In the progress
of its philosophizing the human
spirit is ever more inclined to regard the absolute which it contemplates as having been produced by itself, the
spirit that thinks it: «Until, finally, all that is over against us, everything that accosts us and takes possession
of us, all partnership
of existence, is dissolved in
free - floating subjectivity.»
Man was
free from his own past, because the
Spirit placed him on a new level
of existence in which that past had no power over him.
I have suggested elsewhere that value -
free technology, the military - industrial complex, and narrow nationalism might be modern examples
of such principalities and powers.9 Hendrikus Berkhof suggests that human traditions, astrology, fixed religious rules, clans, public opinion, race, class, state, and Volk are among the powers.10 Walter Wink sees the powers as the inner aspects
of institutions, their «spirituality,» the inner
spirit or driving force that animates, legitimates, and regulates their outward manifestations.11 They are «the invisible forces that determine human
existence «12 When such things dehumanize human life, thwart and distort the human
spirit, block God's gift
of shalom, the followers
of Jesus are rallied for a new kind
of holy war.
The film Although Sweden has produced more than its fair share
of internationally exportable smut, this intimate documentary portrait
of two long - haired,
free -
spirited teens, Stoffe and Kenta, mostly intercuts revealing interview material with footage
of their frequently dull
existence.