Dunamis names the capacity to act with effect, whether that shows up as strength, ability, or a miracle.
Dunamis is a wide word. It covers raw physical strength, the ability to do something at all, the resources a person or army has, and the specific jolt of power behind a miracle. A wealthy city has dunamis. A skilled craftsman has dunamis. A demon that overpowers a man has dunamis. The word doesn't specialise until context forces it to.
English 'power' can carry some of this, but English also wants to sort dunamis into separate boxes: ability, capacity, force, miracle, authority. Greek doesn't sort it that way. The same word can describe God's capacity to raise the dead and a sick woman's simple thought that touching a hem might do something. It's less about who holds authority and more about what actually happens when force meets a situation.
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Greek.
Paul calls the gospel itself dunamis, the effective force that saves, not just a message about power.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Jesus promises dunamis for witness, capacity to act, arriving with the Spirit rather than earned by effort.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
The cross, which looks weak, is called the dunamis of God, showing the word can subvert expectation.
At once Jesus was aware that power had gone out from Him. Turning to the crowd, He asked, “Who touched My garments?”
Jesus feels dunamis go out of him at a touch, the word describing something almost physical and measurable.
Translators reach for 'power' most often, but switch to 'miracle', 'mighty work', or 'miraculous power' whenever dunamis appears in plural, describing specific acts. Occasionally it becomes 'ability' or 'strength'. Each choice narrows the word. English rarely lets one term cover both 'the power of God' as a general quality and 'the powers he performed' as countable events, so the unity of the Greek gets split across several English words.
The common mistake is treating dunamis as the root of 'dynamite' and concluding Paul meant the gospel is explosive. Dynamite was named after the Greek word in the 1800s, not the other way round, so the connection runs backwards and tells you nothing about what Paul meant. Dunamis is about effective capacity, not about detonation.
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