Author- Marva J. Dawn
Publisher-Wm.B.Eerdmans Publishing Co.
ISBN- 0-8028-4770-6
This is an insightful book, the development in print of lectures given at Pittsburgh Theological College in the year 2000. As the title suggests this book issues a call to the church to return to the way of suffering and weakness manifested most fully in the Cross of Christ. The church has carelessly embraced too much of this world’s notions of success and power. This author draws on the apostle Paul’s doctrine of ‘principalities and powers’ against which the church is to wrestle and shows how instead of doing so, the church of today has been duped by those powers which have gained influence over our lives. This is a book to be ‘listened to’ and its challenge, if heeded will result in weak, but strong churches. Present practices and priorities in todays church tend to be the techniques of a market driven, consumerist society. At back of these techniques are the principalities and powers. The health of the church, its well-being is rooted not in following those trends, but in allowing the ‘power of Christ to rest upon us in our weakness’. Christ’s power tabernacles upon weak vessels and only then can the purposes of God be fulfilled through us. The book is written for pastors and people who are willing to resist cultural tides and who will refrain from using methods of power, for those who will accept the path of weakness in faith knowing that God is able to use that weakness in order to display His life. There are four chapter divisions, let the headings of each tell the story of the book. 1. The Principalities and Powers: Created, Fallen, and Then? 2. The Tabernacling of God and a Theology of Weakness. 3. Churches Being, and Acting as, Fallen Powers. 4. What, Then, Shall the Church Be? Images of Weakness. Does the sporting urge prevail in our churches over the spiritual impulse? What happens to church leaders who act out of their power or the pressures of power rather than out of the weakness that receives God’s tabernacling? We are challenged to consider these and many other questions as we read this book. In it we are brought back to the wonderfully liberating theology of the cross and to the simple and credible disciplines of the early church as set forth in the book of Acts. Is the church of today an image of weakness? Weak, but in which a marvelous strength is present tabernacling upon it from God? In what way do each of us need to be released from the influences of principalties and powers at work in this world that the power of Christ might pitch His tent upon us?
