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Padilla on the Gospel in a
Consumer Society
"Behind the materialism which characterises
consumer society lie the powers of destruction to which the New
Testament refers. ... The world is a system in which evil is
organized to opposition to Good. Nevertheless, it is its connection
with Satan and his forces which gives it that character. Satan is
'the god of this world' (2 Cor. 4:4; cf. Jn 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; 1
Jn 5:19); his forces are 'the powers that rule this world; (1 Cor.
2:6 TEV), 'the cosmic powers ... the authorities and potentates of
this dark world' (Eph. 6:12 NEB), 'the elemental spirits of the
universe' (Gal. 4:3, 9; Col. 2:8, 20). This apocalyptic vision of
the world permeates the Pauline epistles and points to a cosmic
dimension or not only sin, but also Christian redemption. The work
of Jesus Christ cannot be understood apart from this
background.
The demonic powers enslave man in the world through the
structures and systems which he treats as absolutes. ...in Galatians
4:8 ff. the apostle Paul is warning his readers not only against
legalism, but against a return to their slavery to spiritual powers
which exercise their dominion over men through organised religion,
against a return to gods who in their essential nature are no-gods.
...(211)
"To speak of the world is to speak of an
oppressive system governed by the powers of evil who enslave men
through idolatry. ... Those who limit the workings of the evil
powers to the occult, demon possession and astrology, as well as
those who consider the New Testament references to those powers as a
sort of mythological shell from which the biblical message must be
extracted, reduce the evil in the world to a personal problem, and
Christian redemption to merely a personal experience. A better
alternative is to accept the realism of the biblical description and
understand man's situation in the world in terms of an enslavement
to a spiritual realm from which he must be liberated. ... (212)
"The church is an eschatological reality - it
belongs to the era of fulfilment introduced by Jesus Christ; ... In
the period between the resurrection and second coming of Christ the
new era supersedes the old and eschatology operates in the very
stream of history. The resulting eschatological tension colours the
whole life and mission of the church. The Lausanne Covenant refers
to one of the most important aspects of that tension: 'we believe
that we are engaged in constant spiritual warfare with the
principalities and powers of evil, who are seeking to overthrow the
church and frustrate its task of world evangelisation.' (213)
from The New Face of Evangelicalism
edited by C. Rene Padilla
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