~ Lord Acton
The Calvinistic Concept of Culture by Henry R. Van Til, page 34:
But culture, as such, is a gift of God to man as well as an obligation. The Germans have a word for it Gabe und Aufgabe. Thus man was at once servant and child. Man stood in that relationship to his Maker, wherein he knew God as his friend, and loved him as his Father. At the same time he had received dominion over all God's created world, to be lord and master in the name of his God. Unto this end he was to populate the earth with his kind and to cultivate it. This was not a matter of choice but of divine precept and it entered into the very constitution of man, so that man is essentially a cultural being.
The cultural urge, the will to rule and have power is increated. This is not demonic, or satanic, but divine in origin. True, men may misues and abuse power after the entrance of sin into the world, but to say with Lord Acton that all power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutlely, which is quoted promiscuously by men who ought to know the Scriptures, is not wisdom but folly and confusion. For power belongs to man by virtue of his creation as a cultural creature. He was made to function in the realm of power and to develop his power to its highest potency - for God, of course! There's the rub! Men continually forget the divine original in paradise and take the condition of Paradise lost for granted as being normative.
"Maybe the solution to the power problem is something like the solution to the sex problem. Both are given and to be used as expressions of love, for the glory of God and the good of another. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely when it is divorced from love, and when it is used for the glory and good of the individual."
~ David Wayne
http://jollyblogger.typepad.com/jollyblogger/
2006/01/does_power_real.html
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