Are We There Yet?
The Kindgom of Christ by Russell D. Moore
The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective
Crossway Books, 2004
(320 pages, $15.99, paperback)
reviewed by David Dockery
We must confess that the Church often misunderstands the implications of her dual citizenship: sometimes living too much in this world and sometimes too much in the next. Who has not known people (and whole movements) for whom “the kingdom of God” meant solely and simply a current political position, and others who seem “so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good”?
In this significant book, Russell Moore, the dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and one of Evangelicalism’s most promising thinkers, seeks to provide a coherent way of addressing key issues facing both church and culture through the theme of “the Kingdom of Christ.” He calls for nothing less than a fully developed Evangelical public theology.
Moore rightfully contends that no overarching framework has existed to enable faithful Evangelical believers to address the culture in a coherent fashion, much less to influence substantive public discourse. How should the Church respond to the issues of abortion and euthanasia in a “culture of death”? How should Christians think about and speak to matters of sexual ethics, homosexuality, and same-sex “marriage”? What place, if any, do the Ten Commandments have in public life? Do Christians have a voice on matters like the war in Iraq, the death penalty, the social security system, and welfare reform?
Moore suggests that Evangelicals have characteristically only addressed such matters issue by issue, as a particular issue became the hot topic of the day. In this carefully researched volume (it includes 82 pages of very helpful notes and a 36-page bibliography), he invites his readers to develop a kingdom-based theology that can serve as a public theology for the twenty-first-century Church.
Divisive Teaching
For centuries, however, Christians have been divided over how to understand Jesus’ teaching concerning the kingdom—a question that extends back to the New Testament itself.
Just before Jesus ascended to heaven, his disciples asked, “Is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus had proclaimed, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” a new order in which the meek will inherit the earth, the lion will lie down with the lamb, and the pure in heart will see God. The disciples had seen Jesus’ signs and wonders, but wanted to know when he would fix this broken world.
The early Church expected the supernatural intervention of God in human history to conquer evil and establish his kingdom. This hope brought great comfort and encouragement to those Christians who suffered at the hands of Imperial Rome. The expectancy for a future “not yet” kingdom, however, took on a more “here-and-now” perspective with the conversion of Constantine in the early fourth century, and became the dominant perspective throughout the Middle Ages and the Reformation period in the West.
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