구조와 방향에서 정사와 권세로 -월터스의 『창조 타락 구속』의 비판적 독해- = From structure and direction To principalities and powers - A Critical Reading of Walters’ Creation Regained

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper critically evaluates Albert Walters’ Structure-Direction schema, which has been called “the crown jewel of the Christian worldview,” and proposes principalities and powers as an alternative. The main criticism is not the conservatism of the structure-orientation schema, but its failure to account for structural evil. Evil and suffering are not as much about misdirection as they are about the structure itself. Bong-Ho Son, Reinhold Niebuhr, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Bob Goudzwaard and others are united in saying that structure itself causes evil.
The alternatives, principalities and powers, are specifically Pauline language, which many scholars say can be translated as structure. And Walter Wink argues that principalities and powers are worldviews. Like worldviews, power is also composed of creation, fall, and redemption. Therefore, principalities and powers has the distinct advantage of explaining structural evil without abandoning either of the structure-orientation models. Nonetheless, Walters, in a face-to-face conversation with Leslie Newbigin, argues that the basis for social participation is grounded in the creation principle. Newbigin points out that engagement based on the creation principle can lead to the error of approving of social and political evil structures, and recommends that we go so far as to reform fallen structures through the cross.
Finally, there are three main practices based on the theory of principalities and powers. Avoid the danger of idolatry, which absolutizes authority, which is fallen and always carries the risk of being corrupted, and place it in its proper place in creation. Then there is the refusal to justify violence and propaganda as a means to a legitimate end, and finally, the church itself becoming a new community of principalities and powers.