IVP - Addenda & Errata - Building God’s Kingdom?

Building God’s Kingdom?

When I hear an evangelical talking about “building God’s kingdom,” my theological sensibilities go into scramble mode. “That way lies pelagianism!,” I want to scream.

Yet among evangelicals you will frequently hear this kind of talk. And it shows up in some manuscripts I’ve read. Where exactly do we get the idea that we should be building God’s kingdom? We may witness to it, testify to it, plant signs of it or work or build for (the word for introduces a big difference, as Tom Wright points out) it, etc. But it’s God’s kingdom, and consequently God is the one who is “building” it. As in “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” (It’s a spiritual tonic to say those lines of the prayer with the emphasis just so). The best explanation for this mistaken Christian speech that I can come up with is that we’ve heard it said so often that we unthinkingly repeat it. But we need to stop, think and desist.

It’s time to return to the work of George Eldon Ladd, who did so much to clarify evangelical thinking about the kingdom of God. As I open my old, worn copy of Ladd’s A Theology of the New Testament, I’m grateful for the time I had him as a teacher back in the 1970s. And I remember how he clarified this point for me in a way that has been so useful. It’s one of those basic theological concepts that has cut through fields of theological brambles over the years. A veritable theological weed whacker. In short, Ladd shows us that the kingdom is “primarily the dynamic reign or kingly rule of God, and derivatively, the sphere in which the rule is experienced. In biblical idiom, the Kingdom is not identified with its subjects. They are the people of God’s rule who enter it, live under it, and are governed by it” (Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, 1st edition, p. 111). Ladd goes on to point out that even the church is not the kingdom! “The church cannot build the Kingdom or become the Kingdom, but the church witnesses to the Kingdom—to God’s redeeming acts in Christ both past and future” (Ladd, 113). There’s more, and I recommend your reading it.

If the kingdom is the dynamic reign of God, how can we as humans “build” it? Actually, it should come as a relief to realize that you and I aren’t in the business of building God’s kingdom. Almost, well, like good news! Jesus proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom. And where he was, the power and reality of the kingdom was evident. But God is the one who brings people into his kingdom, and God is the one who will one day fully overthrow the powers that be. We see signs of the kingdom where God’s Spirit is at work, bringing about repentance, reconciliation, transformed lives and many other wonderful things. We participate in this grand mission of God by bearing witness in word and deed to God’s work—accomplished, ongoing and yet to come. But even the most impressive involvement of Christians in, say, racial reconciliation or ministry to the poor or restoring broken families, let alone evangelistic proclamation, does not amount to “building the kingdom” or, come to think of it, “changing the world.” These are signs or anticipations of the kingdom’s power and presence and future culmination, but provisional signs (after all, they are always faulty and inadequate in one way or another), trailers of the great cosmic coming attraction, pointers to the coming work of God in establishing his kingdom, a work that climaxes in a new heaven and new earth. The understanding I'm sketching here is not the same as saying all of our "work for" the kingdom is in vain. It is to say that it's best parts will in some way be redeemed by God and be incorporated, in ways we can't quite imagine, into his kingdom. If this somehow is not as exciting as the notion of “building the kingdom,” please explain to me why and in what ways it is not. But also, please, give me a biblical theology for your conviction. (This is your final exam. You have one hour. Please write legibly and in complete sentences.)

Here is what Karl Barth said in response to an ordinand who had heard him lecture:

Many thanks for your kind letter. But … now you manage to put down on paper again all that nonsense about the kingdom of God that we must build. Dear N.N., in so doing you do not contradict merely one ‘insight’ but the whole message of the whole Bible. If you persist in this idea I can only advise you to take up any other career than that of pastor. (Quoted in http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/ April 4, 2007, Kim Fabricius)

As ever, I couldn’t have said it better than old Barth!

Posted by Dan Reid at October 16, 2007 10:35 AM