"For I am certain that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Rom 8.38-39 (compare Psalm 82)

The superhuman powers

In one section of the general council, the theme, "The power of grace and the graceless powers," is to be discussed. In this context we are going to consider the text from Romans 8. Various powers are spoken of there, all of which have a super-individual, superhuman might. Death, according to 1 Cor 5.26, is the last power which stands over man. Life means here primarily the endangered character of limited existence. Both death and life were imagined as personal powers, something like angels. They embody the personal urgency of the encounter with new realities. The principalities embody the pressure with which human life is confronted from many sides. Things present and things to come are the temporal dimensions of human existence which man experiences as fate. "Powers" is probably a summary term for height and depth. These are the powers which control the constellations and which were assumed to influence human fortunes.

Paul also regards the law, for example, as a superhuman power (8.2; 1 Cor 15.56). Today one can interpret the powers which stand between man and God as the social, political, cultural and mental realities which take on the form of institutions, laws, legalisms, customs, traditions, and structures. Sometimes these things have been called "non-theological factors," and these dimensions of reality have been underestimated in the churches. Faith has been looked upon solely as a matter of the internal relationship between God and the individual person. Not until most recently have we become aware again that the Bible itself reckons with these realities which stand between man and God. More recent science and, even earlier, dialectical thought emphasized that man is a part of nature, a social being, and a part of civilization and culture.

The realism of the Bible

Often the Bible speaks negatively of the "heavenly powers". They threaten man (Rom 8.39). Death is looked upon as the enemy (1 Cor 15.26), and the gospels speak of the "unclean" spirits (Mk 5.2 and parallels as well as elsewhere) which possess man and which express themselves mostly through illness. At some points there are references to an old Jewish story according to which a few angels became disobedient to God (1 Peter 3.19f; Jude 6; compare Gen 6). They are now misused (Eph 2.2) by the "spirit" which is also called Satan or the devil (Mk 3.22; Jn 12.31; 16.11; 2 Cor 12.7; Eph 2.2). Man, therefore, lives in a threatened world. He is a being which is not autonomous, but is rather a vassal (compare Gal 4.9; Rom 6.16). He must reckon with the powers of nature and society which have the tendency to dominate him, so that he often does experience them as his fate. In the age of Jesus, there were many people who were fatalists. According to the philosophy of the Stoics, a person should consciously submit to the cosmic powers. In the modern age, the fact that man is not autonomous has been characterized as alienation, among other things. That is a profound analysis which reckons with the human subject as well as with the historical contradictions and with movement through time - all of which are elements which the Bible has in view as well. The solution counts upon the resolution of the contradictions through conscious human activity. The idea and the practice of the "endeavour for social justice" and of socialism are moulded by this thinking. If we want to understand it, then we must take its realism seriously. But it cannot render the gospel superfluous.

The Bible, when speaking of the superhuman powers ("principalities"), also speaks of sin. The superhuman powers are not the cause of evil. Their destruction is spoken of (1 Cor 15.24), but what is meant here is their submission to the power of God (1 Cor 15.27), their disarming (Col 2.15). According to Eph 3.10; the gospel applies to them as the wisdom of God, and according to Col 1.16, God has created them "in Christ". They become dangerous when they are misused by human sin. The apostle Paul describes, for example, how sin misused the law (Rom 7.8), and he also shows that it is sin which makes death so cruel (1 Cor 15.56). Because of sin, death becomes the final boundary which separates from God (compare Rom 8.38f). In Jesus' day, people had various ideas of Satan which will not fit well into our world views today. However, it is made very plain that he is kept alive by sin (Eph 2.1f; 6.12ff), and that one can not describe him merely as fate. And yet, if he is successful in his temptations (compare the story in Genesis 3), then he becomes a power over man. This can be demonstrated with the example of the manufacture of a weapon which can be turned against the person who made it. The devil is not, then, a "second principle" next to God, and he cannot overcome God, but he can separate man from God because he exists as a parasite of man's unfaithfulness and embodies human alienation.

Jesus Christ and the heavenly powers

When dealing with human alienation, the Bible speaks not only of sin but also reconciliation in Jesus Christ, who did not succumb to the might of the misused powers (compare paragraph 2.2). In Eph 1.20f we read that he sits "at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion..." In faith, we now know what not only the law tells us, which is that our subordination under the superhuman powers is not our fate but is human guilt (read Romans 7). We also know the gospel, which creates the most profound presupposition for the overcoming of fatalism and for the liberation of mankind. For the apostle Paul, all of this is the result of the justification of the sinner, his salvation for new life by God's grace. If Jesus has risen, then evil is no longer our destiny. It has no future. We may and we should resist it. Jesus' instruction not to resist evil (Mt 5.39) refers to the resistance which imitates the methods of evil. The Christian may and should respond to evil with effective resistance (compare Rom 12.21; Eph 6.10-20; compare paragraph 5.4). All of the biblical warnings against idols or against mammon are a testimony to this struggle which is also reflected in the endeavour for social justice and for peace.

Above all, however, the church battles against the pressure of the superhuman powers through the gospel (compare Rom 8.39), through the courage to address God, the Lord over all superhuman powers, as "Father," "Abba" (Rom 8.15; compare paragraphs 2.4-5). We say the doxology, "Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory" directly after having prayed, "Deliver us from evil." This is the way in which we confess where we see the presuppositions for overcoming evil. That is what is decisively new, through which we can enrich the attempts to improve the world.

The gospel is not only the basis but also the standard for the effect which faith has. The preservation and lengthening of life, peace, social justice, culture, and the development of technology all of this gains, in the perspective of faith, its true sense as an opportunity to overcome that which divides us from God and from each other, as an extension of the opportunity for truly human life in fellowship with God and with mankind (compare paragraph 1.4). These are the presuppositions for Christian responsibility in the world.

The meaning of creation

One of the subthemes of our general council is "The Theatre of Glory and a Threatened Creation's Hope." We have spoken about the misused powers which threaten man (paragraph 4.2). They all are a part of creation (Rom 8.39) which comprehends the realm of nature and of history.

Protestant theology has emphasized that man is to be distinguished from nature, that he stands in responsibility before God. He is the only being with whom God concludes his covenant (paragraph 2.3). How is man's salvation related to the determination of all other creatures? What is the meaning of a creation which is liberated from abuse?

In the Reformation, creation was regarded as the space in which the revelation of God's grace takes place as it applies to humanity. The universe in its unity of incomprehensible space and incalculable time can truly be compared with a stage upon which the actual event between God and man is taking place. Creation itself cannot give human life its meaning. Man in his humanity cannot continue to live in the cycle of nature. His last enemy is, as a result of sin, death (paragraph 4.2). His identity is preserved in death only through God's grace, and thus carried on into the new creation.

But man remains a part of the creation of God and simultaneously responsible for the remaining creation: "Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands" (Ps 8.6). Since modern science has discovered the greatness and complexity of the universe, the mystery of the creation has become more impenetrable. Our earth is merely a little grain of sand in the universe, and the duration of human history is only a brief moment in the river of time. And still, the revelation of Jesus Christ, his incarnation, is the central event in God's action, and man becomes in this way the central point of creation. His hope in death does not consist only of the saving of his personal identity and social nature. He is supposed to leave something meaningful here in this world. If the world were only scenery, then his human existence would be abbreviated. His salvation is not simply redemption from a perverted creation, but also his redemption with the creation, which is his extended body.

According to Gen 3.15; man lost his power over the animal world through his sin (compare Gen 2.18-25). That is an expression of the contradiction between mankind and nature which we have experienced in a particularly painful way in these last decades in relation to the problems of environmental pollution. Yet there was a vital hope in Israel that in the future, after the arrival of the Messiah, the contradiction between man and nature would be overcome (Is 11.1-10; 65.25; Hosea 2.18; compare Mk 1.13). And when the hymn in Colossians (1.15-20) sings of Jesus as the one through whom the principalities and powers were created, then that means that the entire created world has its meaning in Jesus Christ. In Rom 8.20-22, we read that the creation was submitted to futility because of human sin, and that it "groans". At one time, it is supposed to participate in the "glorious liberty of the children of God". Thus man is supposed to mediate "salvation" to creation. How is that to be imagined?

The main way is that man becomes man, that is, recognizes and acknowledges God as his Lord. The "bondage to decay" consists for creation in the fact that it must serve sin and death for man's sake. Its salvation consists in man's salvation (Rom 8.21). Nature does not need personal salvation, because it has no personal consciousness in a human sense. Its identity is bound to mankind which can think about the rest of creation and has a conscious relationship to its surrounding world. To remain with the image of the stage, one can say that nature as the stage is supposed to provide the support for a good play. However, this analogy has its limits. The scenery can be changed, and various plays can be played upon the stage. However, creation is our irreplaceable stage and the drama (the history of humanity) which is played upon it is not theatre. Life is at stake here. And a bad life threatens the meaning of the stage upon which it is lived out. The stage is then dominated by evil powers (mammon, superstition, hate, armaments, exploitation, war, and finally death). A bad play, a futile life, threaten not only the meaning of the world as our stage, but also in a sense its very existence. Following the discovery of atomic energy, it is possible to destroy the entire human sphere of life.

Therefore, a part of our "new life" is our responsibility for nature. This is a part of neighbourly love. The factual contradictions between the need for direct nourishment of the hungry now, on the one hand, and concern for the environment of future generations, on the other hand, must be resolved in terms of this presupposition. Actually, this presupposition is the gospel itself, from which the call to neighbourly love is also derived. Our social-ethical behavior must also be dealt with in practical terms, which we will attempt to do in study 5.

Questions

Which superhuman powers oppress you most in your particular setting?
How can the figure of the devil be interpreted?
What kind of a relationship do you see between Romans 8 and Psalm 82?
What kind of relationship is present between modern science and creation faith?