ABSTRACT
Through a critical dialogue with the selected works of Reinhold Niebuhr, John Yoder and Max Weber, this chapter aims to develop a practice of prophetic witnessing for discerning and engaging with Apostle Paul’s notion ‘principalities and powers’ in this world (Ephesians 6:12). In tracing the narrated life histories of such exiled witnesses as Joseph, Esther and Daniel in the ancient Egyptian, Persian and Babylonian empires as written in the Holy Bible, I will argue that realism was the core spiritual logic of the three pre-modern imperial Powers in ancient Africa and Asia. This chapter then suggests that the modern statehood has been amongst the principalities and powers. This warrants an innovative approach to witness the Christian faith in it, which is dubbed as ‘being in but not of the Powers’. By showing the dynamic and interactive nature between a contemplative life and realist power-structure, I will show that in the paradoxical co-existence of struggle and suffering, God’s divine plan is fulfiled, especially when the here-and-now moment is faithfully connected with the eschaton.
