The tensions arising from Romans 13 are sharply focussed in Jesus’ words to Pilate at his trial: ‘My kingdom is not from this world’ (Jn 18.36), and ‘You would have no power over me unless it had been given to you from above.’ (Jn. 19.11). This contrast between earthly realms and the realm of God occurs often in the Bible, and bears significantly on civic theology.
In his incarnate life and ministry Jesus demonstrated God’s concern for the just ordering of human community and civil society. In bringing good news to the poor, healing the sick and ministering to the outcast, he showed that godly use of power is measured by its respect and compassion for the least well off. As such, he challenged those in authority to live according to God’s righteous purposes. While individuals were called to follow him, and while he commended personal responsibility and domestic stewardship, he also held political rulers like Pilate, and the states and empires they represented, to sober account for their actions (Luke 4.16-20; Mt. 25.14-30; Jn. 18.28-19:16; 1 Tim. 6.17-19). As he did so, Jesus most often expressed the moral standards required of such rulers and institutions in terms of the kingdom, or reign, of God. In using this image, he was drawing on a rich vein of scriptural imagery.
The Hebrew term mal ekût is typically used in the Old Testament to denote the ‘reign’ or ‘rule’ of a particular monarch (1 Chron. 26.31; Dan 1.1). As such, it is most often associated with notions of political power, might and authority. In some cases, these are exercised benignly for the overall good of the king’s subjects, as in the tenures of Asa, Jehoshaphat, Jotham and Hezekiah; in other instances, they are abused to the detriment of the nation, as with Rehoboam, Ahaz, Manasseh and Ahab. The same mixed picture is seen in the reigns of Gentile kings, too: in the responsible God-fearing monarchy of Cyrus on the one hand, and in the tyrannical mal ekût of Nebuchadnezzar, or of Belshazzar, on the other. However, it is made clear time and again that whether they are good, bad or indifferent, all human reigns are subject to the greater reign of God. Thus Nebuchadnezzar is warned starkly that ‘the Most High has sovereignty over the kingdom of mortals and gives it to whom he will’ (Dan. 4.32); but the same divine superintendence applies as much to Hezekiah, who declares: ‘O LORD the God of Israel, who are enthroned above the cherubim, you are God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth.’ (2 Kings 19.15).
In the prophecies of Isaiah, this radical distinction between the rule of God and the rule of human monarchies is maintained (Isa. 40.23). Here, however, the heavenly kingdom is foreseen as achieving vivid earthly expression in a future reign of unprecedented peace, justice and glory - the reign of God’s anointed, the coming Messiah. This special redeemer-king will ‘bring good news to the oppressed, bind up the broken hearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners’. In doing so, he will declare the year of the LORD’s favour and deliver judgement on wrong (61.1-2).
The actual phrase ‘Kingdom of God’ is associated with the New rather than the Old Testament. Indeed, together with its Matthean equivalent ‘kingdom of heaven’, it occurs over a hundred times in the gospels, and very little elsewhere in the canon. Yet Isaiah’s messianic oracles in particular demonstrate its clear conceptual basis in the Hebrew Scriptures. Thus, at the outset of his ministry Jesus identifies his own life and calling with Isaiah 61, as it becomes his manifesto for action - his charter of gospel ministry (Luke 4. 16-19). Just as Jesus’ own incarnate life brings the realm of God into the midst of human society, so he assures his followers that the kingdom of God has come among them (Matt. 12.28; Luke 17.21). Just as his ministry manifests the kingdom, so he sees that same kingdom mission continuing through his disciples, and so instructs them to pray ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt. 5.10). As Craig Bartholomew’s has stressed, ‘we know that heaven is the place where God’s will is done perfectly and here we are given a vision of a world which mirrors that perfection, a world in which God is acknowledged in every area of life as he made it … It is hard to see how Christians can take the Lord’s prayer seriously and neglect a Christian world-view and its implications.’[1]
While these aspects of the kingdom are relatively uncontentious, there has been considerable disagreement among Christians about the extent to which kingdom life can be manifested in the present age, marred as it is by human sin. Linked to this has been divergence on the appropriate means and instruments by which that same kingdom can be brought to bear this side of the Last Day.
Historically, Evangelicals have seen the fullness of kingdom life deferred until ‘age to come’. While acknowledging that the kingdom is to some extent made real through present-day evangelism and social action, they have typically pointed to the ‘not yet’ implicit in Jesus’ promise that he will return in glory, and only then grant the righteous their kingdom inheritance (Matt. 13.36-43; 25.31-46). Likewise, they have tended to stress that it is only in the great future conflict between good and evil that the rival kingdom of darkness ruled by Satan will be destroyed (Rev. 20:10).[2] The most extreme form of this ‘futurist’ evangelical understanding comes in the theological system of Dispensationalism, which denies all contemporary application of Jesus’ kingdom message, telescoping it completely to the end-times.[3]
In the last century or so, such evangelical caution about overly immanent or ‘realised’ models of the kingdom has contrasted with liberal theology, and with the so-called Social Gospel. Pioneered by Albrecht Ritschl and Walter Rauschenbusch, this latter movement sought to collapse what Joel Green has called the ‘temporal dialectic’ of the kingdom into an entirely contingent realm of poverty-relief, community work and political campaigning.[4] For Ritschl, the kingdom thus became the ‘organisation of humanity through action inspired by love’.[5] For Rauschenbusch, kingdom ministry was to be conceived not as ‘the old evangel of the saved soul’, but as a ‘new evangel’ concerned with ‘transforming the life of the earth into the harmony of heaven’ by ‘regenerating all human relationships’.[6] Rauschenbusch even went so far as to suggest that the imperatives of this social gospel should drive and, if necessary, modify, systematic theology and doctrine. By the Sixties and Seventies, these emphases were becoming dominant in mainline denominations, and in ecumenical bodies like the World Council of Churches - bodies from which Evangelicals increasingly distanced themselves..
Though clearly unacceptable to Evangelicals when pressed to such worldly conclusions, the emphases of liberalism and the Social Gospel on practical action nonetheless galvanized many to reconsider how their more transcendent understanding of the kingdom could be applied in a biblically orthodox way to current social problems. This, the impact of two World Wars, and the often appalling deprivation encountered on the mission field, led many Evangelicals to reassess their position. In 1947, the leading American Evangelical scholar and statesman Carl Henry suggested in his pivotal book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism that conservative criticism of the Social Gospel had at times spawned undue neglect of ‘kingdom now’ witness. Evangelicalism, he wrote, should both ‘reawaken the relevance of its redemptive message to the global predicament’ and ‘discard elements of its message which cut the nerve of world compassion as contradictory to the inherent genius of Christianity’.[7] Henry’s analysis spurred a more socially-conscious ‘Neo-Evangelical’ movement which spread from America to Britain and across the world, thanks not least to support from the international ministries of Billy Graham and John Stott. This culminated in the groundbreaking International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne in 1974 - a meeting which can fairly be said to have changed the orientation of evangelical kingdom theology in a profound way. As paragraph 5 of the Lausanne Covenant expressed it, ‘When people receive Christ they are born again into his kingdom and must seek not only to exhibit but also to spread its righteousness in the midst of an unrighteous world. The salvation we claim should be transforming us in the totality of our personal and social responsibilities. Faith without works is dead.’[8]
While the legacy of Lausanne remains immense,[9] one should not suppose that it entirely resolved debate on the meaning of the kingdom for evangelical social and political theology. When the 1974 Congress took place, another kingdom-oriented theology was emerging which would in time supersede the Social Gospel in more radical Christian circles: the Theology of Liberation. Pioneered by Latin American Catholic priests working in deprived parishes, its leading thinkers included Gustavo Guttierez, Jose Miguez Bonino and Leonardo Boff.[10] These theologians combined the collectivist and communitarian emphases of established Catholic social teaching with the economic and class analysis of Marxism. From this, they construed a ‘preferential option for the poor’, which they saw conformed in the biblical paradigms of the Exodus, the teaching of the Hebrew prophets, and the life and example of Jesus - as defined not least by his emphasis on the kingdom. Like the Social Gospel, liberation theology stresses right action, or orthopraxis, as inextricably linked with, and even prior to, doctrinal orthodoxy.[11] While the Catholic origins and Marxist influences of liberation theology hardly endeared it to most Lausanne delegates, certain younger South American attendees, most notably Rene Padilla and Samuel Escobar, did commend a form of evangelical liberation theology to the congress, which found supporters on the left wing of the movement. These ‘evangelical liberationists’ characteristically argued for an understanding of the kingdom which broadened its scope from explicit gospel preaching and social work done in the name of Christ, to all forms of overcoming oppression, poverty and exploitation. Since then, debate about the explicit Christ-centredness, church-relatedness and social extent of the kingdom have continued, and to a large degree this debate defines the different streams of evangelical civic and political theology today.[12]
While disagreement clearly persists among Evangelicals on these more detailed theological aspects of the kingdom, they should not be assumed to detract from a more fundamental consensus on the Lausanne formula. This consensus recognises the priority and indispensability of evangelism and personal conversion in the church’s kingdom call, while recognising that this call is also intimately bound up with social and political witness. Although the pervasiveness of sin and the future aspect of Jesus’ return mean that such witness cannot expect to realise the kingdom fully on earth, it can nevertheless prefigure it, and in so doing, point people to the eternal hope of the gospel, which is salvation through faith in Christ. The following definition by Richard Bauckham captures this consensus well:
In relation to the coming kingdom of God, political activity can be understood as seeking to anticipate the kingdom or to realize the values of the kingdom, as far as possible in any particular circumstances, within the radically imperfect conditions of this world. The hope of the coming kingdom can give political vision and direction. But for the sake of political realism, it is also vital to remember than political activity cannot establish the eschatological kingdom of God itself. Its achievements are never more than fragmentary anticipations of the kingdom, whose transcendence beyond all such anticipations keeps political activity realistic, flexible and never satisfied with the status quo.[13]
[1] Craig Bartholomew, ‘A Christian World-View’, in Craig Bartholomew, Robin Parry & Andrew West (eds.), The Futures of Evangelicalism: Issues and Prospects (Leicester: IVP, 2003), 201.
[2] J.B. Green, ‘Kingdom of God’, in David J. Atkinson & David J. Field (eds.) , New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology (Leicester: IVP, 1995), 529-32; Rachel Tingle, ‘Evangelical Social Action Today: Road to recovery or Road to Ruin?’, in Melvyn Tinker (ed.), The Anglican Evangelical Crisis: A Radical Agenda for a Bible-based Church (Fearn: Christian Focus, 1995), 186-202.
[3] C. Blaising, ‘Dispensation, Dispensationalism’, in Walter A. Elwell (ed.), Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (2nd Edn.) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans/Carlisle: Paternoster, 2001), 343-45.
[4] J.B. Green, , ‘Kingdom of God’, in David J. Atkinson & David J. Field (eds.) , New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology (Leicester: IVP, 1995), 530.
[5] Albrecht Ritschl, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation: The Positive Development of the Doctrine. Translated by H. R. Mackintosh and A. B. Macaulay. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1900 (German original, Volume III, 1874). Reissued, Clifton, NJ.: Reference Book Publishers, 1966), 12.
[6] Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (New York: Macmillan, 1907), xiii, 65, 357.
[7] Carl F.H. Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1947), 53-4.
[8] Text in John Stott (ed.), Making Christ Known: Historic Mission Documents from the Lausanne Movement, 1974-1989 (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1996), 24.
[9] James A. Scherer, Gospel, Church and Kingdom: Comparative Studies in World Mission Theology (Augsburg: Fortress Press, 1987), 173.
[10] Gustavo Guttierez, A Theology of Liberation (London: SCM, 2001 [1971]); Jose Miuez Bonino, Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation (Philadelphi: Fortress Press, 1975); Leonardo Boff, Church, Charism and Power: Liberation Theology and the Institutional Church (New York: Crossroad, 1985 [1981]).
[11] For a helpful overview and assessment, see Samuel Escobar, ‘Liberation Theology’, in Alister E. Mcgrath (ed.), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 330-35.
[12] Tim Chester, Awakening to a World of Need: The Recovery of Evangelical Social Concern (Leicester: IVP, 1993), 89-98.
[13] Richard Bauckham, ‘Politics’, in David J. Atkinson & David J. Field (eds.) , New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology (Leicester: IVP, 1995), 671.
