Powers of Darkness: Principalities & Powers in Paul's Letters

Rating:
Summary: A warning against real live demons
Review: Clinton Arnold is associate professor of the NT at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University in California, which is a fairly conservative Protestant institution. In his preface Mr Arnold comments that the Western church has failed to take seriously "the involvement of a figure named Satan and his powers of darkness" and cites the needs of his Asian, African and East European students. As such it is also conceived as an 'answer' to the modernist approach found in Walter Wink's 'Powers' books (i.e. 'Society is the devil').

Personally my main interest was in the first 5 chapters which purport to deal with "First Century Belief", but even here it soon became obvious that Arnold is only interested in cherry-picking from 1st Century evidence that agrees with his own beliefs in literal supernatural evil.

One particularly crass example of this is on p.61 (and again p.98) where he tries to press Isaiah's Lucifer into service as evidence for Satan's fall. This in itself might be forgiveable, but when he then goes on to claim that "this connection was certainly how early Jewish interpreters understood this passage" he passes the limit between being selective with the evidence and downright falsification. Always beware of commentators who say "certainly" and don't give any footnoted evidence. Which early Jewish interpreters saw Satan in Isaiah 14:14? Not Isaiah (14:16). Nor Josephus, nor Philo, not even the demon-packed Dead Sea Scrolls, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. Not Hillel or the early Rabbis. Not Peter who used the same Greek name for Jesus 'Morning Star'. Not the generations of Christians who following the Vulgate version of 1Peter named their children Lucifer. In fact no one, neither Jewish nor Christian, until Tertullian and Origen. And it is Tertullian and Origen who Arnold is following here - not "early Jewish interpreters".

So, in sum, this is a pretty standard book on evil angels, not much different from any others on the 'Spiritual Warfare' shelf at your local Christian bookstore. Which is fine. But Christian writers should resist the temptation to rewrite the Jewish evidence to fit their own variant of a belief in fallen angels.