Alan Dunn
When we speak of culture in the Bible, you encounter the language of powers and principalities, worldviews, false religions, powers and principalities. You look, for example, at 2 Corinthians chapter 10, reading at verse 3 to verse 5. “For, though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” So, here we see thought systems, we see speculations, we see lofty things raised up against knowledge, and the knowledge of God in Christ Jesus. Paul tells us that we’ve been given weapons—weapons that are divinely powerful, powerful with the very power of God Himself—that we might be able to tear down fortresses, walled castles that men have built by their reasons and their thought systems that they hide behind in order to keep themselves at a distance from God. “Speculations” just means rationalized arguments. Lofty things raised up against God points to the inherent pride that undergirds these ways of thinking: lofty, elevated, man-centered, rebellious, and blasphemous ways of thinking that are in opposition to the revelation of God in His Word.
Let me turn to Ephesians chapter 6. We enter into the passage of warfare, and Paul, again, clearly tells us of the enemies with which we contend. In Ephesians 6, we read in verse 12, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places.” Here are adversaries in this conflict that transpires in culture: rulers, powers, world forces of darkness, spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places. You’ll find Paul using other vocabulary—thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities—that you find in Colossians 1:16. Well, all of this vocabulary is how Paul is describing the way angelic beings—fallen, angelic beings, demons—involve themselves in human society, in human events. In Paul’s day, the demonic was flagrantly evident in the state-authorized religion of the Roman empire. That religion saw Caesar as a god. The confession would be “Caesar is lord,” and for the Christian in that day to say “Jesus is Lord” was a statement of civil disobedience, as well as a statement of religious conviction. He was recognizing that in the state, in the authority structures of the Roman empire, demonic deceptions were at work. Forces, powers, and workings of principalities were propagating the doctrines of demons, deceitful doctrines of demons that Paul speaks of in 1 Timothy 4:1.
The demonic is able to work through particular individuals, but also, through structures of society, and even permeating institutions, and so to form a common concept, the common way of thinking in any given place, at any given time. The German word is zeitgeist; zeit, “the spirit,” geist, “of the time.” It’s a way in which values are shared by a particular people at a particular time, the spirit of the age. Renewed interest in powers and principalities occurred back in the 1950s in American theological studies, because in the 1950s scholars were attempting to answer the question, “What was World War Ⅱ and what was World War Ⅰ? How can we explain, for example, virtually an entire culture having bought in to the idea of the Holocaust and of being deceived by this man Adolf Hitler? How did that happen?” Theologians discovered, afresh, Paul’s language of powers and principalities, and they were able to make some assessment of the Nazi regime, by virtue of this vocabulary and the perspectives that Paul brings upon cultures. In the same way, we have to ask the question: “How can entire societies endorse the idea of Jihad, of flagrant, murderous, wanton slaughter? How can that happen? The Bible would say there are deceptions afoot, there are demonic deceptions afoot.
How can there be a culture that actually tolerates, even legislates, promotes, and celebrates sexual perversion? Something so fundamentally out of alignment with what we know to be natural! How can that happen? The Bible would say there are doctrines of demons that are being believed. People are being deceived, and there’s a generation of values that are being accepted. How can an entire culture tolerate the idea of murdering babies inside the wombs of their mothers? How can there be labor camps in which people, for political opinions, are rounded up, gathered and put into institutionalized prison environments, simply because of the ideas that they have? How can cultures function like this? Well, powers and principalities are afoot, the workings of the Evil One. Behind and beneath, thought systems, value systems of any culture, is (are) the operations of demonic, fallen, angels, and we engage the culture at that level. Not at the level of flesh and blood, but at the level of truth, at the level of integrity, at the level of the Gospel, in order that we might seek to bring light into darkness.
Notice the language of the Apostle in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, reading in verse 3 and verse 4. “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Paul says that no small part of our challenge is contending with the god of this world, the god of this age, who we know to be none other than Satan himself, and it is that that conditions our dealings with culture. We are contending with spiritual forces, forces of darkness, doctrines of demons.
This brings us into the Bible’s teaching about the world, that’s a vocabulary used particularly by John. Now, the world is God’s good creation, but the world, in John’s use of that term, also represents this idea of a thought system, of a philosophical approach to life that answers basic questions of who we are and what life means. There’s an old, Celtic prayer—I’m Irish, and so the Celtic is my heritage, it tells you something of my culture right there—but it’s a prayer that says, “From anities and ologies and edities and isms, good Lord, deliver us.” There are many isms, Marxism, Capitalism, Socialism, Judaism; the anities, Christianity;; the ologies, psychology, philosophy. These are the things that Paul speaks of when he talks about powers, principalities, value systems, worldviews that permeate and then come to characterize the way the people think in a certain cultural setting at any given time in their history.
In 1 John chapter 2, John pretty well sums up anything and everything that any culture or any ism or ology is going to offer to us, and, again, he speaks about the world. He says, in 1 John 2:15, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.” Whatever your political philosophy, whatever your economic philosophy, whatever your cultural and ethnic background, this world will offer you three things: the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. That’s it. You succeed in a Socialistic System, that’s what you’ll get; you succeed in a Capitalistic System, that’s what you’ll get; you succeed in a Communistic System, that’s what you’ll get. That’s all the world has to give you in whatever construction of its philosophical isms and ologies: lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life, and it’s all passing away. So, that teaches us that we’re to look at the world from the vantage point of Eschatology, from the vantage point of the last things. Because, as we’ll see when we turn our attention to the issues of the two kingdoms, we live in an Eschatological kingdom, we live in a kingdom of the age to come that is conditioned by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
© 2014 IBRNJ
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