Powers, Principalities, and the Spirit: Biblical Realism in Africa and the West
Overview
Among the many factors that separate churches in the West from those of the global South, there may be no greater difference than their respective attitudes toward supernatural “powers and principalities.” In this follow-up to her book For Freedom or Bondage? African theologian Esther Acolatse bridges the enormous hermeneutical gap not only between the West and global Christianity but also between the West and its own biblical-theological heritage.
- Explores the hermeneutical gap between the Christian West and global South
- Addresses various attitudes toward supernatural “powers and principalities”
- Examines how worldview facilitates and/or hinders faithful understanding and interpretation of the Bible
- A Question of Perspective
- Wink and the Powers
- Reclaiming “Myth”
- Karl Barth in New Perspective
- Contextualizing Ephesians 6
- Biblical Realism
Top Highlights
“This is the kind of world described in Ephesians 6:10–20, a text that offers us a glimpse into the beliefs held by the earliest Christians about how to live in light of the reality of the world presented.” (Page 163)
“Ultimately, it asks, has it taken its hermeneutical cues from the culture it seeks to engage and, in a sense, is it fleeing from the Spirit in its engagement of the world with the Word?” (Page 162)
“Ephesians, we are given the idea that they believed in a world teeming with personal spiritual forces accounted for by the language Paul used in his admonition and encouragement to the church. A caution, an invitation for alertness, and a strategy for ensuring victory in the war against the devil are what stand out most in these verses. The struggle is taken for granted: it is always at the doorstep of the believer. The only question that remains is what the believer will do to engage the battle and in so doing be secure and protected and keep going—continuing in the faith.” (Page 164)
“ a question of how to attend to Spirit for the entire church” (Page 5)
“understood in the relationship of God to the gods.” (Page 43)
Acolatse’s theologically informed approach takes Scripture seriously and welcomes all interpretive locations to the table. Although she remains unfailingly gracious, it seems clear that the traditional modern Western approach to the Spirit and spirits has remained blind to its own biases. Acolatse exposes our more impoverished approach and opens us to the wealth of global perspectives more consistent even with our own biblical and theological heritage.
—Craig S. Keener, Asbury Theological Seminary
If Christianity’s center of gravity has shifted decidedly to the global South, then Esther Acolatse is at the vanguard of the surging and irresistible theological wave swelling up from out of those tectonics. In this book her majority-world sensibilities critically retrieve and creatively reappropriate the theological tradition, constructively engaging in cross-cultural dialogue the most prominent pneumatologically relevant programs from Bultmann and Wink to Barth and Levison, among others, to fuel dialogue and debate about life in a spirit-filled late-modern cosmos.
—Amos Yong, Fuller Theological Seminary
In this groundbreaking book by one of our leading global pastoral theologians, Esther Acolatse offers insight into the continuing significance of the biblically configured spiritual world for understanding the social, political, and economic worlds of African peoples and the forms of pastoral invention and care that would support thriving life. There are few scholars with her grasp of African and African diaspora life and fewer texts that match this theological brilliance.
—Willie James Jennings, Yale Divinity School
- Title: Powers, Principalities, and the Spirit: Biblical Realism in Africa and the West
- Author: Esther E. Acolatse
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Publication Date: 2018
- Pages: 255
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Topic: Spiritual Warfare