The good work to date, I think, has tended to be piecemeal, focused only on
narrow aspects of human life history and decision - making.
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.