Theological glossary · FaithLogic

Principalities and powers

Paul's cluster of terms (rulers, authorities, thrones, dominions, 'world-rulers', 'spiritual forces of evil') for created spiritual beings — some good, some fallen — arrayed in the unseen realm and connected to the structures of the fallen world.

Greek archai ('rulers'), exousiai ('authorities'), thronoi, kyriotētes, kosmokratores; the same words are used of legitimate human government.

Romans 8:38; 1 Corinthians 15:24; Ephesians 1:21; 3:10; 6:12; Colossians 1:16; 2:10, 15; 1 Peter 3:22; Daniel 10:13, 20 (the angelic 'princes' of nations).

Created in and for Christ (Col 1:16), the fallen ones were 'disarmed' and 'triumphed over' at the cross (Col 2:15). The 20th-century 'Powers' debate (Hendrik Berkhof, Walter Wink) reads the language as, in part, the spiritual dimension of human institutions and systems; the mainstream keeps them as personal beings entangled with fallen structures.

'Our struggle is not against flesh and blood' (Eph 6:12) — the conflict is real and unseen, and the equipment for it is the 'armour of God': truth, righteousness, the gospel, faith, salvation, the word, and prayer.

Personal-beings reading vs. the demythologised 'spirituality of institutions' reading (most hold a both/and).

Open in the glossary for related terms and the doctrines this concept appears in.