An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land: Chapter 3, "The Moral Reality Named Death"

Big day!

We've arrived at Ground Zero of William Stringfellow studies: Chapter 3 of An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land.

This is the chapter (entitled "The Moral Reality Named Death") where Stringfellow gives what is generally considered to be his fullest and most definitive treatment regarding the nature of "the principalities and powers."

I guess if you were going to read only one chapter of William Stringfellow Chapter 3 of An Ethic might be your best bet.

Before getting to his description of the principalities and powers in Chapter 3 Stringfellow starts by articulating a theology of the Fall. This is important for Stringfellow because our conceptions of the Fall shape our vision of Christian ethics. According to Stringfellow, the Fall isn't just about human sinfulness, people doing bad things. For Stringfellow, the Fall points to the moral disorder of Creation and the resultant antagonism within Creation because of that disorder:
The biblical description of the Fall concerns the alienation of the whole of Creation from God, and, thus, the rupture and profound disorientation of all relationships within the whole of Creation. Human beings are fallen, indeed! But all other creatures suffer fallenness, too. And the other creatures include, as it were, not only cows, but corporations; the other creatures are, among others, the nations, the institutions, the principalities and powers. The biblical doctrine of the Fall means the brokenness of relationships among human beings and the other creatures, and the rest of Creation, and the spoiled and confused identity of each human being, within herself or himself.
The Fall, then, is less about sin than about the moral antagonism we experience in relating to the world, with much of this antagonism coming from "the principalities and powers." Christian ethics, according to Stringfellow, is less about Christian piety than it is about learning to become a human being in the face of the moral antagonism we experience from the principalities and powers, an antagonism that blunts, numbs, confuses, distracts, intimidates and demoralizes the conscience.

From there Stringfellow goes on in the chapter to describe the "Traits of the Principalities." He asks: "Who and what are the principalities and powers? How are the principalities related to the moral reality of death?"

Stringfellow starts by describing the powers as "legion" in appearance and manifestation:
According to the Bible, the principalities are legion in species, number, variety and name...They are designated by such multifarious titles as powers, virtues, thrones, authorities, dominions, demons, princes, strongholds, lords, angels, gods, elements, spirits…

Terms that characterize are frequently used biblically in naming the principalities: “tempter,” “mocker,” “foul spirit,” “destroyer,” “adversary,” “the enemy.” And the privity of the principalities to the power of death incarnate is shown in mention of their agency to Beelzebub or Satan or the Devil or the Antichrist…

And if some of these seem quaint, transposed into contemporary language they lose quaintness and the principalities become recognizable and all too familiar: they include all institutions, all ideologies, all images, all movements, all causes, all corporations, all bureaucracies, all traditions, all methods and routines, all conglomerates, all races, all nations, all idols. Thus, the Pentagon or the Ford Motor Company or Harvard University or the Hudson Institute or Consolidated Edison or the Diners Club or the Olympics or the Methodist Church or the Teamsters Union are principalities. So are capitalism, Maoism, humanism, Mormonism, astrology, the Puritan work ethic, science and scientism, white supremacy, patriotism, plus many, many more—sports, sex, any profession or discipline, technology, money, the family—beyond any prospect of full enumeration. The principalities and powers are legion.
Having described the principalities and powers Stringfellow goes on to comment on two common mistakes we make in relation to them. First, we deny that these institutions and ideologies can have, if we can put it this way, a "will of their own." The powers are not inert. They have goals and, thus, intentions in the world, a "personality" if you will. Stringfellow:
A recurrent stumbling block to comprehending the principalities exists...[because] [h]uman beings are reluctant to acknowledge institutions--or any of the other principalities--as creatures having their own existence, personality, and mode of life.
This leads to the second mistake. In believing that the principalities and powers are passive and inert we trick ourselves into thinking that we can master, control and remake these institutions. We think we are "in change" of the powers when, in fact, quite the opposite is the case: the powers control us:
The typical version of human reluctance to accord the principalities their due integrity as creatures is the illusion of human beings that they make or create and, hence, control institutions and the institutions are no more than groups of human beings duly organized...

[H]uman beings do not control institutions or any other principalities.
Human beings do not control the institutions and ideologies of which they are a part. The institutions and ideologies control and dominate human beings. How so? The principality and power usurps the role of God, inserting and making itself the goal of human existence and the foundation of human worth and significance. Basically, the principalities and powers become idols and we, in serving the powers, engage in idolatry. We come to worship the creature rather than the Creator:
The principality, insinuating itself in the place of God, deceives humans into thinking and acting as if the moral worth and justification of human being is defined and determined by commitment or surrender--literally, sacrifice--of human life to the survival interest, grandeur, and vanity of the principality. 
And as slaves and servants of the powers we become pushed and pulled by their competing demands:
People are veritably besieged, on all sides, at every moment simultaneously by these claims and strivings of the various powers each seeking to dominate, usurp, or take a person’s time, attention, abilities, effort; each grasping at life itself; each demanding idolatrous service and loyalty. In such a tumult it becomes very difficult for a human being even to identify the idols that would possess him or her…
Stringfellow goes on to describe this idolatry as a form of "demonic possession" that dehumanizes human persons:
There are those who actually define their humanity as nonhuman or subhuman loyalty and diligence to the interests and appetites of the principalities. There are many who are dumb and complacent in their captivity by institutions, traditions, and similar powers. There are persons who have become automatons. There are humans who know of no other alternative to an existence in vassalage to the principalities. There are people who are programed and propagandized, conditioned and conformed, intimidated and manipulated, fabricated and consigned to role-playing. These are human beings who are demonically possessed.
Stringfellow, in striking turn of phrase, calls this captivity to the powers "dehumanized obeisance to the demonic."

But what are the powers wanting? What do they need us for? Survival, according to Stringfellow. The animating goal of the powers is to survive:
Corporations and nations and other demonic powers restrict, control, and consume human life or order to sustain and extend and prosper their own survival.
...
The principalities have great resilience; the death game which they play continues, adapting its means of dominating human beings to the sole morality which governs all demonic powers so long as they exist--survival.
And yet, as creatures the principalities and powers are subject to death. Thus, all the idolatrous service rendered to the principalities and powers ultimately becomes, in the long run, service rendered to death. Fighting for survival the ethos of every principality and power is the ethos of death. Death is the "angel"--the morality and spirituality--of every institution and ideology:
[H]istory discloses that the actual meaning of such human idolatry of nations, institutions, or other principalities is death. Death is the only moral significance that a principality proffers human beings. That is to say, whatever intrinsic moral power is embodied in a principality—for a great corporation, profit, for example; or for a nation, hegemony; or for an ideology, conformity—that is sooner or later suspended by the greater moral power of death. Corporations die. Nations die. Ideologies die. Death survives them all. Death is—apart from God—the greatest moral power in this world, outlasting and subduing all other powers no matter how marvelous they may seem for the time being. This means, theologically speaking, that the object of allegiance and servitude, the real idol secreted within all idolatries, the power above all principalities and powers—the idol of all idols—is death.
This is the moral condition of the Fall: human beings idolatrously serving the principalities and powers in the search of meaning and significance only to find that the moral reality behind the powers is death.

Thus, in the final words of Chapter 3, the Fall becomes the place where "human life is sacrificed for the demonic."

Link to Chapter 4

This entry was posted by Richard Beck. Bookmark the permalink.

17 thoughts on “An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land: Chapter 3, "The Moral Reality Named Death"”

  1. This is crucial analysis--as far as it goes. So I really look forward to the coming posts.
    Here's what I'll be looking for: Following this chapter, the natural response (for myself, anyway) seems to be, "OK, then show me what's not death, so I can get back in the game."
    But of course, the "game" has to change, so that won't work. It should be interesting...

  2. "And if some of these seem quaint, transposed into contemporary language they lose quaintness and the principalities become recognizable and all too familiar: they include all institutions, all ideologies, all images, all movements, all causes, all corporations, all bureaucracies, all traditions, all methods and routines, all conglomerates, all races, all nations, all idols. ... ."
    Wow, this series is challenging me, but I am welcoming it!
    As to this list, I'm not seeing 'the Body of Christ' anywhere, so may I assume there is a distinction between 'religious institutions' and 'the Church'?

  3. The chapters that follow start talking about what Stringfellow calls "resistance," how to live humanly alongside the powers. Though his discussion isn't very specific. But I know this great book called The Slavery of Death which I think is pretty good on extending Stringfellow's analysis. :-)

  4. Yes, in the last post he spoke of "Jerusalem," his term in the book for "the Body of Christ." So there is the event of Jerusalem on the one hand and religious institutions on the other. As described in the last post, the two can overlap. Jerusalem, as an event, can be experienced within the institution (our outside the church walls for that matter), but Jerusalem is fragile and transitory as the institutional aspects of church life are constantly threatening it. I think we've all seen this.

  5. Very cool. By chance a book with that very title arrived at my house a couple days back. I'll check it out, then...

  6. Well, if that doesn't blow your hair back, I don't know what will.

    These two quotes are equally terrifying and illuminating to me:
    "In believing that the principalities and powers are passive and inert
    we trick ourselves into thinking that we can master, control and remake
    these institutions. We think we are "in change" of the powers when, in
    fact, quite the opposite is the case: the powers control us:"

    and

    "Death is—apart
    from God—the greatest moral power in this world, outlasting and subduing
    all other powers no matter how marvelous they may seem for the time
    being."

    While terrifying, it really speaks to me why we need Christ to 1) offer us freedom from the fear of death and 2) defeat death and release us from the slavery of the principalities and powers.

  7. On a mundane level, in contrast to Stringfellow's profound one, Richard Dawkins developed an idea he named "meme" which acts in a way of human life in the same manner that principalities do. Memes, like genes, shape life. We invent cars for instance, and soon we become a car culture- there's something about cars that in turn drive us. Hence a car can be thought of as a meme. And so on.


    This meme idea is a benign one especially when compared to the idea of principalities that Stringfellow is developing here. I think both ideas illuminate how much of human life is based on Participation; by this I mean that an actor never acts in isolation, but always with some kind of Other, with some kind of exchange taking place.

  8. I fear that for the Conservative culture in this present moment, freedom has become a Principality. When I encounter a person fretting and foaming about the threats to their own freedom, I ask them to name something that that indeed threatened their actual freedom that day; unless they were non-white or non-male, they couldn't name anything. This leads me to believe that this particular person is engaged in his living through ideology rather than reality.


    I think I would push Stringfellow's idea of Principality further, and say that what ever it is, one of its characteristics is that it will be engaged in living through System or Ideology rather than real time reality.

  9. I'm sure Richard can address this much better than I, but it probably depends on where you draw the line on when the "battle" ends.

    My impression from this post is Stringfellow focuses on exclusively on worldly institutions as principalities and powers and is intentionally ignoring any demons and powers that may play out after death. For example, [and those of you with better knowledge, please correct any errors in the following...] If one takes a Universalist approach, God's love is still searching and seeking to restore a relationship with all mankind - even after death. This would suggest we remain suspect to other powers and principalities that fight to control "us" after death and keep us in slavery.. Only acceptance of God's love and grace will ultimately release us from this slavery.

  10. So I guess where the battle ends ranks right up there with other mysteries such as why the battle began and why there is a battle at all being that it all traces back to a single creative source.

  11. I refer to 2013 as the year of Zombie-Zen-Bacon-FroYo . . . because of all the topics i heard people discuss, those were the most popular.

    On a serious note, while I agree with Dawkins' meme, what's striking to me is how much he's part of the the scientism of our age and the idea that science is the only way to truth. And often this leads to what I'd call "atheistic-fundamentalism."

    On the one hand, I find it absurd that anyone thinks we should teach creationism in schools, but I also find uproar from those who wish to defend the merits of evolution almost as absurd. I'm not sure what I'm getting at really, just maybe just to assert your idea of the necessity of "the Other" in an exchange.

    It's not really a new thing, but I find that as a whole, humans spend a lot of time defining their relationship to the other. It's probably why we're stuck with a plutocratic two-party system, and why we have so much economic disparity, and we spend so much time killing each other, and defending our right to kill each in self-defense.

  12. re: cars:
    ----------
    http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2012/01/myth-of-machine.html

    "For most Americans, television has come to represent the experience of
    collective participation, and yet the flickering lights in the suburban
    windows serve as a reminder that few activities are more solitary or
    more isolating. In precisely the same way, the freedom represented by
    the car moving down the open road is a pathetic illusion; from the
    immense government programs that build and maintain those open roads,
    through the gargantuan corporate systems that produce the cars, to the
    sprawling global network of oilfields, pipelines, refineries, and the
    rest of the colossal system that transforms fossil hydrocarbons into the
    gas that keeps the car going, there are few human activities on Earth
    that depend more completely on the vast and faceless bureaucracies that
    most Americans think they despise. Isolation packaged as participation,
    dependence packaged as freedom ..."
    ----------
    he goes on to talk about Martin Buber's I-Thou vs I-It relationships, and how machines are all I-It.

    overall, i think this essay is along the same lines of the powers and principalities theme, and worth the read to get a different perspective from someone who uses different terminology.

  13. "overall, i think this essay is along the same lines of the powers and principalities theme, and worth the read to get a different perspective from someone who uses different terminology."


    Thanks for the link sgl; I think your sensitivity to seeing this theme in other terminology is useful in the best sense of the word. Somehow, it's letting us know that we're seeing something more than ideology, which in our time is crucial....

  14. 2Cents ________________________

    Thinking that
    god/God/he/she
    created or/Createor
    prouced a bad product
    as a builder of a bad car
    it is intresting that the product of the creator
    blames- big gilt trip - its self for being a bad product
    as a car would say i am a bad car and its is my bad -
    or we as in all have a corruped human idea of a Creater god/ God/he /she -
    i think that all good /evile is in ones own mind it is this quality that
    makes one moral responsible if one is not responsible then there is
    no morality -

    Blessings ___________________________________________________

Leave a Reply