Dawn, "Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God "

Book Review

Marva J. Dawn, Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdsman, 2001).

Marva Dawn’s book challenges the church to consider some tough questions. In what ways has the church been led away from its true calling by heeding the seductive and dangerous manifestations of fallen ‘powers’ within our culture? She offers a thoughtful overview of historical and biblical understanding of the powers, essentially the fallen ones. In response to the fallen powers, Dawn boldly proclaims to the church to return to the theology of the cross, put on the full armour of God and live out of our weaknesses. The church must resist and overcome the fallen powers, not by acting as one, but by being the church in weakness. Make no mistake, the victory of over powers was decisive (on the cross), but the battle continues through times since these ‘powers and principalities’ yearned to be freed to manifests themselves- and it is the Church’s task to display that.

To uncover this treasure of weakness, Dawn takes us through the Scripture and some reflective readings that reveal how the fullness of God’s presence and power tabernacles in our weakness. The truth is, we are nothing, and cannot do anything apart from God. Only by living out of our brokenness in utter dependence upon God can we ever hope to fulfill the Church’s true calling to be the agent of God’s purposes. Dawn also draws the attention to the scene in Acts 2 where the fidelity of the church was consistently marked by their devotion to the seven practices: the Apostles’ preaching, fellowship, breaking of the bread, prayers, signs and wonders, economic redistribution, and worship. As a church, we are called to be vigilant, always remembering the theology of the cross, and the theology of weakness.

Dawn writes with a deep conviction as one who has experienced the power and compassion of Christ in the midst of her own suffering and pain. She writes with the wisdom of a theologian and her reflections of the vitality and passion of the early church (in Acts 2) persuades us that the church is an embodiment of the theology of weakness itself. One cannot help but eagerly desire the same tabernacling of God’s presence in our midst today.

Knowing the vocation of the church is such, why do we look for alternatives such as turning out pastors into CEOs, instead of the shepherds of the weak? Why not our church ministers follow Christ who is the model in suffering? Why do our churches adopt practices of secular business life and its achievement models, rather than what is spelled our biblically? The concern is not about the secular ‘efficiencies’ or ‘effectiveness’ would not help the church, but we must first learn to estimate rightly the capacities of the powers working around us. Should we let the things of the Spirit to depend on the value-judgments and concepts of the world? Far from it! In fact, the apostle Paul assures his readers in Rome that we are to count on the Holy Spirit as the primary helper in our weakness (Rom 8:26-27) rather than looking elsewhere (i.e. the secular world methods of creating powers).

As Christ’s disciples, we serve by means of Christ’s power at work through them by the gift of the Holy Spirit. It highlights an understanding of the concept of God’s power at work in human weakness – as we see in the Lord’s words to Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 9:12). Paul glories in his weakness because through its very existence Christ is able to reveal His presence with him in a unique way. Since there are similarities of the believers today and the early church, we do well by heeding Paul’s theology of weakness.

The struggle to minister out of weakness rather than my own strength or power is a familiar one to me. I sense the Lord is encouraging the true servants of the Lord to let go of our fears, and simply trust in Him to do His work. Our self-reliance to achieve at best a ‘temporarily’ results is hard to quit and often times, I find it very hard to do. We need to rely more on the Holy Spirit who empowers us to do what only He can do. Dawn draws heavily on the ideas of Walter Wink and Jacques Ellul, thus making a strong case for weakness in the church. The revival we have been speaking of, and ‘dreaming’ of to happen in our land- is not happening yet. Is it because we have not become open enough, or weak enough for God to move in with His power? This is a crucial question we need to probe ourselves.

I appreciate Dawn’s discussion on this topic. She is calling us to be biblically-based and not to be an ally to the fallen powers. I particularly wonder about the idea of the church being a fallen power. I think it is easier for most of us to believe that wherever the church appears to be corrupt, then what we are seeing is not actually a church. When a church exists without the presence of the Spirit and the Word, is that not a church? Ephesians 6:13-17 says it well when we are to be the ‘fighters’ against the fallen powers. This could be well applied to especially the political arena where we can easily fall prey joining the forces of fallen powers rather than exposing and wield against them.

Dawn presents a rather convincing case that teleo usually has the meaning of ‘finish’ rather than ‘make perfect’. It is indeed a daring and provocative exegesis of 2 Cor 12:9. However, I still hesitate to go against the preponderance of scholarly opinion. Of greater concern, however, is her insistence that it is Paul’s power, not God’s, that it is referred to. The context strongly suggests to me that the power referred to is God’s.

On the other hand, as we read the gospel for example, we see God’s power in Christ through the resurrection most definitely comes in its fullness through the weakness and death of Christ. Jesus is constantly "bringing his own power to an end" in order that God's power might show through. It is an exegetical debate, but however we might read it, her main thesis still stands, even with the traditional interpretation of 2 Cor 12:9.

We must continually affirm our weakness, and our weakness must be acknowledged so that the Sprit of God may tabernacle among us. She left with us the evidences of churches being fallen powers (many could have been potentially prevalent among churches in Malaysia), fallen and corrupt similar to the principalities and powers around us, and wields Ephesians 6 to draw a picture of how a church could live in weakness, and what it looks like- with the cross as our heart.