Charles L. Campbell. The Word Before The Powers. 2002.
"This "not yet" is evident in 1 Corinthians 15:24-28. In this text it is only at "the end" - the final fulfillment of God's purposes - that Jesus ultimately overcomes the powers: "Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power" (v. 24). Only when God's purposes have been brought to fulfillment will the deathly ways of the powers finally be overcome. Not surprisingly, as Paul notes, the last of these powers to be dealt with is death- the driving force and ultimate reality and sanction behind all of the powers' work (1 Cor. 15:26). As Paul recognizes, the struggle against the powers continues despite their having been overcome through the cross and resurrection. Christians live in the tension between this "already" and "not yet." That is Christians live in the tension between two coexisting "worlds" - the new creation inaugurated by Jesus and the Domination System perpetuated by the powers. Christian discipleship, and Stringfellow puts it, is pursued in the conflict between the new Jerusalem and Babylon; each moment Christians are called to take up the cross and practice the "social reversal" of the new creation.
Christians, however, live in this tension and engage in this practice clinging to a promise: the powers will finally be redeemed. As beings created in, through, and for Christ, the powers will ultimately be transformed and brought back to their true vocation of sustaining human life in community. While there is no sense that human beings will ourselves transform or "Christianize" the powers, we do live with the promise and in the hope that God is at work to transform the powers and that God will fulfill that work through Jesus Christ. Clinging to this promise in the face of the powers of death, the church, and particularly the church's preaching, takes up THE WAY OF RESISTANCE."
(Page 66-67)
