Principalities and Powers: the Cosmic Background of Paul's Thought

Abstract

I hope that no apology is necessary for the choice of a subject so closely akin to that of the Presidential Address by Professor William Manson last year.1 It was in fact that address which inspired the present paper. If any further justification is necessary for reverting to this theme I would remind you that a presidential address is by use and wont exempt from criticism, so that last year there was no opportunity for the discussion of a subject which should surely invite lively debate. Moreover, though Dr Manson in his address made occasional reference to Paul's thought, he deliberately confined himself in the main to the ‘Spiritual Background of the Work of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels’. Such promising exploration deserves to be followed up, for it is only with Paul that this background is filled in, in all its tremendous cosmic grandeur. As Dr Manson put it, the spirit world in Paul's thought ‘has taken on new dimensions and acquired a cosmic range and character’. Or again, whereas last year we were meeting the demonic powers ‘in the form of malignant and ghoulish beings, on the earth-level of popular demonic belief’, this year we are confronted by Paul's ‘grandiose hierarchy of cosmic spirits’. But my best justification is the sheer importance of this subject for the understanding of Paul's thought. As Professor J. S. Stewart has remarked in a notable article in the Scottish Journal of Theology (vol. IV, no. 3), we shall never get inside the mind of Paul until we take seriously what has in fact been ‘a neglected emphasis in New Testament Theology’, and cease to treat ‘as secondary and extraneous elements in the primitive Christian proclamation what in fact are integral and basic components of the Gospel’.