In our fast-paced secular world, God and theology are second-class citizens. Money, politics, sports, and science seem better suited to the hard realities of our world. As the church steeple has been eclipsed by the skyscraper as the centerpiece of the urban landscape, so has the divine realm been set aside in favor of more immediate human experience. One sad consequence of this shift is the loss of spiritual and theological bearings, most clearly evident in our inability to understand or speak about such things. If the old way of viewing the universe no longer works, something else has to replace it.

The Powers That Be reclaims the divine realm as central to human existence by offering new ways of understanding our world in theological terms. Walter Wink reformulates ancient concepts, such as God and the devil, heaven and hell, angels and demons, principalities and powers, in light of our modern experience. He helps us see heaven and hell, sin and salvation, and the powers that shape our lives as tangible parts of our day-to-day experience, rather than as mysterious phantoms. Based on his reading of the Bible and analysis of the world around him, Wink creates a whole new language for talking about and to God. Equipped with this fresh world view, we can embark on a new relationship with God and our world into the next millennium.

More than ever, Walter Wink believes, the Christian tradition of nonviolence is needed as an alternative to the dominant and death-dealing powers of our consumerist culture and fractured world. In this small book Wink offers a precis of his whole thinking about this issue, including the relation of Jesus and his message to politics and nonviolence, the history of nonviolent efforts, and how nonviolence can win the day when others don't hesitate to resort to violence or terror to achieve their aims.

The reader of this work will search in vain for a definition of power. It is one of those words that everyone understands perfectly well until asked to define it. Our use of the term 'power' is laden with assumptions drawn from the contemporary materialistic worldview. Whereas the ancients always understood power as the confluence of both spiritual and material factors, we tend to see it as primarily material. We do not think in terms of spirits, ghosts, demons, or gods as the effective agents of powerful effects in the world. Thus a gulf has been fixed between us and the biblical writers. We use the same words but project them into a wholly different world of meanings. What they meant by power and what we mean are incommensurate. If our goal is to understand the New Testament's conception of the Powers, we cannot do so simply by applying our own modern sociological categories of power. We must instead attend carefully and try to grasp what the people of that time might have meant by power, within the linguistic field of their own worldview and mythic systems. I will argue that the principalities and powers are the inner and outer aspects of any given manifestation of power. As the inner aspect they are the spirituality of institutions, the within of corporate structures and systems, the inner essence of outer organizations of power. As the outer aspect they are political systems, appointed officials, the chair of an organization, lawsin short, all the tangible manifestations which power takes. This hypothesis, it seems to me, makes sense of the fluid way the New Testament writers and their contemporaries spoke of the Powers, now as if they were these centurions or that priestly hierarchy, and then, with no warning, as if they were some kind of spiritual entities in the heavenly places.-from the Introduction

Wink explores the problem of evil today and how it relates to the New Testament concept of Principalities and Powers. He asks the question How can we oppose evil without creating new evils and being made evil ourselves? Winner of the Pax Christi Award, the Academy of Parish Clergy Book of the Year, and the Midwest Book Achievement Award for Best Religious Book.

Angels, Spirits, principalities, powers, gods, Satanthese, along with all other spiritual realities, are the unmentionables of our culture. The dominant materialistic worldview has absolutely no place for them. [But] materialism itself is terminably ill, and, let us hope, in process of replacement by a worldview capable of honoring the lasting values of modern science without succumbing to reductionism. [Therefore] we find ourselves returning to the ancient traditions, searching for wisdom wherever it may be found. We do not capitulate to the past and its superstitions, but bring all the gifts our race has acquired along the way as aids in recovering the lost language of our souls. In Naming the Powers I developed the thesis ... that the New Testament's principalities and powers is a generic category referring to the determining forces of physical, psychic, and social existence. In the present volume we will be focusing on just seven of the Powers mentioned in Scripture. Their selection out of all the others dealt with in Naming the Powers is partly arbitrary: they happen to be ones about which I felt I had something to say. But they are also representative, and open the way to comprehending the rest. They are: Satan, demons, angels of churches, angels of nations, gods, elements, and angels of nature.

A thorny historical issue handled with artistry and imaginationThe epithet the son of the man (or the Human Being) in the Gospels has been a highly debated topic. Wink uses this phrase to explore not only early Christology but the anthropology articulated in the Gospels. Jesus apparently avoided designations such as Messiah, Son of God, or God, though these titles were given by his disciples after his death and resurrection. But Jesus is repeatedly depicted as using the obscure expression the Human Being as virtually his only form of self-reference.

Wink explores how Jesus' self-referential phrase came to be universalized as the Human Being or Truly Human One. The Human Being is a catalytic agent for transformation, providing the form and lure and hunger to become who we were meant to be, or more properly perhaps, to become who we truly are.

From the pages of Fellowship magazine, this volume highlights the writings of some of the preeminent peacemakers of our century. These seventy original and classic essays offer a comprehensive reader in nonviolence while also chronicling the struggle for peace and justice in the twentieth century. For students, activists, and all who share an interest in building a more just and peaceful world.

Examines the treatment of John the Baptist within the synoptic gospels and Acts, as well as how the early church envisioned his role in God's redemptive mission.

Both participants and leader will be transformed through this revolutionary approach to group Bible study. Far-reaching in its concept and implications, this innovative group-encounter method makes particular use of split-brain theory, emphasizing the province of the brain's right hemisphere -- synthesis, imagination, feeling, etc. It also blends biblical form criticism and Jungian psychology with a zealously inquisitive spirit. Wink does well to integrate the social with the personal, as well as the relevance of a scripture passage in its original cultural context with its relevance to our contemporary context. Numerous examples and exercises are given, along with helpful appendices. If you are involved in clergy or lay study groups, teaching a church class, or conducting a prison ministry, Wink's study will open the door to a radically new understanding of the Bible. In the end, the transformation of study methods will lead to the transformation of participants.

In this brilliant culmination of his seminal Powers Trilogy, now reissued in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition, Walter Wink explores the problem of evil today and how it relates to the New Testament concept of principalities and powers. He asks the question, How can we oppose evil without creating new evils and being made evil ourselves?

Winner of the Pax Christi Award, the Academy of Parish Clergy Book of the Year, and the Midwest Book Achievement Award for Best Religious Book.

In this magnificent autobiography, Walter Wink, one of the most influential Christian intellectuals of our time, offers insight and perspective on his life and work-always through the lens of Jesus. From his brilliant and provocative theological writings, to his heartfelt pastoral work, to his passionate advocacy for social justice and nonviolence, Wink shows us that the key to becoming more human is a vivid encounter with Jesus.

An autobiography of my interest in Jesus, writes Wink, perhaps that is too ambitious. What I have done here is far less grand. I have simply written down vignettes, or excerpts of my life's story that I find interesting. These autobiographical reflections are in no way exceptional. Everyone has a life story. Some are more interesting than others, but they all deserve a hearing. My story may, at the very least, show why I theologically think the way I do.

My Struggle to Become Human is essential reading for every human.

Historical biblical criticism is bankrupt. That startling affirmation began The Bible in Human Transformation when it first appeared in 1975. Wink asserts that despite the valuable contributions of the historical-critical method, we have reached the point where this method is incapable of allowing Scripture to evoke personal and social transformation today. More than thirty years later, Wink now looks back in a new preface over the more and less humanizing developments in New Testament studies of the last few decades and renews his call for a transforming approach to biblical interpretation.

Walter Wink's writing has been described as brilliant, provocative, passionate, and innovative. His skills in critical scholarship were matched by an engaging and honest style that make his work a must read for twenty-first century theologians and all who seek deeper understanding at the intersection of Bible, theology, social ethics, and more.

Repressive authoritarian regimes are falling and fragile new democracies are emerging around the globe. How are long-standing conflicts and deep divisions to be healed and enemies reconciled without breeding further injustices?To answer this question, Walter Wink here applies his compelling analysis of the Powers, as they appear in the New Testament, to the global scene. Surveying the wrenching religious and ethical dilemmas involved in transitions from despotism to democracy, Wink neatly summarizes key concepts from his Fortress Press trilogy on the Powers, including sections on Jesus against Domination and Nonviolence. He then shows how central concepts in the teaching of Jesus can clarify true and false ideas of forgiveness and reconciliation and apology - without sacrificing justice. The personal, political, and geopolitical pertinence of Wink's ideas shines in his discussion of specific situations in Africa and Latin America.

And what of the churches? Jesus proclamation of God's domination - free order, Wink claims, providesa framework for dealing with the role of the churches in helping nations move from autocracy to democracy. Far more is at stake than merely an orderly transition to a more representative form of governance: suchmoments in history open up to heavenly potentials. ... In such times, it is the vision of God'sdomination-free order that prevents us from acquiescing to unworthy visions, or accepting political compromises as anything more than temporary pauses on the path to fuller justice.Wink's new work demonstrates the power, promise, and practicality of Jesus' ethic of nonviolence for today.

Issues surrounding homosexuality threaten to divide the Christian churches and the people within them. This unique resource presents short pieces from some of the nation's most prominent church leaders - Protestant and Catholic, mainline and evangelical - who address the fundamental moral imperatives about homosexuality. Together they invite the reader to open his or her heart to the Spirit, to tolerance, and to Gospel values. Through personal testimony, factual clarification, and moral suasion, they provide much-needed clarity on the biblical witness and biblical authority, the nature or character of homosexuality and sexual orientation, and many related topics. Contributors include Elise Boulding, Ignacio Castuera, John B. Cobb Jr., William Sloane Coffin, Peggy Campolo, Bishop Paul Egertson, James A. Forbes Jr., Maria Harris, Barbara Kelsey, Morton Kelsey, Gabriel Moran, David G. Myers, Richard Rohr, O.F.M., Ken Sehested, Carole Shields, Donald W. Shriver Jr., M. Mahan Siler Jr., Lewis B. Smedes, and Walter Wink.