But why does creation – complete with all its powers, both earthly and heavenly – need to be ‘reconciled’? Clearly, the second half of the poem presupposes something not said here, something corresponding both to Genesis 3 – 11 and to the long story of humankind’s failure, of Israel’s failure. These multiple disasters have led to the point where the ‘principalities’ and ‘powers’, though created in, through and for the one we now know as Jesus, had accrued terrible power to themselves through human idolatry, and were now on the rampage through creation, wreaking havoc with people’s lives and
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