25 June 2025

The Power and Personhood of God

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.^[1]

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.^[2]

We should admit rather that power produces knowledge…; that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.^[3]

Abstract

This paper explores the biblical and theological understanding of God’s power, asserting that divine power is inseparable from God’s personhood and character. It traces the expression of God’s power through creation, providence, and redemption – culminating in the cross of Christ where power is paradoxically displayed in weakness. The paper contrasts God’s righteous and purposeful exercise of power with human abuses of power, engaging critically with Michel Foucault’s analysis of power-knowledge dynamics. It argues that true power in the church must reflect God’s character, aim at restoring believers into the image of Christ, and be exercised through godly leadership, spiritual means, and humble dependence on divine strength.

Introduction

Objective truth, absolute morality, religious or other metanarratives, social structures and institutions, knowledge, human rights – all are viewed today as masks of power. The jewels of the liberal establishment get a bad name as the dupes of power; power has become the éminence grise behind the structures and values we hold dear. Everything is suspect, a probable ‘power grab’. Where this all-embracing suspicion comes from and whether there is anything we can learn from it, we shall see later. But surely not all power, even if some suspicion is always justified, is bad? Let us begin with what the Bible says about power, which means beginning with God. Following that and some systematic reflections, I examine four main issues relating to power: sovereignty, knowledge, the cross, and power in the church. My thesis is simply that if it is God’s power we want to see at work in the church, we must be restored in his image through Jesus Christ.

God and Power

God’s Names

The early names of God in the Bible denote power. El (derivatives Eloah, Elohim; compound forms, El Shaddai (Almighty God, Gen 17:1), El-Elohe-Israel (God, the God of Israel, Gen 33:20), El Elyon (God Most High, Gen 14:19), El Gibbor (Mighty God, Isa 9:6)) is the first common general description of deity in the Ancient Near East and it is widely accepted that it is derived or at least related to the Hebrew word el whose root meaning is strength or power (Gen 31:29; Ezek 32:21). God is first introduced to us therefore in his own word as powerful, indeed power itself. Power and God’s being as a person (his personhood) are inseparable. The most frequently occurring name of God in the Old Testament (x 2250) is Elohim (Gen 1:1), a plural of majesty and also an adumbration of more than one person in God. El Shaddai, ‘God Almighty’ (Gen 17:1; Exod 6:3; cf Rev 1:8; 4:8)^[4] particularly denotes God as the all-powerful one. Also implying power is Yahweh Sabaoth, ‘the LORD of Hosts’ (Ps 24:10; 46:7,11).

In the Greek world before Christ, ‘Plato calls dynamis [power] the absolute mark of being’ but ‘the cosmic principle is the same thing as God. There is thus little reference to the power of God, for God himself is power’^[5]. The difference in the Bible is that the power of a personal God replaces the force of nature that was equated with deity. Individual gods in the pagan world were sometimes called dynameis but in the Hebrew Scriptures there was a ‘Lord’ of hosts (Ps 24:10), and in the LXX dynameis is sometimes used for ‘hosts’.

God’s Actions

This all-powerful God (for expressly or by implication God is omnipotent, e.g. Gen 18:14; Job 42:2; Jer 32:17; Luke 1:37) has acted in power in creation, providence and redemption.

In Creation

As Creator he made all things (Gen 1:1; 1 Chron 29:11; Neh 9:6; Job 38:4f). His eternal power is, with his deity, revealed in creation (Rom 1:20; Ps 8:3; 19:1). His creative power distinguishes him from idols (Ps 135:5-7; Isa 45:12,16,18; Jer 10:11,12). He created by a simple act of will, a word (Ps 33:6). He created, as the use of the verb bara (Gen 1:1,21,27; Heb cf. 11:3) suggests, from no pre-existing material, ex nihilo. His power exceeds that of all created agents. Only his power can produce from nothing. He created man, male and female, in his image, to be his representatives, dominion bearers, prophets, priests and kings in and over creation. Yet these are ‘but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him!’ (Job 26:14).

In Providence

As Ruler, God exercises his power in providence, his government of creation in fulfilment of his decree. He preserves what he has made (Ps 104:5-30; Acts 14:17); indeed, because this all-powerful God is all-knowing, nothing he made will ever be annihilated – he has no second thoughts, or better ideas, or ways in which things could be improved (though had he purposed creation otherwise, he could have done things differently with different perfections). His power is active in propagation (Gen 1:22,23) and in governing history and nations (Jer 27:5; Acts 17:25-27). He exercises moral government: he judges, and punishes, evil (Gen 6-9); he rules the devil though uses him for his purposes (Job 1,2).

In Redemption

As Redeemer, God exercises his power to redeem his people. Although creation is called as a witness to the greatness of God’s power (e.g. Jer 32:17), it is more likely to be his acts of deliverance that are typically referred to as the supreme example of God’s power. Having recounted God’s great deeds in getting Israel to the border of the Promised Land, Moses prays, “O Lord God, you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your mighty hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do such works and mighty acts as yours?” (Deut 3:24; c.f. Isa 63:11; 43:16-17; 51:9-10). The Psalms repeatedly extol the power of God in saving his people and destroying the wicked (Ps 7:6,7; 20:6-8; 89:17,18). God’s power is to be beheld (63:2) and a cause of praise (145:4-7).

God may work without means (as in immediate creation); with means (as in mediate creation, Gen 1:22,24,28); or against means (Isa 38:7,8 when the sun is returned ten steps on Hezekiah’s dial).

But there is a yet greater work of deliverance according to the prophets, typified but not fulfilled in the deliverance from Babylon under Cyrus. There is a greater Messiah than was ever seen in the sixth century BC (Isa 9:6,7; 61:1,2), a greater future for Jerusalem (51:3) and a greater freedom, joy and prosperity than was known in Israel in succeeding centuries or ever (Isa 60 passim; 65:17-25) and one day a new creation (Isa 64:17-25). Thus, the redeeming power of God is seen above all in the coming of Jesus Christ where the ‘power of the Most High’ and the coming upon Mary of the Holy Spirit are parallel and identical phrases for the act of God that caused Jesus to be conceived (Luke 1:35). Jesus knew the power of the Holy Spirit in his ministry (Luke 4:14; Acts 10:38). He gave his apostles authority to cast out demons (Mark 6:7). There were times because of lack of faith in the crowd (Mark 6:4,5) or in the disciples (Matt 17:19,20) that miracles could not be performed, indicating that faith is the usual precondition to his performing a miracle, rather than that unbelief is an external limitation on his power. His death on a cross seems to be the nadir and negation of power but it is in fact the place where God’s power is most effective for his glory (1 Cor 1:18-25). Jesus was assisted by the power of the Spirit of God in his death (Heb 9:14) and above all in his resurrection by which he was seen now to be the Son of God in power (Eph 1:19,20; Rom 1:4) in contrast to the apparent weakness of his incarnation. His power is seen in its ‘immeasurable greatness’ (Eph 1:19), which is as close to saying ‘infinite’ as one could get, particularly in the resurrection of Christ.

The publication and application of redemption are also acts of the power of God – the disciples would receive power when the Spirit came upon them (Acts 1:8). The gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom 1:16) and is to be preached and received exclusively in the power of God so that faith is both created by and rests in his power (1 Cor 2:3-5). In 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 Paul draws a distinction between the power and wisdom, weakness and folly of the world and of God. Believers experience a measure of the transcendent fulness of his power, that we might grow in the inner man and have strength to know his incomprehensible love (2 Cor 4:7; Eph 1:19,20; 3:20-21) and achieve God’s purpose for us which is to be conformed to Christ. It is in his servant’s weakness especially that God’s power is apparent (2 Cor 4:7; 12:9,10).

The climax of history will be the return of the Lord Jesus Christ ‘in power and great glory’ (Matt 24:30).

Some Systematic Reflections

Personal Infinite God

The God of the Bible is personal and infinite. He is personal as one God as well as being three subsistences or persons as Triune. He is personal in essence. His attributes, or perfections, including his power, are one with his essence. The ‘power of God’ is ‘God powerful’. His essence is his attributes, and his attributes are his essence and his essence is personal. The simplicity of God demands this – all that is in God is God.

Power of One and of All

The persons of the Trinity are consubstantial, so they consist of the essence, therefore the attributes of God, in common. They are one, for example, in will and power. Will and power are not attributes God ‘has’, as if they were somehow distinct from his essence. God has no ‘parts’ (neither spiritual nor, of course, physical); this is what is called his ‘simplicity’.^[6] He is one; the three persons, meanwhile, are subsistences of the one essence; they are one in essence, therefore in will and power. Indivisible in essence, the persons are therefore indivisible in operations, working inseparably in creation, providence and salvation. Each person will have a particular ‘appropriation’ in the work, so the Father, Son and Spirit will each distinctively exercise power. Thus, we may say that the Father’s acts of power are seen in that all things proceed from him, the power of the Son in that all things are accomplished by him and the power of the Spirit in that all things are applied or completed by him. Thus, the same essential power of the one God is exercised in three presentations, or appropriations, so that truly opera ad extra trinitatis indivisa sunt^[7].

In the Bible, Christ is the power of God (1 Cor 1:24); the Father is ‘the Power’ (Jesus using a Jewish circumlocution for God to describe the Father – Matt 26:64; Mark 14:62) and the Spirit is the power of God (Mic 3:8; Luke 1:35; 5:17). Power is particularly associated with the Spirit for it is his work to bring the work the Father has initiated and the Son has accomplished to fruition (Acts 1:8). But as the Athanasian Creed says, “the Father is almighty, the Son almighty and the Holy Spirit almighty, and yet there are not three Almighties but one Almighty”.

But what does power mean within God? Classical Theism holds that the distinctions between the persons are derived from eternal relations of origin only (the unbegotten Father, the begotten Son and the Spirit who proceeds). Thus, eternal generation alone explains the Son’s eternal origin, without any subordination or difference of authority, or any hierarchy, within the ontological or immanent Trinity. The fundamental act of God in power is therefore his own self-existence, his aseity, and that is for eternity as all his attributes require his eternality. The eternal generation of the Son is also an exercise of power by the Father – an eternal exercise of divine power in the ‘appropriation’ of the Father. Father and Son together breathe the Spirit. “Generation and spiration – the two ‘emanations’ or processions in which we may discern the personal modes of the one God – are the manner in which God is limitlessly abundant life, reciprocity and ‘ineffable mutual delight’”.^[8] We might easily also say, ‘limitlessly abundant power’.

Power in Context: Character, Counsel, Covenant and Creation

God’s power is directed by both his will and his character. First, his power is wholly directed by his character, that is his love, holiness, righteousness and wisdom. Nothing he does is ever inconsistent with any of these or other attributes. God will never use power unrighteously, unwisely or unlovingly. Second, the exercise of God’s power is further directed by what he has determined (understood non-temporally) as to the end of all things, that is, by his eternal counsel or decree. There is an eternal plan in all things – to unite all things in Christ (Eph 1:10). Third, central to God’s counsel is covenant. Unlike the arbitrary and capricious gods of paganism, God acts righteously, rationally and consistently. He need not have entered a covenantal relationship with humanity but he condescended to do so, first with Adam in a covenant of works, then in a covenant of grace to save a people in Christ, pursuant to an intra-trinitarian covenant of redemption. God will save the people he elected in eternity and will be faithful to them through life and in death and in the consummation. His power is engaged in this context. Fourth, God’s power operates within the context of other powers in his creation. He has created human beings with free will, the ability to make significant decisions and God, while retaining absolute sovereignty, nonetheless works with the freedom he has created and honours the significance of will and power, for good or ill, in unbelief and faith, of his creatures. We are not puppets; he is not a puppet-master. The freest person to walk the earth was his Son, Jesus Christ. He demonstrated the proper use of freedom, which is to obey the Father. Power in the creature is to be exercised to this purpose, but the reality in a fallen world is horribly different.

Absolute and actual (ordinate) power

God’s power is not limited by any external thing, for anything apart from God is his creation and nothing created can thwart his purposes (Job 42:2). Nothing poses a threat to him; nothing limits him. He does whatever he pleases (Ps 115:3). But he could do a lot more than he does. His power is absolute in terms of what he could do, but of course he does not do all he could do. He does what in righteousness and wisdom he determines to do, what he decrees. This is called his ‘ordinate’ power, power applied to a given end. For example, Jesus could have called on his Father to send legions of angels to help him (absolute power) but he did not, so that Scripture would be fulfilled (Matt 26:53-4). His ordinate power is directed by his righteous will. Is anything too hard for the Lord? No. Will he therefore do everything he could do? No.

What God, Thankfully, Cannot Do

God cannot contradict his being, as in dying, which would be a contradiction of his necessary existence, of his eternity, of his spirituality and his aseity (self-sufficiency). God cannot contradict his character, for example by lying as he is the God of Truth (Tit 1:2). He cannot do anything that contradicts any of his attributes, for example his omniscience. He cannot change his mind (Scriptures that suggest he does are to be seen as his changing not his mind but his revelation of his mind to us, e.g. Gen 6:6, 1 Sam 15:11 but c.f. v 29). He cannot contradict his stated purposes, such as being unfaithful to his promises (2 Tim 2:13). God cannot do what contradicts the nature of reality – for example make a square circle or a rock too heavy for him to lift. Such logical contradictions are unknown to him so to do them would be to contradict his omniscience as well. From our perspective we might see these as ‘limitations’ on God’s exercise of his power but they are better seen as perfections of it, arising from his being, his character, his purposes or the nature of his creation. There are no weaknesses in God but only aspects of glory, for not to be able to die, or lie or be unfaithful or contradict his designs or purposes, is to be truly God.

God and Potential

While discussing God’s power (omnipotence) it is worth noting that God has no potential. A being with potential can grow and change. Neither is true of God. God is perfect and complete in every way. There is potential in what God determines to do in creation, but not within himself and, as we have seen, what he may do in creation would be acts of ordinate power, governed by the factors discussed above.

Power Defined

A typical definition of God’s power would be that of Stephen Charnock: “that ability and strength whereby he can bring to pass whatsoever he please”.^[9] His first exercise of power is his self-subsistence, his aseity. It is of his essence to be able to do all that he wills, and he will do what he wills in accordance with his character. Power is what God is, and it is how he accomplishes things. “Power belongs to God” (Ps 62:11 – alongside steadfast love). After celebrating some of the works of God in creation Job concludes, “Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?” (Job 26:11). The chapter begins however with “How you have helped him who has no power!” (26:1). Job is not addressing God but, sarcastically, his “worthless physicians” (13:4). It raises the question, from where does our power come?

God’s Power and Ours

“In him we live and move and have our being” Paul tells the Athenians, citing one of their own poets (Acts 17:28). We live by the power of God. All things were created and exist by his will (Rev 4:11) and of the Son it is said, “he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb 1:3). If this is true in creation and providence, then all the more so in redemption: “O Lord God of hosts, who is mighty as you are, O Lord…You have a mighty arm” (Ps 89:8,13), therefore “Blessed are the people who know the festal shout…For you are the glory of their strength; by your favour our horn is exalted” (89:15,17) – that is, God is the one who endows the king and his people with power. He delivers the weak (Ps 71:17-21) and helps his kings (20:6) and his prophets (Mic 3:8) and gives strength to his people (Zech 10:12). The strength of animals is his gift (Job 39:19,20); how much more the strength he gives his apostles to preach the gospel (Col 1:29; 1 Cor 15:10) and to enable sinners to receive it in regenerate hearts (Luke 18:26,27; John 3:5.6; 1 Cor 2:4,5,12; 2 Cor 5:17) and to love him (Eph 3:16-19). God’s power is the source and origin of our power. When his servants are weak, it is his power that is demonstrated to his glory (2 Cor 12:9,10). God’s people are not simply passive in relation to God’s power. He urges us to call upon him (Isa 62:6,7; Eph 6:18; Col 4:2,3; 1 Thess 5:17) and the prayers of the saints have real influence in the courts of heaven, even bringing God’s judgments on the earth (Rev 8:3-5).

Issues Concerning Power

Every sin is an abuse of power, a misdirection of the energy God gives us. It is true at the level of the individual, in family life, in society, in the state and in the church. At the cosmic level Satan is the arch abuser of power. We are accustomed to hearing of abuse of power in different spheres by totalitarian regimes, sexual predators and bullies. Whilst not ignoring the wider picture, I want to focus on what the church may learn about the abuse of power from the biblical presentation of God’s use of power and from analyses of power at work in the world.

Power and Sovereignty

If power is the ability and strength used to achieve one’s purpose (following Charnock’s definition of the power of God), authority is the institutional or structural context that legitimates the exercise of power. Sovereignty is the supreme rule in a society which normally enjoys authority to exercise power. Order is the end to which duly authorised sovereignty is justified in exercising power. God possesses sovereignty, authority and power to perfection and exercises them perfectly. We do not. Were God to rule us directly there would be no problem. However, he has ordained that in family, society and church there should be human government with varying forms of authority and sovereignty for the purpose of appropriate order. It would appear from the headship God gave Adam over Eve and creation (Gen 2:19-25; 1 Cor 11:3; Eph 5:22-33; 1 Tim 2:13,14) and the fact that there is authority in heaven (Matt 25:21,23; Luke 19:17,19) that some form of government was and would have been necessary even had there been no Fall, but certainly the Fall made government absolutely necessary and far more painful both to exercise and to be subject to.

What happens in human government? Too often power is exercised without or beyond the remit of legitimate authority, sovereignty becomes tyranny, and order becomes harsh control or even bondage. On the other hand, power may not be exercised adequately or at all, authority and sovereignty are ineffective, chaos and anarchy ensue.

What happened in Eden? Eve was deceived, Adam rebelled, power was exercised against the God who gives it. Behind power is an act of will informed by a mind with a certain picture of reality, in Adam’s case and forever after a distorted view of reality informed by Satan’s double lie – you shall be as God, you shall not die. This was rebellion against sovereignty and authority; disorder ensued. God did not exercise power to stop this rebellion because it was within his decree that it happen. Here is an example of what looks like a strange inertia, a non-exercise of power when action seems called for. God is exercising power only within the parameters of his decree. He of course swings into action after the Fall – the encounter in the Garden, the imposition of the curse, the promise of grace (the protevangelium, Gen 3:15), the expulsion from Eden. God acts in accordance with his decree and his character, exhibiting righteousness and grace in perfect harmony. His sovereignty and authority remain intact, and power is exercised to restore order (redemption) in creation. 

Power Absolute and Ordinate in Practice

God does not do all that he could. Absolute power refers to all that God could do, limited only by not contradicting his being or character. Ordained or ordinate power is what God actually does. The distinction is not without practical relevance. One of the effects of medieval nominalism was to drive something of a wedge between the will of God and his character.^[10] In Sovereignty: God, State and Self,^[11] American philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain discusses the relationship between God’s power and his other attributes, notably his will. The God of Augustine and Aquinas never acted in capricious ways, she argues, but ‘voluntarism’ developed in the late middle ages in which God is particularly characterised by omnipotence and freedom, his will being primary among his attributes. The result is a God who is more likely to exercise power in arbitrary ways: “Medieval scholars argue that this idea exacted a severe cost, namely, that it diminished the intelligibility of the world and threw medieval thought and practice into a whirlwind of controversy from which it never recovered. For example, if God can act contrary to what we have come to understand as natural law, where does that leave earthly power and the understanding of selves?”^[12] Whereas Thomism appealed to reason rather than authority, and Augustine appealed to love, the new emphasis on God’s sovereignty, whilst revering God, meant his actions (for example, creation) became primarily acts of will rather than of reason or love.

The voluntaristic God, argues Elshtain, led to the voluntaristic prince. The seeds of absolute monarchy (epitomised in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan) reflected a view of God that saw his exercise of power unbound by his righteous character. William of Ockham, the leading nominalist, taught that “no act [is] evil except as prohibited by God and which cannot be made good if it be commanded by God”, a doctrine “promoted and advanced by such as thinking nothing so essential to the Deity as uncontrollable power and arbitrary will”.^[13]

Of course, it is right to say that an act is right if God commands it, but it is only so because the will of God acts in perfect harmony with his righteous character (and so could never be ‘evil’). Unlike Ockham, Aquinas, says Elshtain,

Retained the inner connection between God’s reason, justice and love, and the manner in which God wills. God’s omnipotence remains but he is bound in ways accessible to human reason and through the workings of grace. God’s will is just, insisted Aquinas. It follows that God can do nothing contrary to his nature and to what he has ordained. God’s ordained power offers a world that is stable and knowable: God will not pull the rug out from under us.^[14]

Elshtain concludes,

Suffice to say that with post-Ockham theology, God is less frequently represented as the fullness of reason and goodness than as the site of sovereign will. This latter vision came to dominate sovereignty talk and helped to lay the basis for the juristic conception of the state when man decided that he, too, could be sovereign in this way.^[15]

Ockham effectively said that absolute and ordained powers are one. He opposed the increasingly totalitarian direction of papal power but by concentrating attention on the sovereignty and authority of God, he ironically created the tools for absolutism to increase.

In all this one sees the danger of isolating or prioritizing the will, the ‘sovereignty principle’. The simplicity of God means that this can never happen with him. The will which moves power will always act in concert with the other attributes. With fallen human beings, too, the will moves in concert with our sinful character – we are free, but the will is not, bound to our fallen nature. Where the will is exalted, ironically it becomes more in bondage to the flesh. Think of the temptation of Christ (Matt 4:1-11) – Satan was trying to tempt Jesus to an independent exercise of power, wrenched free from his mission and call to obedience to the Father.

It would be simplistic to say that this is behind all cases of abuse of power, but it may explain much. Perhaps authority, sovereignty, power, the ‘man of action’, are venerated too much; the will is exalted over other aspects of personhood and character. The will has traditionally been portrayed as autonomous – hence ‘free will’, as if it could be separated from the mind and from the nature of the person. This can however degenerate into a love of power, and indeed the ‘will to power’. Men (or women) in positions of leadership, in society or church, can be particularly prone to separating the ability and energy to do something (power), from the moral character that should govern their behaviour. At the personal level it is seen in sexual abuse or bullying, at the political level in the lurch towards totalitarianism. Power corrupts, as Lord Acton said – or rather, it manifests the corruption of the flesh.

What can be done? At the structural level, forms of government that share power should be created. A biblical blend of democracy, aristocracy and monarchy (the many, the few and the one) is familiar enough in Protestant churches and in western politics and can work well. But at the personal level, perhaps we should indeed remind ourselves of the inseparability in God of power and will, reason, love and other attributes. So also, by us, should power be exercised in righteousness for the glory of God and the good of his people. True godliness reflects divine simplicity – one should perhaps call it ‘integrity’.^[16]

The triune nature of God also helps us here. Elshtain reports that in the fourteenth century “it was common for theologians to maintain that the Father has a form of absolute power that is beyond the power of the Son and the Spirit”.^[17] The equality of the three fades in favour of the absolutism of the one. The communal context of power is lost within God and then in the church. A firm grasp of the truth that God is both simple (his attributes are one essence and indivisible) and triune, keeps power in the proper context.

Power and Knowledge

The relation between power and truth is manifold. For example, does power decide what is true or not? Is might, right? In his lectures Truth and Juridical Forms, Michel Foucault recounts from the Greek play Oedipus Rex a chariot race between Menelaus and Antilochus. There is an infringement at the turn where there is a man placed to make sure the rules are followed. Menelaus lodges a protest against Antilochus who has won the race. How is the truth to be established? We might think – call the witness, the umpire on the spot. But no, Antilochus is challenged to swear by Zeus that he did not commit a foul. He refuses to do so thus giving himself away.^[18] So how is truth established? Not by evidence but by a test that has no inherent relation to the issue to be resolved at all. It is a trial, a kind of power play, relying on a religious worldview and regard for conscience. It is an appeal to the gods / God as judge. In premodern times, guilt and innocence were established not by evidence but by ordeal – such as clutching a red-hot coal or being ducked in water. However irrational they seem (and became), these were originally not superstition but appeals to the God who knows all things and is our ultimate judge. One thinks of the test for adultery in Numbers 5:11-31 where the priest writes a curse and washes it off into water in which there is dust from the floor of the tabernacle. Here is God revealing the truth through ritual.

The Bible has many instances however where truth is not so much revealed as validated and established by power. Who is the true prophet? For example, in Egypt? The Exodus is, after creation, the greatest display of power in the Old Testament and power displays (miracles) accredit the servant of God, Moses, by whose hand God does miracles. Miracles attest to the authority of prophets, including Jesus the greatest of all (Acts 2:22, where “mighty works” translates dunameis c.f. Matt 11:10ff; Mark 6:2; Luke 19:37) and his apostles (2 Cor 12:12 – the “signs of a true apostle”).^[19]

The Bible therefore shows God using acts of power to accredit his servants and these are different from ‘magic’: they are done by the word, they are signs that point to the greater work of salvation or new creation, and they are performed in response to faith. Power supports the word and the work of the word and points to the God who performs it.

Displays of divine power therefore presuppose that relativism has no place in God’s world. There is a difference between the truth and falsehood and God will demonstrate that. The final demonstration of that distinction will be the final judgment at the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. Power does not reveal the truth but it does bear witness to it. The reality of absolute truth means too that truth can challenge power – the role of the prophet.

The relationship of power and knowledge has been brought to the fore by Michel Foucault, perhaps the most important philosopher on power in recent times. His radical relativism meant that there was no truth that stood above power. “Truth”, Foucault says, “is ‘a thing of this world’ – meaning truth exists or is given and recognised only in worldly forms” and no means of verification used to determine truth are available to us in forms which we know to be definitive.^[20] According to one scholar, he wanted “to generate doubt and discomfort” in the process of “extending our capacity for suspicion”^[21] but he was not saying that all power was evil, just that it was dangerous . We have to avoid the Scylla of paranoia and universal suspicion and the Charybdis of a compulsive quest for foundationalist certainties and guarantees, both of which (in his view) impede the rational and responsible work of careful investigation.^[22] The problem for the relativist of course is that it is not possible to stand outside this network to challenge power with an objective Truth.

Very simply, for Foucault, what a group in power determined was true, and becomes ‘knowledge’. Foucault was not saying this is how it should be, but simply analysing how things were. He wanted to expose the power networks that lurked behind the supposed objectivity of science, politics and religion. We are familiar with the trope that ‘knowledge is power’; for Foucault ‘power is knowledge’, though in neither case do we mean the two things are identical. Foucault did not assert that ‘power equates to knowledge’ – he insistently denied that this is what he was saying – but he did argue that they were inseparable: “the formation of knowledge and the increase of power regularly reinforce one another in a circular process”.^[23] His claim is that power relations stand behind both institutions and stated ideals.^[24] In society, knowledge develops within, and masks, power networks. Truth claims are power grabs. Spheres of knowledge (and Foucault particularly examined the social management of madness, sexuality and penal systems) emerge within the practice of power, and power relations in which we live form us as individuals. “Government”, for Foucault, is “the conduct of others’ conduct”.^[25] He once said, “nothing is more untenable than a political regime which is indifferent to truth; but nothing is more dangerous than a political system that claims to prescribe the truth”.^[26]

He most fully worked out his thinking on ‘power-knowledge’^[27] in Discipline and Punish, a history of penal systems and prison. Foucault sees three stages of penal system, the pre-modern (characterised by torture), the early modern (18^th century – the era of punishment) and the modern (19^th and 20^th centuries – the era of discipline). The shocking thing, says Foucault, is that this last phase is no better than the earlier, to us perhaps more primitive and crueller, forms of punishment. All are forms of control and oppression. All that changes is the mechanisms and technologies of power. Power relations are integral to society; history is the “endlessly repeated play of dominations”, the only drama being staged.^[28] The prison is a microcosm, Foucault is saying, of society itself.

For Foucault his view of power is epitomized by the Panopticon of Jeremy Bentham^[29] (whom he regarded as more important for our society than Kant or Hegel).^[30] In Bentham’s model for a prison, every prisoner is isolated in a small room where they all may be observed at all times by a single person in the central tower. Each person can be seen but cannot see the observer or each other. The system combines visibility (total, of the individual) and unverifiability (he never knows whether he is being watched or not by the observer – who is in effect invisible^[31]). Bentham envisioned the same arrangement for prisons, factories, schools, barracks, hospitals and madhouses. He also acknowledged that it did not matter who governed the Panopticon or according to what moral code – it was effective as a system of control, not just a “dream building” but “the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form…a figure of political technology…’.^[32] This is how Foucault applies Bentham’s idea, more widely than as a prison:

The Panopticon is a ring-shaped building in the middle of which there is a yard with a tower at the center. The ring is divided into little cells that face the interior and exterior alike. In each of these little cells there is, depending on the purpose of each institution, a child learning to write, a worker at work, a prisoner correcting himself, a madman living his madness. In the central tower there is an observer. Since each cell faces both the inside and the outside, the observer’s gaze can traverse the whole cell; there is no dimly lit space, so everything the individual does is exposed to the gaze of an observer…The Panopticon is the utopia of a society and a type of power that is basically the society we are familiar with at present, a utopia that was actually realized …We are a society where panopticism reigns.^[33]

Moreover, asserts Foucault, in such a society power rests not on inquiry (the judicial form whereby truth was traditionally ascertained) but on ‘surveillance’ (supervision) and ‘examination’. Inquiry was interested in what happened. Supervision and examination are interested not in reconstituting an event in the past to ascertain whether it deserved punishment or not (that is, has a crime been committed?), but in whether someone is behaving as he should in accordance with norms or rules. Norms are a major tool of control – ditch norms to obtain freedom.

The difference between ‘inquiry’ and ‘surveillance’ may seem slight but think of the difference between a crime and ‘anti-social behaviour’, or police recording non-crime hate incidents. Does Foucault have a point? Such surveillance, he says, grows to make “the punishment and repression of illegalities a regular function, co-extensive with society”.^[34] Do we think perhaps of all-seeing CCTV cameras?

The plague-ridden city, for Foucault, is the ideal demonstration of the disciplinary society,^[35] where complete control, regulated organisation and constant surveillance, are seen in full bloom, the disciplinarian’s dream. We might, in an uncharitable mood, call it totalitarianism. We might, in an even more uncharitable moment, think of the Covid era, where supposed knowledge kicked power into action, and then power created an environment where knowledge developed and on the basis of that knowledge, shared by an elite, decisions were made, laws were promulgated, people were ruled. Raison d’état is perhaps a valid principle in emergencies and at moments of urgent national security, but it can easily become accepted as normal.

James K.A. Smith uses the 1975 film One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest to illustrate power as Foucault sees it.^[36] Set in a mental hospital, strategies aimed toward cure are in fact systems of control. The hospital is a machine that ‘works over’ its patients by its power. From a glass-enclosed nurse’s station, Nurse Ratched keeps watch over the ward like a warden from a prison watchtower. Institutional power is portrayed as attempting to whitewash its mechanisms with paternalistic claims about ‘cure’ and ‘the good of the patient’.^[37] This is precisely Foucault’s point about the principles driving penal systems. They may not be as harsh today in terms of punishment but they are about control. And those same principles are applied in other institutions, indeed in society at large: “all of us…are subject to mechanisms of control and repression’.^[38] Different eras result in different configurations of society, but they result only in different constellations of power. Whether torture, punishment or discipline, all aim at control. Power is unavoidable and constitutive of society; one cannot have society that is not fundamentally characterised by power relations. Power, for Foucault, means force relations, relations of domination, control of one group by another.

We may think Foucault’s thesis gloomy in the extreme, driven by a neo-Marxist hermeneutic of suspicion, perhaps indeed the ultimate conspiracy theory: the whole of society is one big power grab, Big Brother out to control you.^[39] ‘In power-knowledge we live and move and have our being’ might be his text. One may think all he is doing is describing the impact of culture and our environment on us. What he does do however is to alert us to culture as the presence of power, and our role as subjects within that context.

Foucault did have something to say about the church, as he saw the late Middle Ages (15^th and 16^th centuries) as the time when the idea of ‘pastoral government’, the “idea that each individual should be governed in a relationship to truth, composed of dogma”,^[40] extending over secular society. In The Subject and Power,^[41] Foucault asserts that the modern western state integrated into a new shape Christian ‘pastoral power’, pointing out that Christianity is the only religion that has organised itself into a Church (he has the Roman Catholic Church in the forefront of his mind). It is a form of power whose ultimate aim is individual salvation in the next world; is prepared to sacrifice itself for the flock, as well as to command – so is different from royal power; that looks after each individual, not only the whole community, throughout life; that cannot be exercised without knowing the inside of people’s minds, exploring their souls and knowing their consciences, with an ability to direct it; and is ‘oblative’ (directed at worship). Though no longer widely effective in its ecclesiastical form, this type of power has spread, argues Foucault, and multiplied outside the Church and informs the post-medieval state, healthcare, the workplace, penal systems, education, sanatoriums and the military. It became co-extensive with and central to what Foucault calls the ‘disciplinary’ society.^[42] The goal of ‘pastoral power’ became this-worldly; the officials of power increased, taking in police, private benefactors, philanthropists, healthcare officials and many others.

So, while Foucault has no particular love for Christianity,^[43] he does see that it is in a secularised form that ‘pastoral power’ has developed and become a network of ‘force-relations’. What he is suspicious of more fundamentally, however, is what this ‘pastoral power’ has grown into. Foucault is describing a ubiquitous presence of knowledge and power whereby one group dominates others. In the apocalyptic words of his younger contemporary, Bernard-Henry Lévy, “total power is synonymous with total knowledge, and the shadow of Bentham’s panopticon looms large over all modern societies”.^[44]

But, contra Foucault, all-power and all-knowledge exist only in God. When power is abused by man you have the horrors of which he speaks, though we could point to societies where cruel domination is not inherent/endemic. In God alone however are omniscience and omnipotence pure and simple; by God alone are knowledge and power perfectly harmonised and put to perfect use.

What do we see in our churches? The pastoral gaze will caringly look after the flock but must not become the surveillance of panopticism. We know in part and will be satisfied with that. Power must be exercised in accordance with character. Unlike an atheist we need not be relativists. Our power is sourced by and subject to a higher power, and our knowledge is subject to a higher truth.

It is salutary to acknowledge however that our knowledge (the truth by which we live) will be formed to some extent within human power networks and is not as pure as we may like to think. The way a leadership or a church culture over the years, or even generations, produces a kind of Christian subculture by which it operates (not always harmfully of course) should be addressed by Scripture. The Reformed church must always be reforming. It should be of concern to us because whatever ‘discipline’ characterises our churches, will become co-extensive with the church and such cultures create us as individuals and if there is abuse of power that will detrimentally affect those living within that network. Power is productive, for good or ill. Aware that our culture will greatly influence the people we are, we must create healthy church cultures and put in place counter measures – counter-knowledge, counter-disciplines and so a counter-culture.

Power in Weakness: The Cross

When Jeroboam asked Rehoboam to treat Israel kindly, Rehoboam’s older advisers advised him to “be a servant” to them; his younger men encouraged him to oppress them further. Rehoboam followed the latter course, and in the providence of God the kingdom split (1 Kings 12:1-16). Two different ways of using power: to serve, or to oppress. Foucault would have immediately recognised Rehoboam’s response, a stereotypical ‘force-relation’. The way of service however is not so common or popular; indeed, by such as Nietzsche (a considerable influence on Foucault) it would be derided as Christian weakness and folly.

Yet as Christians we cannot consider power without considering Christ, and we cannot consider Christ without turning to the cross. We want to look more now at power at the cross, before closing with power in the church.

To recap a little: Power in the Bible is reflected in God’s names, and demonstrated in creation, providence and redemption. At every stage God acts through Christ, through whom all things were made (John 1:3, Col 1:16) and in whom they hold together (Col 1:17). All things are reconciled to God by him through the cross (Col 1:20). In all his dealings with creation God’s exercise of power is qualified: by his character so that he does nothing discordant with his holiness and love; by his counsel, for his decree directs all he does; by covenant, for he relates to creation and notably to his redeemed people by covenant; and by the nature of creation, for though he can work without and against means, he will never act in such a way as to contradict the nature of what he has made. God exercises and directs his power within his chosen channels.

There is however a being in creation who opposes God, yet never outside God’s sovereignty or counsel. He is called variously “the adversary” (“Satan”, e.g. Job 1:6-9), “the slanderer” (“the devil”, e.g. Matt 4:1), “the enemy” (Matt 13:25) or “the destroyer” (“Apollyon”, Rev 9:11) amongst other names. He and his cohorts are called “the rulers…the authorities… cosmic powers over this present darkness…the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12; c.f. 2:2; John 12:31). His story spans the Bible, from his presence in Eden in the guise of a serpent, to being cast into the lake of fire prepared for him (Gen 3:1; Rev 20:10; Matt 25:41). The work of Christ in redemption is described as to destroy him and his works (1 John 3:8, Heb 2:11). But how would this be done?

In the Incarnation God performs arguably the greatest act of power to that point in the conception by the Spirit of his Son within the womb of Mary (“the power of the Most High will overshadow you”, Luke 1:35) uniting the eternal Word with a sinless human nature so that the God-man is born. It was of the essence of Jesus’ life and ministry that he obey the Father (John 4:34, 17:4; Heb 10:7). He obeyed even to death, death on a cross (Phil 2:8). In doing so, though never relinquishing anything of being God except the unclouded enjoyment of glory, he took on also the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men (Phil 2:6-8). Thus, to display power was never in itself primary or central in the work of Christ; all was in the service of, a means to, obediently carrying out the redemptive purposes of God. Indeed, the devil’s temptation of Christ (Matt 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13) was to get him to exercise power rather than accept the role of humble and human dependence and obedience that alone would accomplish the work of redemption. “If you are the Son of God…” (Matt 4:3,6) is an invitation to exercise independent power, the sovereignty principle. Christ does not succumb.

This obedience would lead him to the cross, as Paul says (Phil 2:8). Redemption needed the exercise of power but only in the service of righteousness. What divine power was exercised at the cross? The power of Jesus’ will, moved by love, is immense. Further, it was by the Spirit that Christ was enabled to offer himself without blemish to God (Heb 9:14). But redemption required the satisfaction of God’s law, both in terms of precept (Christ as God-man perfectly obeyed the law of God thus providing a perfect righteousness to the Father and for imputation to his people) and of penalty (bearing the just punishment for the sins of his people thus removing from them the wrath of God). The real battle with the evil one was not a power display but a provision of righteousness that met all the demands of God, not “by the sheer power of a king, but by the sacrifice of a priest to make propitiation for our sins” (Heb 2:17).^[45] Satan’s greatest threat over sinners is eternal damnation for unforgiven sin, hence his determination to accuse the saints (Rev 12:10-12). Thus, Satan is cast down for now he has no more claim over God’s people (John 12:31; Rev 12:7-12). Thus, the crucified Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, and God’s weakness (at the cross) is shown to be stronger than man’s strength (1 Cor 1:24,25). The saints’ victory over Satan is “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death” (Rev 12:11).

There was on the third day a mighty act of power in Jesus’ resurrection, for by it he was declared Son of God in power (Rom 1:4). And when he returns, there will an immense display of power in his appearing, the resurrection of all people, the final judgment and in bringing in the new heaven and new earth.

Power in the Church

Meanwhile what of the proper exercise of power in the church? We have seen that the key to the right exercise of God’s power is that he only exercises power in accordance with his character and his purposes. Moreover, the power we need to see exercised in church must be his power graciously and righteously exercised. Therefore, we see the purpose of power.

The Purpose of Power

In the era of redemption, the purpose of power from a Christian perspective in the world and the church is to unite all things in Christ (Eph 1:10), in particular the restoration of fallen human beings into union and communion with God in him. This entails restoring in us the image of God. Foucault’s analysis of power as a ubiquitous network of force relations is insightful about the world as it is but gives no guidance as to how power should be used. The direction of others’ conduct (Foucault’s understanding of government) is not in itself a bad thing, but everything depends on what it is aimed at and how it is done.

In the church God is aiming, penultimate to his own glory, at the restoration of sinners into his image and the image of his Son (Rom 8:29; Eph 4:23,24; Col 3:10) or as Paul says elsewhere, until “Christ is formed in you” (Gal 4:19) or believers are “mature in Christ” (Col 1:28). This means the perfection of holiness and love (Eph 1:4; 3:17-19; 1 Cor 13:13; 1 Jn 3:2,3,23; 4:7).

Foucault’s understanding of pastoral power in its early ecclesiastical context is not inaccurate in its assessment of what this means: to do with salvation, involving the inner person, requiring sacrifice, aiming at worship. Using the Bible, however, rather than Foucault as our guide, the aim of pastoral care/government/use of power is the restoration of sinners to fellowship with and the worship of God under the government of God: “The Lord reigns…Exalt the Lord our God; worship at his footstool! Holy is he!” (Ps 99:1,5). We belong to God, we are to be restored to him: “It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise” (Ps 100:3,4); “Worthy are you our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” (Rev 4:11). It is for his flock that Christ died and that elders are called to live and die (John 1:11; Acts 20:28). Therefore, pastoral care is a means to the end of bringing a sanctified people into the presence of God, ultimately to see God.

This means perfect freedom for a person, as we will see below. Our moral quality must be holiness with love, our nature the renewed image of God in Christ, our disposition and activity worship, our relation to all other creatures, one of freedom (not meaning isolation). The environment to be created in churches is freedom, not oppression. Pastoral ministry, while always being personal, is to be as unobtrusive as possible so that the Spirit’s power is free to work in our worship, preaching and government. This means that the spiritual nature of the work must be ever kept in the foreground. The aim is spiritual, the means must be spiritual. Things go wrong in churches when a human, measurable, quantifiable goal usurps the place of the goals God has set and when ungodly means of achieving those goals usurp those that God has ordained. How then is power to be rightly exercised? 

The Exercise of Power

If the purpose of power is to bring us to God, the exercise of power must be to allow God’s power to work in his people. We can trace this in terms of character, counsel, covenant, creation and cross.

First, the character of the one exercising power must be godly, reflecting both the nature and the character of the God he serves. As the sinner’s life grows out of his sinful nature, so the regenerate character grows out of the renewed nature – or should do. Godliness therefore reflects simplicity – complete harmony of being. Power must be exercised in accordance with that godly character. The will must not be elevated above the character. Sovereignty is of the Lord, not a church leader.

Second, there is an overall plan we are following – God’s counsel or determination to unite all things in Christ (Eph 1:10). Led by Scripture and the Spirit we know what we are aiming at. We seek therefore to present everyone mature in Christ (Col 1:28).

Third, power must be exercised in accordance with the covenantal purposes of God – seeking to bring sinners into the new covenant and all its benefits (see e.g. Heb 8:10-12), then applying the principles of new covenant ministry to foster their growth in Christ. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians, these means are fundamentally Spirit (2 Cor 3:3,17; c.f. Zech 4:6 – “Not by might nor by power but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts”)^[46] and Word (4:2-6; 10:3,4)^[47]. What the Spirit brings is freedom (2 Cor 3:17) in the sense of freedom from bondage to sin and death but here probably particularly from the law as a means of justification (the covenant of works refracted through the old covenant); and the Spirit transforms the believer into Christ’s image (v18). Nor should we forget here that the Lord’s Supper is the meal of the new covenant (Matt 26:28; 1 Cor 11:25).

Fourth, power must be used in accordance with the created nature of human beings – to be inviolate by human engineering. The pastoral task is the exercise of power to shepherd the soul (Heb 13:17 – your leaders are “keeping watch over your souls”; and 1 Pet 2:25 – Christ is the “Shepherd and Overseer of your souls”). But that does not mean that only the soul is precious or that the body is of no importance. Far from it, the spiritual life is to be lived out in the body, the sins of the body are to be mortified, the body is to be used for righteousness (Rom 6:12-20 – where Paul again speaks of freedom – this time freedom from bondage to sin’s dominion). The body itself will one day be transformed, to be like Christ’s glorious body (Phil 3:21). To say it is a spiritual ministry, is not at all to deny or devalue the physical but to remember that it is first of all the human being as before God – coram Deo – that is the focus of pastoral care, and that the soul/mind/heart is the engine room of the new life and the matrix of divine power. The life that is nurtured there will be active in the home, at work, in church, in politics, in society – and to none of these will the pastor be indifferent though his influence in each case will be more or less indirect.

When does the exercise of power go wrong? When official power (that is, of one in legitimate office, an elder or deacon) is abused and decisions or actions are forced on an individual or a congregation; or when unofficial power, such as the power of relationship, exploiting people’s deference to authority or unwillingness to oppose their leaders or dislike of confrontation, is relied on to achieve a goal. There are many aspects to this – lovelessness, ambition, pride, the ‘Diotrephes’ syndrome, wanting to be first (3 John 9), managerial models of ministry – but much would be avoided if (i) church leaders were to remember that the flock belongs to the Lord, not to them – “It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” (Ps 100:3); the flock does not belong to the undershepherd; (ii) the aim of their charge is fundamentally spiritual, love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith (1 Tim 1:5). Thus, results cannot easily be measured though fruit can be seen.

In addition, pastoral care must be aware of the networks of power in which people live and which influence their thinking – indeed to some extent, create them. We think, for example, of the materialism of the west or the sexualisation of young people and children. Most mass media aims to create an audience for marketing; the provision of communication, information and services, ostensibly the primary service on offer, is only ancillary to that main goal. We are familiar with the extensive grasp of Meta, Alexa or Siri, X or Instagram. Here is power-knowledge at work, a culture forming minds and perhaps especially young minds.^[48] Are we able to produce counter-cultures? Do we have a counter-knowledge/truth to convey and counter-power to apply? James K.A. Smith describes the way in which marketing capitalises on human desires and uses tools of what Foucault would call ‘disciplinary practice’ to create its audience: making us internalise its values, using techniques of repetition, images and other strategies, communicating truth in ways that are rarely propositional or cognitive, so that we become the kind of person who wants that car, that beer, those clothes or that holiday. The covertness of the operation (the invisibility of power) and its apparent neutrality are what make it so powerful.^[49]

Within churches also, as mentioned before, power-knowledge develops. Notice the way Paul uses in his letters vocabulary such as freedom, slavery or captivity. The situation in Colosse was challenged by Paul thus: “See to it that no-one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ” (Col 2:8). Or in the Galatian churches where Judaistic legalism was eating out the freedom of the gospel, where false brothers “had slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery” (Gal 2:4). “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (5:1). Or in Ephesus, where Paul assures his readers that Christ is seated in heaven and rules “above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above very name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Eph 1:21) and that we are to see where the real “powers” against us are ranged, in the heavenlies, and we are to stand against them in Christ and in the armour of God (6:10-20). Pastoral work is to liberate sinners and Christians from various power-knowledge networks to realise their true freedom, to come under the government of God, to worship him through Christ and in the Spirit. Perfect freedom may perhaps be seen as the finite, dependent ‘imprint’ of divine aseity in that, if aseity is God’s independence, so true freedom in Christ is creaturely independence from bondage to sin, Satan, death, and all false gods and ideologies. We are liberated from false lords and powers to depend solely on the true God. The more dependent on him we are, the more free we are. It is an imprint of his aseity, not an imitation of it, because of course we are dependent and God is not, but it is a creaturely independence. 

Counter-formation is an important part of our task. Let us lead worship reverently (Heb 12:28) in Spirit and truth, according to the word, observing the sacraments. We have a crisis of worship in western evangelicalism, as if how we worship were more or less up to us and our preferences – which is to create another human power-knowledge network. We need to recover the regulative principle as a principle of liberation, seeking God’s kingdom and righteousness before all else, substituting the true God for our idols. Thus will the image of God be renewed in us, in the context of the church; we become the people of God in company with one another, not alone.

But the method of helping people to achieve this is by producing freedom for them, realising that the work is God’s. When church leaders impose their own goals and visions, then people become fodder for merely human power and tragedy results. Doing God’s work with God’s people must be done in God’s way; then the power will be God’s and the glory will be his (2 Cor 12:9-10). This entails duly-appointed men called and commissioned to the ministry of word and sacrament, engaged in the task of shepherding established by God (Ezek 34:1-16; John 21:15-17; Acts 20:28; 1 Pet 5:1-5) who will work with the flock for their joy (2 Cor 1:24).

The Christian is not merely passive in relation to God’s power. In prayer, impotence takes hold of omnipotence. The child leans on the Father, in reverence and dependence, calling for his kingdom to come and his will to be done, recognising his need for even simple daily provision, as well as mercy for our sins and protection from evil (Matt 6:9-13). We pray for the preaching of the gospel (Eph 6:18,19) and for the Holy Spirit’s constant influence in our midst (Rom 12:12). If we want to experience God’s power, we will be people of prayer.

Fifth, and finally, at every point we find that the cross is integral to pastoral living, as Paul outlines in 2 Corinthians. “My power is made perfect in weakness” was the truth of the cross of Christ. It is the truth for Christian living. And as Paul particularly means in context, it is the truth behind pastoral work. As even Foucault saw, and church leaders sometimes forget, sacrifice is integral to pastoral care. Pain does not have to be sought; merely obey – this was the heartbeat of Jesus’ life and death. Obedience is the way of love and righteousness, of serving rather than being served, of dying daily, of being “content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities”. For God’s power is made perfect in weakness: “when I am weak then I am strong”. Then the power of God is made perfect; then the power of Christ rests on me (2 Cor 12:9,10). Thus, his work is done in his way.

 

Footnotes

^[1] 1 Corinthians 1:22–24 (ESV).

^[2] Lord Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 5th April. Transcript of, published in Historical Essays and Studies, edited by J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (London: Macmillan, 1907).

^[3]  Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Penguin edition, translated by Alan Sheridan, 1991; first published as Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison; Éditions Gallimard, 1975), 27.

^[4]  El Shaddai, x 48 in the OT, x 31 in Job; in the New Testament pantokrator, 2 Cor 6:18, x 8 in Revelation.

^[5]  Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, abridged by Geoffrey K. Bromiley (Wm B Eerdmans, 1959) 187, s.v. dynamai.

^[6]  For example, Thomas Torrance writes, ‘His power is not different from his nature, for it is the power of his nature, the power of his Being in action, the power of what he is in his Being and ever will be. He is God the Father Almighty…We cannot even think of God’s power from any point above him or apart from what he actually is’. The Christian Doctrine of God, (T&T Clark, 2001) p 204-05.

^[7] “The external works of the Trinity are undivided.”

^[8]  John Webster, ‘Trinity and Creation,’ in God without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology, Vol. 1: God and the Works of God (T&T Clark, 2016), 89. The internal quotation is John Owen, ‘Christologia,’ in The Works of John Owen (Banner of Truth edition) vol. 1, 18. The eternal, ceaseless nature of generation and procession must be remembered; they are not acts in time, nor acts which originate in the will of God so much as in his nature: ‘in accordance with nature but not thereby lacking in freedom’ (Webster, ‘Eternal Generation’, God without Measure, vol 1, p 35). Nor of course do they imply subordination of the Son or the Spirit to the Father.

^[9]  Stephen Charnock, Discourses on the Existence and Attributes of God, vol. 2 (Baker Book House (reprint): 1993) 13.

^[10]  From Platonism, medieval theology held to the notion that Forms had real existence, for example, humanness, canineness, felineness, in which the common nature of humans, dogs and cats was anchored. These forms could by Christians be seen as rooted in the eternal Logos. This belief in ‘real’ universals was called ‘Realism’. William of Ockham (c 1287-1347) believed that an extra-terrestrial realm of such universals was not real, nor necessary. For him, universals were only names (hence ‘nominalism’) and we are to look only at particular things as having objective reality. We do not need any factor other than the mind and individual things to explain the universals. Two dogs may be alike, as may two men, but they do not share a common nature. So, one asks, if this similarity between two men is not the result of a shared universal, why are they so similar? The reason is: the will of God. This emphasis on God’s free and sovereign will, or ‘voluntarism’, traceable to Duns Scotus (1265-1308) thus developed alongside nominalism. See Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The weaving of a sacramental tapestry (Eerdmans, 2011), chapter 4, pp 79-82, for a helpful discussion.

^[11]  Jean Bethke Elshtain, Sovereignty: God, State and Self (Basic Books: 2008).

^[12]  Ibid., 35

^[13]  As summarised by Ralph Cudworth, a Cambridge Platonist of the 17th century, cited in Elshtain, Sovereignty: God, State and Self, 40.

^[14]  Ibid., 22.

^[15]  Ibid,. p 27.

^[16]  I am not suggesting we can perfectly reflect God’s simplicity; apart from anything else, we have ‘parts’ – at the very least we are ‘body and soul’; God does not and is not.

^[17]  Elshtain, Sovereignty: God, State and Self, 26.

^[18]  Michel Foucault, Power: Essential Works 1954-84 (Penguin Books:2002), 17,18.

^[19]  Not all miracles attest the truth however, for false prophets can perform counterfeit signs (Deut. 13:1-5). The primary test is ‘is this man speaking the word of God?’ A straightforward test was given by God: does what this man says come to pass (Deut 18:20-22). More fundamentally, has he stood in the council of the Lord (Jer 23:18)?

^[20]  Colin Gordon, Introduction in James D. Faubion ed. Michel Foucault: Power: Essential Works 1954-84 (p xviii.

^[21]  Gordon, Ibid., p xvii.

^[22]  Gordon, Ibid., p xix.

^[23]  Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 224.

^[24]  James K.A. Smith, Who’s afraid of Postmodernism? (Baker Academic, 2006), 877.

^[25]  See Foucault, ‘The Subject and Power’, in Power: Essential Works, 341.

^[26]  Cited by Gordon, Michel Foucault: Power: Essential Works, xxxix-xl, from a late interview by Foucault.

^[27]  Which may, tentatively, be defined thus: ‘power-knowledge is the cognitive content behind acts of power, characterising regimes or individuals in power, which informs, motivates and directs power acts, by which the regime/individual seeks to control, and which it seeks to impose upon, those under its jurisdiction, and which then escalate into further impositions of knowledge and power’.

^[28]  Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”, in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, Ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 142; cited in Smith, op cit., 87.

^[29]  Discipline and Punish, chapter 3. He calls the Panopticon the “architectural figure” of the disciplinary society, op cit, 200. Foucault writes: “Discipline…is a type of power…comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures…a technology”; and claims that it may be taken over by many kinds of institutions, so a “disciplinary society” is formed (p215-16). It reduces people as political forces and maximises them as useful forces, (p221). Historically Foucault traced the development of ‘mechanisms of discipline’ (as opposed to ‘punishment’) throughout the 17^th and 18^th centuries (p209). He asserts that in England it was ‘private religious groups’ that carried out for a long time the functions of social discipline (p213).

^[30]  Michael Foucault, “Truth and Juridical Forms,” in Power: Essential Works 1954-84, 58.

^[31]  For Foucault, it is the apparent neutrality and political invisibility of systems of control that make them dangerous, and transferable between political systems: who invented concentration camps, for example? (Britain!).

^[32]  Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 205.

^[33]  Foucault, “Truth and Juridical Forms”, 58.

^[34] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 82.

^[35]  Ibid., 195-200.

^[36]  Smith, Who’s afraid of Postmodernism?, 81-8.

^[37]  Ibid., 84.

^[38]  Ibid., 89

^[39]  Foucault’s analysis of history in Discipline and Punish came under attack from some historians; see David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault (Verso, 2019; first published by Hutchinson, 1993), 401-06.

^[40]  Gordon, op cit, xxxix. For a discussion by Foucault of the God – shepherd – king theme in Christian and other literature, and how this influenced western ideas of government, see “Omnes et Singulatim,”in Power: Essential Works 1954-84, 298-325.

^[41]  Power: Essential Works 1954-84, 326-48.

^[42]  Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” Power: Essential Works 1954-84, 332-36.

^[43]  Although he retained what David Macey calls a “lingering admiration” for the church, especially when, as in South America, it stood up for the poor and persecuted; The Lives of Michel Foucault, 351.

^[44]  See Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault, 386.

^[45]  Joel R.Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology vol 1: Revelation and God (Crossway, 2019), 1147.

^[46]  C.f. also Rom 15:13 – “so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope”; 1 Cor 2:4,5: “my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power”; 1 Thess 1:4,5: “the gospel came to you not only in word but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction”.

^[47]  Elders must be “apt to teach” (1 Tim 3:2) and be devoted to reading the Scripture, teaching and exhorting (4:13) and be ready to “Preach the Word” (2 Tim 4:2).

^[48]  “At least 70% of the UK population – more than 47 million people – use a platform owned by Meta every day. Most are unwittingly being tracked as they go about their day to day lives. It’s not just the data that we upload into the media sites themselves, but a whole empire of data about other activities that is fed back to Meta, allowing them to customise and optimise their ad business, which brought them $134bn in revenue last year”. Matilda Davies, The Week, 6 April 2024.

^[49]  Smith, op cit 104-05.