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Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

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in the movies, further fulfilling the spiritual hunger so many postmoderns have. Some<br />

call this the re-enchantment of the West -- essentially a return to our animistic roots,<br />

albeit in new forms.<br />

With few exceptions, modern scholars show<br />

little awareness of the very active debate<br />

about alternative Christianities which<br />

flourished in bygone decades, so that we have<br />

a misleading impression that all the<br />

worthwhile scholarship has been produced<br />

within the last thirty years or so. To the<br />

contrary, much of the evidence needed to<br />

construct a radical revision of Christian<br />

origins had been available for many years<br />

prior to the 1970’s, if not the 1870’s<br />

(Jenkins, 2001:13).<br />

It is again relevant and necessary for Western Christians to appreciate the naturalsupernatural<br />

duality as Jesus did. He treated Satan and demonic forces as real foes,<br />

frequently casting out demons and set free people he called ‘captives’ and ‘oppressed’<br />

(Luk 4:18). Such language is the language of warfare. Furthermore, Jesus called Satan<br />

“the ruler of this world” (Joh. 14:30). In a similar vein, Paul refers to Satan as “the evil<br />

god of this world” who blinds people to God’s Good News (2Co. 4:4) and the Apostle<br />

John said, “the whole world is under the rule of the Evil One” (1Jn 5:19)<br />

Westerners tend to feel that such beliefs need<br />

not be taken seriously since, we believe, these<br />

so-called gods are not gods at all but<br />

imaginary beings empowered only by<br />

superstition. The Bible, however, shows God<br />

and His people taking such spirits seriously,<br />

though we are warned against giving them<br />

honor or fearing them, since the true God is<br />

greater and more powerful than these servants<br />

of Satan. And, if we are properly related to<br />

the true God, we have the authority to protect<br />

ourselves from other gods and to confront and<br />

defeat them when necessary (Kraft, May 2000).<br />

191<br />

University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, <strong>South</strong> Africa

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