Kingdom of God Part 1
February 23, 2010
Forthcoming booklet Crossways Spring 2010; A Chapter of the book The Gospel as the Center, ed. D.A. Carson Summer 2010.
Introduction
Modern people, living under the influence of the culture’s myth of self-creation, have had difficulty with authority. The self-proclaimed libertine denies any ruling structure, except for his own intrinsic self-authority, since he believes that no authoritative power has the ability to emancipate. Authority now redefined as totalizing oppression by this present cultural climate has developed an illusion of self-sufficiency that has dismissed the notion of humanity’s need to be guided by any external authority. There is a scene in Monty Python’s The Holy Grail which illustrates well this anti-authority sentiment while satirically suggesting that certain forms of lordship can be suppressive and coercive.
King Arthur: Old woman.
Dennis: Man.
King Arthur: Man, sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there?
Dennis: I'm 37.
King Arthur: What?
Dennis: I'm 37. I'm not old.
King Arthur: Well I can't just call you "man".
Dennis: Well you could say "Dennis".
King Arthur: I didn't know you were called Dennis.
Dennis: Well you didn't bother to find out did you?
King Arthur: I did say sorry about the "old woman", but from behind you looked...
Dennis: What I object to is you automatically treat me like an inferior.
King Arthur: Well I am king.
Dennis: Oh, king eh? Very nice. And how'd you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society…….
Dennis: Man.
King Arthur: Man, sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there?
Dennis: I'm 37.
King Arthur: What?
Dennis: I'm 37. I'm not old.
King Arthur: Well I can't just call you "man".
Dennis: Well you could say "Dennis".
King Arthur: I didn't know you were called Dennis.
Dennis: Well you didn't bother to find out did you?
King Arthur: I did say sorry about the "old woman", but from behind you looked...
Dennis: What I object to is you automatically treat me like an inferior.
King Arthur: Well I am king.
Dennis: Oh, king eh? Very nice. And how'd you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society…….
King Arthur: I am your king.
Woman-I didn’t know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective….
Woman-who does he think he is?
King-I am your king
Woman: Well I didn't vote for you.
King Arthur: You don't vote for kings.
Woman: Well how'd you become king then?
[Angelic music plays... ]
King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king.
Dennis: [interrupting] Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony…….
Woman: Well I didn't vote for you.
King Arthur: You don't vote for kings.
Woman: Well how'd you become king then?
[Angelic music plays... ]
King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king.
Dennis: [interrupting] Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony…….
This culturally dominant interpretation of self-determination is supported by postmodernist thinkers like Don Cupitt who declares, “the age of authority of grand institutions, of legitimating myths, and capital T-Truth, is over.”[i] That proposition is stated with a powerful voice rendering its assertion to be self-negating. This is the irony and the paradox of choice. Modern individuals believe that the multiplicity of options is liberating but it is actually debilitating and ultimately de-motivating and tyrannizing.[ii] According to Richard Bauckham, “God therefore is undoubtedly implicated in the contemporary crisis of freedom...Belief in God…seems to many incompatible with human autonomy….All too often in church history God has been misrepresented as suppressing rather than promoting freedom. He has been the heavenly despot who is the model and sanction for oppressive regimes on earth. It is clear that this is not the biblical God. His lordship liberates from all human lordship. This is because the divine Master himself fulfills his lordship not in domination but in the service of a slave (Phil 2:6-11).”[iii]
What then of authority and kingship in the Christian faith? Postmodernism empowers the individual’s intrinsic authority which drives his autonomy over against the extrinsic authoritarian claims of Enlightenment rationality or pre-modern religious authority. However, the biblical metanarrative is a story not of the assertion of one’s self-mastery in domination but of the authority of grace. Authority belongs in the first place to the redemptive narrative of God’s gracious self-donation to us.[iv] C. S. Lewis has said that the increase of intimacy enjoyed by individuals in a relationship will inevitably, naturally, and simultaneously decrease their level of independence.
The Bible introduces the undisputed reality of the authority of God, his word, and of truth revealed by him. Therefore, the theme of the kingship of God is one of the central and key motifs in all of Scripture. This chapter will examine a theology, an identity, and a community shaped by this kingdom.
© 2010 The Center for Gospel Culture
[i]P. Heelas, ed. Religion, Modernity, and Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 218.
[ii] Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 2-3.
[iii] Richard J. Bauckham, God and the Crisis of Freedom: Biblical and Contemporary Perspectives (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 50-51.
