In the Gospel of Luke the Kingdom of God, or the reign of God if like, is mentioned more than forty times. For Luke God's rule and reign on earth is what Jesus had come to unleash. What is interesting however is that by the time of the writing of Acts, which is the second half of Luke's story (Luke-Acts), the Kingdom of God goes virtually unmentioned. Why the sudden change from one story to the next? The answers are Easter and Pentecost. At Easter the powers of this world were defeated and the reign of God broke into the world in the presence of the risen Christ. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit was unleashed so that the Kingdom could be an ever growing reality even without Jesus physically present. The book of Acts then did not need to speak about the coming Kingdom because it was a reality into which they were living.
Why am I writing about the Kingdom of God? I am writing because the church has spent the last two thousand years trying to figure out its relationship to the Kingdom. The two critical questions with which the church has struggled are: Are the church and the Kingdom the same? Does the church bring in the Kingdom of God? We will look at both of these questions.
First, are the church and the Kingdom the same? In the early years of the church, theologians concentrated on the Kingdom of God as an inner spiritual reality. However once the church was not only legalized (311 CE) but later became the official religion of the empire theologians in both the East and the West began to associate the church with the Kingdom of God. This was an easy connection to make since there was one empire and one church which were intimately bound together (almost a theocracy). In other words the Kingdom of Rome/Church and the Kingdom of God were assumed to be the same. In medieval times this association was used to justify the crusades as expanding the Kingdom of God through conquest of those who were enemies of God and the state. While these views faded during the Reformation period (1540s onward), they never completely vanished.
Second, does the church bring in the Kingdom of God? If we follow the logic of our first answer, the response of the church for more than a thousand years was, yes. The church brings in the kingdom by conquest and conversion. While that sense of bringing in the kingdom faded in the Reformation period it regained a foothold in a slightly different form during the early 1900s. It came in the form of the Social Gospel movement. One of the leaders of the Social Gospel movement, Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist preacher in Hell's Kitchen, claimed that the church had forgotten the purpose of the Kingdom of God which was to change society and improve the world. The church then was to bring in the Kingdom of God by encouraging progressive legislation which would deal with poverty, education, fair labor standards, health care and other issues of social need. While the movement as such foundered after the horrors of World War I, its legacy lived on in movements as diverse as labor unions, the Civil Rights movement and women's suffrage. We can still see vestiges of this movement in the church today.
So again, is the Church the Kingdom of God and/or does the Church bring in the Kingdom? The simple answer is, no. Hans Kung puts it this way, "Ekklesia (the church) grows from below, can be organized, is a product of development and progress…in short it is definitely the work of man; basilelia (the Kingdom) comes from above, is an unprecedented action, an incalculable event, in short is definitely the work of God." (The Church, p. 93) What we as Presbyterians have believed is that we are to live as a provisional demonstration of the Kingdom of God; meaning we are to do our best to model what we believe the Kingdom ought to look like in terms of personal relationships and social justice. Thus we are not to retreat into personal spirituality as if the Kingdom is only within, nor are we to be so arrogant as to believe we can create the Kingdom of God for God. We are to strive to be both personally and corporately faithful to Christ's call to love God and love neighbor, as good citizens of the Kingdom.
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