditional idea that demons represent fallen angels. Rather, Barth proposes that with regard to Satan and demons, “their origin and nature lie in nothingness.” The concept of “nothingness” (a translation of the German phrase das Nichtige) is crucial to Barth’s theology of creation and evil. location 434
working to reinterpret, and so rehabilitate, the New Testament notion of “principalities and powers” in the modern world. Among such scholars, there was a common tendency to reinterpret the “powers” in terms of human corporate/structural categories of power, dominance, and oppression. For some, this reinterpretation of the powers allowed for both spiritual and human realities; for others the powers were ultimately reduced to human structures without remainder. location 468
for Wink, while the principalities and powers have a spiritual dimension, they are not to be viewed as personal spiritual beings. Rather, they are the spiritual dimension of earthly, human institutions and structures. location 496
Note: I think that while Wink does talk about Powers as the inner 'spiritual' aspect of corporate entities, his integral view actually calls for recognising the outer aspect as part of the deal. an emergentist approch helps in this. At his most consistent, so does Wink.
Unlike the more traditional understanding, in Yong’s model angels and demons are not disembodied spirit beings created by God in an autonomous spiritual realm that is separate from the physical world. This is because there is no autonomous created spiritual realm that is dualistically separate from the physical. Rather, created spirits—whether angelic spirits, demonic spirits, human spirits, and even animal spirits—always emerge from, and then supervene upon, the complex material world that, itself, is always-already an “interrelational cosmos.” location 527
... disagrees with Wink at a crucial juncture. For Yong, while angels are “emergent from their material substrates,” they are, in fact, “personal realities.” And yet, Yong can also say that “what we call angels are higher-level transpersonal or suprapersonal realities, constituted by and supervening upon the human relationships from which they derive.” location 538
In turning to the demonic, Yong simply applies his emergentist theory to the dark side of things. He writes: Demonic spirits, then, are divergent (as opposed to emergent) malevolent realities that oppose the salvific grace of God in human lives. . . . But just as the human spirit emerges from socially and environmentally embedded brain and body, and just as angelic spirits emerge as supervenient upon the concreteness and complexity of our interpersonal, social, and cosmic relations, so also, I suggest, do demonic spirits emerge from and supervene upon the human experience of alienation that disintegrates personal lives and destroys human relationships in general and human well-being as a whole. location 545
Yong is quite willing to recognize the personal dimensions of angels, he is reluctant to do so when it comes to demons. In fact, in good Augustinian fashion (i.e., evil as privation), he is hesitant to confer upon them the status of robust ontological reality. location 551
Note: I'm not sure why Yong doesn't extend by analogy of human fallenness the possibility of demonic capability of corporised structures. This too is departure from Wink.
even for those who embrace significant elements of the two remaining models, confronting such idolatrous systemic evils as racism, sexism, classism, and violence (in its manifold forms and spheres) can be seen as a vital aspect of the church’s call to spiritual battle. J. Nelson Kraybill, for example, urges that this sort of “macroexorcism” (i.e., “naming and confronting the powers of evil on a systemic and political level”) is a necessary partner to “microexorcism” (i.e., the confronting of evil powers on a “personal level”) and that both should work together in complementary fashion. location 584
the classic model, with its focus on the “weapons” of repentance, truth, prayer, obedience, worship, and study of the Scriptures, spiritual warfare and Christian growth/discipleship are seen as virtually one and the same. location 605
Note: In Demolishing Strongholds, I make the case that this classic model is most true to the Biblical data we have and is combinable with Wink's (and I would now add Yong's) broad approach to interpretation of 'principalities' and 'powers'.
Some critics of SLSW grant that the biblical evidence for territorial spirits is worthy of consideration—or even persuasive—but that biblical warrant for practicing SLSW itself is lacking. Others argue that even the biblical texts used to support claims about territorial spirits are ambiguous at best and are better interpreted in other ways. As a consequence, they fear that SLSW proponents have unwittingly given territorial spirits “more ‘territory’ than they deserve.” Some critics go so far as to charge SLSW proponents with unwittingly succumbing to a syncretistic mixing of Christianity with an “animist” worldview. Proponents of SLSW have responded by suggesting that the animist worldview happens to share some important aspects with the biblical worldview. They in turn fear that the critics of their approach to spiritual warfare have drunk too deeply at the wells of the modern naturalistic worldview, and in the process have fallen victim to what missiologist Paul Hiebert has called “the flaw of the excluded middle”—namely, a systematic neglect of the spiritual world of angelic and demonic powers. location 727
in his book Spiritual Warfare for Every Christian, Dean Sherman writes: Some think spiritual warfare is only deliverance. Others emphasize pulling down strongholds in the heavenlies. Still others say spiritual warfare is doing the works of Jesus—preaching, teaching, and living the truth. Yet another group says all this is impractical. They claim we should focus on feeding the hungry, resisting racism, and speaking out against social injustice. I believe we have to do it all. Pulling down strongholds is only important if people are led to Christ as a result. However, some are deaf to the preaching of the Gospel until we deal with hindering powers. And some can’t break through into victory until bondage is broken in their lives. We must do it all as appropriate, and as God leads. location 742
Michael Hardin, who collaborates with Wink on his responses to the other contributors, is the executive director of Preaching Peace and has recently written a book that touches on our topic at hand, The Jesus Driven Life: Reconnecting Humanity with Jesus (2010), location 757
Excessive zeal for justice always becomes satanic. location 850
then be punished. Excessive zeal for justice always becomes satanic. All location 850
Job’s Satan, in short, is no friend of Job’s, but he is in fact humanity’s best friend because he lures God into a contest that will end by stripping God of the projections of the oppressors. location 859
It is only in the period between the Testaments, and even more in the period of the New Testament and early church, that Satan gains recognition. Soon he will become known as the enemy of God, the father of lies, the black one, the archfiend, and assume the stature of a virtual rival to God. location 869
Satan is depicted here as able to accomplish something that Jesus had himself been unable to achieve during his ministry. If we refuse to face our own evil, but take refuge, like Peter, in claims to righteousness, our own evil will meet us in the events triggered by our very own unconsciousness. Satan is not then a mere idea invented to “explain” the problem of evil but is rather the distillate precipitated by the actual existential experience of being sifted. When God cannot reach us through our conscious commitment, sometimes there is no other way to get our attention than to use the momentum of our unconsciousness to slam us up against the wall. This is heavenly jujitsu practiced by God’s “enforcer,” this meat-fisted, soul-sifting Satan—servant of the living God! location 883
1 Timothy 1:20. The writer of 1 Timothy says (in the name of Paul) that he has delivered the heretics Hymanaeus and Alexander “to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.” Apparently the writer does not mean that he has damned them to hell for eternal punishment. He really seems to expect them to learn to stop blaspheming and return to the fold. Once we acknowledge that Satan is a devoted servant of God, the meaning is transparent: these men, like the fellow in 1 Corinthians 5, are to be excommunicated in order to force them to recover a sense of “conscience” (1:19) and abandon their libertine ways. location 912
What is Satan tempting him with here and in each of these “temptations” if not what everyone knew to be the will of God? Mosaic prophet, priestly Messiah, Davidic king—theses are the images of redemption that everyone believed God had given in Scripture. (And in no time at all they would be titles given to Jesus by the church: Prophet, Priest, and King.) What irony: everyone in Israel knew the will of God for redemption—except Jesus. He was straining to hear what it was as if he alone did not know. location 950
Satan’s fall was an archetypal movement of momentous proportions, and it did indeed happen every bit as much as the Peloponnesian War, but it happened in the collective symbolization of evil. “The whole world is given over to the evil one” (1 John 5:19, author’s translation): Satan has become the world’s corporate personality, the symbolic repository of the entire complex of evil existing in the present order. Satan has assumed the aspect of a suprapersonal, nonphysical, spiritual agency, the collective shadow, the sum total of all the individual darkness, evil, unredeemed anger, and fear of the whole race, and all the echoes and reverberations through time from those who have chosen evil before us. location 977
Satan is “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4 RSV) because we humans have made him a god as a consequence of willfully seeking out our own good without reference to any higher good, thus aligning our narcissistic anxiety with the spirit of malignant narcissism itself. But since narcissism is antithetical to the needs of a harmonious and ecological universe, Satan has become, by our own practice of constantly giving the world over to him, the principle of our own self-destruction. location 984
Intercession is spiritual defiance of what is, in the name of what God has promised. Intercession visualizes an alternative future to the one apparently fated by the momentum of current contradictory forces. It infuses air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of the present. location 1065
The message is clear: history belongs to the intercessors, who believe the future into being. This is not simply a religious statement. It is as true of Communists or capitalists or anarchists as it is of Christians. The future belongs to whoever can envision in the manifold of its potentials a new and desirable possibility, which faith then fixes upon as inevitable. This is the politics of hope. Hope envisages its future and then acts as if that future is now irresistible, thus helping to create the reality for which it longs. The future is not closed. There are fields of forces whose interactions are somewhat predictable. But how they will interact is not. location 1087
The Romans were a model of lucidity on this point. They did not, at least during the New Testament period, worship the seated emperor, but only his “genius.” This Latin term does not refer to the emperor’s intellect but to his inspiration, the daemon or god or spirituality that animates the incumbent ruler by virtue of his being incumbent. His genius is the totality of impersonal power located in an office of surpassing might. location 1102
A seer whose vision cuts through the atmospherics of imperial legitimation is a far worse threat than armed revolutionaries who accept the ideology of domination and merely desire it for themselves. Churches, which continually complain about their powerlessness to induce change, are in fact in a privileged position to use the most powerful weapon of all: the power to delegitimate. But it is a spiritual power, spiritually discerned and spiritually exercised. It needs intercessors, who believe the future into being. If the future is thus open, if the heavenly hosts must be silenced so that God can listen to the prayers of the saints and act accordingly, then we are no longer dealing with the unchanging, immutable God of Stoic metaphysics. location 1115
An aperture opens in the praying person, permitting God to act without violating human freedom. The change in even one person thus changes what God can thereby do in the world. location 1156
Impossibility is more possible than everything which we hold to be possible.” Miracle is just a word we use for the things the powers have deluded us into thinking that God is unable to do. location 1159
the phrases of the Lord’s Prayer are not indicative but imperative—we are ordering God to bring the kingdom near. It will not do to implore. We must command. We have been commanded to command. We are required by God to haggle with God for the sake of the sick, the obsessed, the weak, and to conform our lives to our intercessions.Read more at location 1172
Prayer is not just a two-way transaction. It also involves the great socio-spiritual forces that preside over so much of reality. location 1207
The angel of Persia does not want the nation he guards to lose such a talented, subjected people. The angel of Persia actively attempts to frustrate God’s will, and for twenty-one days succeeds. The principalities and powers are able to hold Yahweh at bay! location 1227
This is an accurate depiction, in mythological terms, of the actual experiences we have in prayer. location 1232
The predicament we see in Daniel derives from the fact that God does not effectively rule “this world” (what I have been calling the Domination System). Satan rules it. In short, prayer involves not us but God and people and the powers. What God is able to do in the world is hindered, to a considerable extent, by the rebelliousness, resistance, and self-interest of the powers exercising their freedom under God. location 1239
If the powers can thwart God so effectively, can we even speak of divine providence in the world? location 1252
Whenever sufficient numbers of people withdraw their consent, the powers inevitably fall. location 1267
Note: in this Wink seems to be enviasging deatruction rather than redemption
Wink’s perception of the scale of evil is human-sized. Here are two metaphors. It’s like explaining Nazism by looking at individual atrocities and at the characteristics of German culture, politics, economics, and society, but viewing Adolf Hitler’s mesmerizing authority and iron will as simply an emergent aspect of all things Germanic. It’s as if Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings located evil in the individual activities and collective organizations of orcs, evil men, Ringwraiths, and the fallen wizard Saruman—but no Sauron or One Ring was a power to reckon with. In each case, much evil would remain, but something essential goes missing. Downsizing Satan into a symbolic resource for institutional evils affects Wink’s goals as well as his perception of what’s wrong.Read more at location 1321
Note: I'm not convinced that this is fair. Leaving aside whether it is fair to Wink, it seems to me that it runs the danger of missing what an emergentist view actually suggests. The LotR analogy is helpful in expressing the misgiving clearly but, I think, misses the point. Sauron is an individual -if disembodied- personal agent in LotR; Tolkien has no emergent agency analogous to Principalities and Powers.This critique misses what is actually proposed.
The words “Listen to my voice!” can express two very different standpoints. When God says to us, “Listen to my voice!,” he commands—we perish if we fail to do what he says. When we say to God, “Listen to my voice!,” we entreat—we perish if he does not do for us what he promises. In the imperative of entreaty, I say to God, “Have mercy, Lord. Your kingdom come!” In the imperative of command, God says to me, “Show mercy to your neighbor. My will be done!” Both are in the imperative mood location 1352
RESPONSE TO WALTER WINK GREGORY BOYD location 1370
I deeply appreciate the fact that he has helped mainline theology begin to take the New Testament’s teaching on transcendent evil seriously. location 1375
Wink argues that Satan should not be thought of as a personal being that exists independently of humans. location 1421
Note: This is true, but as I argue in Demolishing Strongholds, Satan 's existing can be conceptualised even with Wink's general approach. Wink's disposition to interpret Satan more symbolically is not inherant to his way of interpreting the Power's language.
The medieval depiction of Satan as a red monster with horns, hoofs, pointed tail, and holding a pitchfork (along the lines of the Greek god Pan) has got to go! In my estimation, Wink’s own demythologized conception of Satan is much closer to the truth than this and similar mythic conceptions. location 1434
Wink does not accept that Satan and the powers have a will and a power over and above the will and power of social systems and people groups, location 1460
Note: Again we should note that this seems to miss the possibilites opened up by an emergentist interpretation in which the implicit opposition between the social systems and a spiritual power is not very meaningful. As it happens, I think Wink sees the powers as having their own agency but that he tends to fall back into peronification.
It seems to me Wink is inconsistent on this point inasmuch as he appeals to the activity of the powers to help explain unanswered prayer, location 1462
I will be like the most High” (Isa. 14:14 KJV). location 1509
Note: this is not about Satan
His phrase, “history belongs to the intercessors,” is quoted again and again with the fervency and assurance usually reserved for biblical texts. However, we have been filtering Wink’s words through the grid of our understanding of intercession, while Wink’s grid turns out to be somewhat different from ours. To begin with, Wink has a broader concept of who the intercessors might be than we do. location 1520
we would stress, as Wink admittedly also does at points, that it is God who actually changes history, not intercessors themselves. location 1533
“I believe in a world which does not exist, but by believing it, I create it.” Kazantzakis is not our kind of an intercessor. Our intercessors do not believe that they create anything. They strive to stand in the gap before the Creator himself, but they do believe that, at times, their prayers (both petitions and proclamations) move God to do things to change history that he would not otherwise have done. location 1540
Scripture points out the person and work of Satan only as he stands in relationship to God’s purposes with us, as we live for either good or ill. The emphasis is pastoral. God passes over many questions that might intrigue us. We might be curious to know more of the biography of Satan. How did he become evil? What is the origin of the collective forces of evil? What is the hierarchy of relationships between the devil and demons? How can it be that Satan and other hostile spirits are utterly malicious, acting to harm and destroy all people, and in particular to subvert God’s church—yet they serve God’s various purposes and work at his permission? God seems to think we don’t need to know all the details. location 1557
We learn (and need to know) that the animistic, occult, superstitious view of demonic agencies is false. Animism exaggerates the personhood and autonomy of the forces of darkness. It locates the human drama within a haunted universe. It diminishes the significance of personal and sociocultural evils. One of the consistent purposes of the Old Testament is to demythologize the superstitious worldview. location 1590
The overwhelming majority of evils, individual and collective, are not atrocities or paranormal oddities. They are everyday trespasses and sins; the common passions and fears; the unbelief, anger, lusts, and lies of our foolishness. location 1626
The pieces of weaponry (6:11–17) are an extended metaphor, a proclamation of Christ, fleshing out how faith and love operate. location 1635
“Girding on the belt of truth”? Paul took this from Isaiah 11:5, which describes a man characterized by truth and faithfulness. location 1642
“The breastplate of righteousness”? Paul takes both this and the “helmet of salvation” from Isaiah 59:17. Who arms himself in these ways? Isaiah 59:1–21 makes clear that the Lord God comes armed. He alone can make right all that is so wrong. location 1646
Again, this is Jesus Christ. Only when wrenched out of its missional context does the military hardware seem to be defensive armor. location 1649
“Shoes for your feet” that express “the readiness given by the gospel of peace”? This also comes from Isaiah: How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (52:7 ESV) location 1650
“Taking up the shield of faith”? This is the only image that does not arise from Isaiah, and the only image intended to communicate an essentially protective and defensive role. location 1658
Messiah is going out to war, and he is both shielded (Ps. 18:30–31, 35) and strengthened to pursue his enemies (Ps. 18:29, 32–42). Even the “defensive” weapon of Ephesians 6 is portrayed as being used for a divine offensive. location 1668
In Ephesians 6:18, Paul drops the metaphor of weaponry entirely in wrapping up this call to faith and love. location 1678
When children of light lapse into what we once were, hurting and fighting each other, it helps to know that our deepest enemies are not flesh and blood. It “lowers the temperature” amid human conflicts, location 1688
Paul’s core intercession is very simple: “God, personally strengthen us to know you.” No fireworks, no fuss and feathers, no binding and loosing, no authoritative pronouncements, no naming and claiming. His prayers are new Psalms, familiar patterns overflowing with fulfillment in Christ. location 1712
To win spiritual warfare is simply to live as light in a dark world. It is to treat others with humility, patience, and thoughtful consideration. It is to live as a conscious and contributing member of “we the people” whom God has brought together by mercy. It is to have things to say that are worth saying: true, constructive, timely, and filled with grace. It is to live purposefully amid a thousand distracting voices. It is to seek God’s grace and strength. At its core, to win this war is to know God and consciously serve him. location 1722
The “passions of our flesh . . . the desires of the body and the mind” (Eph. 2:2–3 ESV) manifest our own hearts’ sympathy for the devil. Will we insist on healing, or demand a comfortable life, or place our deepest hopes in doctors? We become obsessive, angry, escapist, or fearful when driven by the tyranny of our desires. location 1767
Deliverance from the sin of pursuing the occult never includes any sort of deliverance from inhabiting spirits. location 1797
The gospel is unveiled by the God whose power created the world and raised Jesus. If anyone awakens, it is because God shines the light of Christ into hearts (2 Cor. 4:6). Sinners are blinded by the devil, and they culpably choose blindness. Everyone is a slave; but no one is a puppet. God enlightens; people turn and believe. location 1842
Ministry to enslaved people begins with fleeing our own slavish propensities, bringing us into the community of those who call on the Lord and pursue Christ’s character (note the parallels to the Ephesians’ weaponry). location 1853
Note: living in the opposite spirit
We learn to do Christ’s work of deliverance in Christ’s way: breathing forth the fragrance of kindness, speaking relevant truth, being patient when others wrong us, correcting gently, relying on the Lord. Jesus sets slaves free, using us. God tells us what to do to liberate the enslaved. He doesn’t need our attempts at a show of power. location 1855
people whose lives changed—who turned from their sins, who came under Christ, whose lives became fruitful—were people who did “normal” things. “Normal” did not mean rote, perfunctory, or mechanical. It meant the reality of Scripture, confession, repentance, faith, prayer, worship, fellowship, accountability, obedience. People in whom normal things did not take root continued to live in sin, fear, and animistic chaos. Normal things were the difference in delivering people from Satan’s power. Deliverance ministry made a lot of noise but made little difference. It even reinforced the core assumptions of animism. As my friend continued to reflect on Scripture and his experience, he concluded that the demon-deliverance worldview and practice did not add up biblically and failed practically. location 1904
the brokenness of life calls for a power encounter with an inhabiting spirit. My friend began to change his approach. He started to dig carefully, to proceed more patiently, to do more pointed ministry of Word and prayer. He sought to find out what else was going on in the lives of people. He found dark secrets and relational problems—and the miseries of life that both tempt to sin and result from sin. He found secret adulteries. He found financial corruption. He found Christians who, in their anguish over a sick child or extreme poverty, began visiting witch doctors and wearing amulets. Most frequently, he found bitterness and hatred, relationships that had been broken and never reconciled. False accusations were also a common relational problem. In the context of suffering and unexpected death, the traditional culture looked for someone to blame. The finger of accusation often pointed to “witches” or “witch children” as the cause. In all these cases, bizarre manifestations appeared. The liar, accuser, and murderer is at work in all this—but not quite in the way it was being interpreted. The environing animistic worldview was yet another lie—a “teaching of demons” about demons (1 Tim. 4:1). My friend was uncovering complex spiritual and moral problems. We don’t need to sort out where “flesh” ends and “world” begins, where “world” ends and “devil” begins. We don’t need to determine where the devil’s role in moral blinding and in inflicting destruction begin and end. We can’t see through the fog of war. But Christ’s truth and power address all dimensions simultaneously. We intercede with our Lord to comprehensively deliver us from evil. My friend normalized the abnormal and humanized the bizarre, seeking to get behind confusing appearances, seeking to minister. location 1914
Why had she first lost control that morning after church? Why did she manifest multiple personalities? Why did she act and sound like an animal? It is a puzzle. Giving her a descriptive label—“MPD” or “DID”[190]—can comfort those who like to use medical-sounding words for complicated human things, but it explains little if anything. Naming her problems as demonic inhabitants is speculation: people in the Bible whose afflictions were demonically induced didn’t do and say the kinds of things she did and said. She was able to describe what happened that morning. People crowding her, loudly and authoritatively invading her physical and psychological space, had utterly terrified her. Hearing her problems named as demons had further terrified her. Her own hysterical reactions had added to her terror. Unassuming human kindness and simple good sense slowly reassured her. location 1953
What helped this young woman? My friend prayed silently for her (God hears and answers honest intercession, not according to the volume). He talked gently with her (not bypassing her by loudly challenging supposed demonic agencies). He prayed clearly with her and for her (not praying loudly against supposed demons). He lived, modeled, and communicated how Christ meets a very fearful young woman (not how the animistic worldview feeds fears). His prayers and counsel gathered up her sufferings and fears within the promises of our Lord’s mercies and shielding strength. They talked about listening to God’s voice—the Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. They exposed the false authority of the rapist’s contrary voice. He was a liar, and the murderer of a girl’s innocence, in the image of the liar and murderer. How might she put her hopes in Christ rather than in the hopeless hope that her past would somehow go away? They talked about small obediences—what Ephesians 4:29 words might look like as she entered into conversations with people at church, the small practicalities of building genuine, mutual friendships. They talked about being known fully by God, and loved. My friend’s conversations embodied the things he spoke about. Did this young woman’s problems all go away? Of course not. Do your problems or mine all go away? She was coming out of a deep pit, and that’s almost always a long process. But she subsequently spoke of that time after church as a true turning point. The bizarre experience forced her to consider crucial spiritual realities with more urgency: Who is in control? Who is her rock and fortress? Whom does she trust? Trusting herself was no longer a viable option. She became able to talk about her fears of people with depth and directness. Her world became organized. As inner panic lost its dominion, outer hysteria was no longer her only option. She learned to name evil—the real evils of sin, the real devil who lies and kills, not the spooks of the animistic worldview—and to call on the name of the Lord. As she began to learn faith, she began to learn love. In other words, my friend practiced spiritual warfare with her. He taught her how to fight, how to find strength in the God of strength, shelter in the God who shields. She learned to pray. She learned to believe, standing against the world of fear. She learned to love, standing against the world of hate. She learned to live within the body of Christ, the light of the world. In a world that often feels precarious—because it is precarious—she learned to stand. location 1963
recognition that the satan is the spiritual dark side of humanity. To recognize this does not detract from evil, nor does it make evil less evil. In fact to correlate the satanic and the Adamic (as does the writer of the second creation narrative in Gen. 2–4) places the problem of evil right where it belongs: on human shoulders. We no longer need to do a theological Flip Wilson (“The devil made me do it”).Read more at location 1996
Like so many who wrestle with the problem of evil, what is missed is the problem of human violence, its origins and effects. location 1999
When Paul takes up the armor of God in Ephesians 6, what is notable is what is not there: violent retribution and zeal. location 2020
Most interpreters see the deception of Genesis 3 and the violent killing of Abel in Genesis 4 as the referent to those “attributes” associated with the satan in John 8:44. Yet few connect the two. Violence is deceptive. location 2022
The weapons of the Christian life here are not for the casting out of demons but are epistemological in character. They are intended to change the way people think, to alter their perspective. The purpose of spiritual warfare is to create obedience to Jesus and his way, which is not oriented to zeal or wrath, like Phineas, but is a war waged with love of the enemy Other, forgiveness for the sinner, and esteem for the marginalized. If the armor of God is given in Ephesians 6, the strategy and tactics are given in the Sermon on the Mount location 2033
Paul identifies his preconversion issue as that of zealous violence. His conversion was not a change in religion, from Jew to Christian, as much as it was a change in perspective on the problem of violence within religion itself. location 2039
While we can only rely on analogies to understand the nature of these invisible agents, based on the things Jesus and New Testament authors say about them, they clearly possess something like personal characteristics such as volition and intelligence. They are, in other words, something like personal agents who exist independent of us. location 2081
extrabiblical revelation must be accepted in principle, since our very definition of the Bible as having sixty-six books does not come from the Bible itself but through extrabiblical revelation. location 2250
While today some define monotheism as the belief that only one God exists, biblical authors never thought this way. While they acknowledge Yahweh as the only Creator, and while they consistently emphasize Yahweh’s superiority over other gods, they never deny the existence of other deities. location 2329
while all gods are commanded to worship Yahweh (Ps. 97:7), it seems that many, if not most, of the gods who were commissioned to oversee nations rebel against God and operate out of their own self-interest. Because of their rebellion, D. S. Russell notes, these gods are no longer regarded as legitimate “sons of God” but have instead become “demons” (Deut. 32:17 TNIV; cf. Ps. 106:37).[221] Rather than leading their people to the worship of Yahweh, rebel gods make themselves idolatrous objects of worship, which is why Israelites were strictly forbidden from following them (Deut. 29:26; location 2335
the god of the Persian nation was trying to intercept Yahweh’s response to Daniel’s prayer and that he had succeeded for twenty-one days. The passage thus demonstrates that, though rebel gods never threaten Yahweh’s supremacy, they can, within limits, “hold Yahweh at bay,” location 2348
Yahweh’s supremacy, they can, within limits, “hold Yahweh at bay,” as location 2350
Note: what is the means of this resistance?
While modern Western believers tend to separate the “spiritual realm” from the “the natural realm,” ANE people, including ancient Jews, had a more holistic perspective. Throughout the Bible “earthly” and “heavenly” battles were viewed as two dimensions of one and the same battle. location 2354
As Wink correctly notes, the prevailing assumption in the biblical narrative is that “what occurs on earth has its corollary in the heavens.” location 2362
Note: this is very like the world-view played with by Shakespeare in Midsummer Night's Dream: the 'as above so below', microcosm/macrocosm idea is played out as fairy's and human's affairs mirror one another.
Satan and his cohorts are depicted as deceiving and enslaving “all the nations” and “all the inhabitants of the earth, except those who bear the seal of the Lamb” (Rev. 13:3, 7–8, 12, 14 NIV; cf. 20:8). And in his first epistle, John goes so far as to claim that the entire world is “under the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19 NRSV). Paul doesn’t shy away from labeling Satan “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4 NRSV) and “the ruler of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2 NRSV). It is because of this pervasive and oppressive diabolic influence that Paul, in typical apocalyptic fashion, depicts this entire present world system as fundamentally evil (Gal. 1:4; Eph. 5:6). location 2380
salvation in the New Testament is portrayed not primarily as a matter of individuals being forgiven their sin (as is often the case in American evangelicalism) but of humans and the whole cosmos being delivered from the power of Satan and brought into the kingdom of God’s Son. location 2403
There is a growing consensus among scholars that Paul’s references to “angels,” “rulers,” “principalities,” “authorities,” “dominions,” “thrones,” “spiritual forces,” and “elemental spirits of the universe” refer to various categories of cosmic powers that were believed to exercise a destructive influence over systemic aspects of society, over particular social groups and institutions, and over systemic aspects of creation. location 2417
there is no denying that there is a mythological element to the various conceptions of spirit agents in Scripture. Twenty-first-century people obviously cannot be asked to conceive of an evil cosmic agent along the lines of a many-headed sea monster (Ps. 74:14) or angels riding in chariots of fire (2 Kings 6:17). Yet it’s one thing to grant that the way someone conceived of a cosmic agent was mythic and quite a different thing to claim the very idea of cosmic location 2456
four arguments in support of my conviction that we should continue to understand the powers to be agents, each of whom possesses something like a mind and a will over against humans. location 2606
if we interpret his language in its original apocalyptic milieu, it’s very hard to deny that Paul thought of the powers as conscious, volitional agents, location 2607
fully embrace Wink’s perspective that all distinct social groups and organizations have a “spirit” that is an emergent property of these groups and organizations and that therefore transcends the individuals that constitute them. But I see no good grounds for identifying without remainder this emergent property with the transcendent powers referred to throughout Scripture. location 2624
there is no example in Scripture of God’s people engaging in this type of spiritual warfare, and this must surely be considered relevant. location 2755
Greenwood and those she ministered with in Kansas, the fact that the abortion rate in Kansas dropped 23 percent in two years after they “bound Lilith” undoubtedly helped confirm that their dreams, impressions, and research about Lilith were accurate and that their strategic-level spiritual warfare “worked.” What did not register as significant, however, was the multitude of other factors that could potentially explain this fortunate drop. location 3719
so preoccupied with fighting invisible forces that they minimize the significance of other important factors that pertain to an issue. For example, if a person called to address the abortion issue is part of a ministry that is centered on confronting the invisible forces behind abortion on the basis of information someone believes they’ve received from God, they can easily minimize the significance of the multitude of more earthly factors that affect abortion and that need to be addressed. They can easily believe that the most important thing needed to bring an end to abortion is to bind the demonic power behind abortion in the particular way they believe God told them to. location 3740
seems to me their focus should be on more practical, and generally more challenging, questions, such as: How can we individually and collectively sacrifice our time and resources to make it practically feasible for mothers with unwanted pregnancies to go full term with their unborn babies, location 3748
How can we sacrifice our time and resources to alleviate poverty, since studies suggest there is a strong correlation between poverty and abortion? How can we sacrifice our time and resources to befriend and serve young people who come from tragically broken homes, since studies suggest there is a correlation between broken homes and abortion? And how can we individually and collectively sacrifice our time and resources to demonstrate Christlike love to the abortion practitioners, since loving and serving “enemies” lies at the heart of the kingdom Jesus brought?
Understanding Spiritual Warfare: Four Views
Understanding Spiritual Warfare: Four Views eBook: James K. Beilby, Paul Rhodes Eddy: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store
