The power of love

Kathryn Tanner

pp. 45-65

in: Joshua Daniel, Rick Elgendy (eds), Renegotiating power, theology, and politics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Abstract

Cstianity's ambivalence about power is apparent. Its history has a disconcerting way of oscillating between unequivocal hostility and ready complicity with "the powers that be." Its scriptures routinely apply epithets of supreme power and might to God even as they tell of a divine mission for the world climaxing in the weakness and humiliation of the cross, God's victory in a struggle with principalities and powers, pulled paradoxically from abject defeat. Power is sometimes by definition good— because it always has its source in God, following a common interpretation of Romans 13. At other times it is by definition evil— simply the conflict-ridden way of a fallen world. If the whole course of Christian history and the constant contests within it about what to make of its complex scriptures are any indication, power is both good and bad from a Christian point of view, requiring a complex judgment from Christians about when and where it is one or the other.