I’m reading and thinking through Matthew’s gospel at the minute and it’s quite obvious that the concept of the kingdom of heaven is one of the key emphases of his book. Even at the very start, Jesus is introduced to the reader as the Messiah, the son of David. There is no doubt that the stage is being set for the introduction of one who is a King. The King is born in accordance with ancient prophecy and even the Jewish leaders recognise that the future King of Israel will be born in Bethlehem. He is preceded by a herald called John who announced to the nation that the kingdom of heaven has come near and that they must repent in preparation for the kingdom. So far so good. But this kingdom… what is it? For many years I simply assumed that this was some sort of “spiritual kingdom” which had no physical manifestation. But as I read various literature I discovered that such a view made nonsense of a Scriptural view of this kingdom.

Alva McClain in his excellent work, “The Greatness of the Kingdom”, describes eight distinct views on what the kingdom is. Such variety is a testimony to the confusion which exists as to this important doctrine.

The first is the National Kingdom Idea which is primarily a Jewish idea which identifies the kingdom of God with the nation of Israel. Then there is the Celestial Kingdom Idea which suggests that the kingdom of God refers to the reign of God in heaven. The Ecclesiastical Kingdom view identifies the Church with God’s kingdom. This view was espoused by the Roman Catholic Church and seems to be still the popular view despite dissent from certain theologians such as Hans Kung. This view then spread into Protestantism during its formation and was espoused in a sense by various Reformers. The Spiritual Kingdom view refers to the idea that the kingdom is God’s rule in the heart’s of people. It is an idea of the kingdom which makes it a soteriological concept. This view distinguishes between the Church and the kingdom but believes that the Church is one of the most effective ways for the establishment of this kingdom on earth. Then, the Moral Kingdom view is the idea that the kingdom of God is the moral rule of God over humankind. However this idea is drawn mainly from the philosopher Immanuel Kant. The Liberal Social-Kingdom view sees the kingdom as the “progressive social organisation and improvement of mankind”. The Modern Eschatological-Kingdom view, as McClain called it, is perhaps not so modern anymore and was propounded by liberal theologians such as Albert Schweitzer who argued that Christ’s concept of the kingdom was a literal kingdom which he intended to establish on earth but apparently Jesus’ expectations of the second coming were not fulfilled and he then began to arrange to get himself executed.

That’s seven of the views so far. But there’s another one. This is what McClain calls the Millennial Kingdom view. This is the view that sees the kingdom of God as a literal kingdom which will be established on earth for a thousand years. I contend that this view is the Biblical one.

These eight views however, are not mutually exclusive. G.E. Ladd in some very influential writings among evangelical circles, believed a combination of the Spiritual Kingdom view and the Millennial Kingdom view. He suggested that the kingdom offered by Jesus was a spiritual one while still maintaining that there would be a literal millennial kingdom (although he did waver on whether or not the kingdom would last for precisely a thousand years or instead, a long time).

In my next post I’ll talk about why I think the Millennial kingdom view is the one most often presented in Scripture and indeed, the one offered by the Lord Jesus Christ to the nation of Israel. Having said that, the Scriptures do sometimes speak of the rule of God presently in various ways and at some stage I’ll take a look at some relevant passages.

Perhaps this has been available before now but today I noticed that bible.org have a large collection of literature by John Walvoord online. This should be worth reading.

http://www.bible.org/author.php?author_id=224&scid=0 

It’s been way too long since my last post. I apologise for that. However, now that exams are over I should have more time to read, think and blog.

Over the past few days I’ve been thinking about the importance of expository preaching. Expository preaching is, quite simply, preaching the word of God verse by verse and chapter by chapter. It’s the type of preaching actually that recognises that God didn’t give us verses - God gave us books. And expository preaching realises that these books have valuable messages that need to be conveyed to today’s world. Topical preaching is quite different from expository preaching. Now I appreciate the great value of topical preaching and in no way do I suggest that it is a bad practice but it can become easy in topical preaching to pick verses out of context and mix them together to support one’s predetermined theology. In expository preaching, it isn’t as easy to do that because the preacher becomes aware of the need to see each sentence in its context. Expository preaching then, is simply preaching the word of God through each of the different books that God has given us.

Why have I been thinking about this? Well, when I have been looking at a few different churches recently I have been struck by the absence of expository preaching. Instead it is replaced by messages with a few verses thrown in for good measure. But I don’t want to go to church to hear what some person thinks I need to hear - I want to go to church and hear the voice of God. I want to know that fellow believers will bring to me the word of God. It’s not that I simply want to go to church and be fed and give nothing back. It’s not that. But I want to be part of a community of believers who appreciate the need for the sharing of God’s word among each other. And that’s something that’s hard to find. When I meet with other believers I want to find encouragement. Perhaps at other times I need to be rebuked. But when I seek encouragement, I want to be encouraged from the word of God. When I need to be challenged or rebuked, I want to hear it from God. So when I see a church that has become accustomed to giving God’s word second place, it makes me sad. And it makes me sad to see that so many churches have displaced the priority of God’s word and instead have devoted their attention to preaching their own messages.

So I’m still searching…

I just thought I should say Merry Christmas to everyone! Have a great time with your friends and family and above all, let us take time to remember the Lord Jesus Christ “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” That God should take upon himself humanity and be born in a feeding trough so that he could ultimately go to the cross to redeem us is something that takes my breath away.

Blessings,

Andrew

It was largely through the writings of Brevard Childs at Yale University in the 1980s that a new approach to Scripture developed. Then, as now, the Scriptures were often viewed through the lenses of redaction criticism, source criticism, form criticism and so on, but while such approaches might carry with them an aura of scholarship and intellectual rigor, they had little or no value for the Church. The community of faith largely could not benefit from these approaches to Scripture no matter how valid or invalid they are. Childs and others who recognised this, while not discarding the old critical methodology, chose to read the Scriptures in a different way. What they realised was that the Scriptures, as we have them today, are of value in their present form having been arranged and recorded for the edification of future generations of believers. This approach came to be known generally as canonical criticism and it emphasised the unity of the books of the Bible and indeed the entire Bible itself. Rather than reading the Bible atomistically, canonic critics read the Bible as a collection of carefully arranged books that carried a message not only to their original audiences, but to all future generations for whom the books had been collected and preserved.

It’s something that the evangelical community has recognised to an extent for a long time but I find that there are still important lessons that we can learn from canonical criticism. Put it this way, even to this day I can pick up books and commentaries that argue that some books of the Bible have little or no structure. The canon critic, due to his assumptions that the book has been carefully arranged and that it is a unity, will think twice before arriving at such a conclusion. Perhaps it is more a testimony to a writers ignorance of the structure of a Biblical text when he reaches the conclusion that it has little or no structure, than it is to anything else. Thus I find that the canon critics’ approach to Scriptures is one which we ought, perhaps, to consider carefully. Consider for example, the book of the Psalms. The introduction of form criticism (basically this is categorising literature into different types) of the Psalms by scholars such as Mowinckel, has led many scholars to treat the Psalms rather atomistically. Consider even Fee and Stuart’s comments on the Psalms in “How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth”. Stuart outlines how each of the different Psalms can be considered as a different types including Lament Psalms, Thanksgiving Psalms, Hymns of Praise, and so on and even though he warns that “the Psalms [i.e. the individual psalms] are to be treated as wholes, not atomized into single verses or thought of… as so many pearls on a string”, Stuart fails to treat the structure of the Psalter itself with any great significance. Rather, each Psalm is taken separately with little relationship to the other. But are there not some clear indications within the Psalter itself that it is a carefully organised book? Why does the book of Psalms have five divisions? Why does the Psalter open with a Psalm that functions almost like a prologue for the whole book? Psalm 1 opens with the contrast between the righteous and the wicked. The wicked will be destroyed by Yahweh while the righteous will be preserved by him. The second Psalm then introduces the Lord’s Son who stands as Yahweh’s representative on the earth. He is the epitome of the righteous man in Psalm 1 while the wicked are those who refuse to submit to God’s anointed king. And so, just as the way of the wicked will be destroyed in Psalm 1:6, the ways of those who refuse to kiss God’s son will be destroyed in Psalm 2:12. Psalm 2 introduced the theme of opposition to the Davidic king but Psalm 3 makes this more explicit when David cries out to help from Yahweh as he flees from his own son. I could continue on doing this and trying to link each of the Psalms together thematically as indicated by the repetition of both keys thoughts and expressions but I just want to illustrate that maybe the Psalms contain more than what commonly meets the eye. Maybe there is a structure to these Psalms that we have missed very often. Also, the titles of the Psalms? Stuart dismisses them as non-canonical but perhaps this is too hasty. The canon critic will respect these titles and will understand them to be a significant feature of the text that needs to be integrated into the understanding of the text.

While I am very fond of a more canonical approach to Scripture, there is always the charge of eisegesis (reading into the text our own ideas). At what stage does canonically reading Scripture cease to be a valid exegetical approach? Are some of these structures in the Biblical text more in the eye of the beholder than in the text itself? This is an important question and one that I find hard to answer. But overall, I think that the canonical approach to Scripture is one which ought to make us think more carefully about the structure and unity of the Biblical text than we frequently have.

If you’re interested, have a listen to Gordon Wenham’s lectures on the Psalms: 1) Reading the Psalms Ethically, 2) Reading the Psalms Messianically, and 3) Reading the Psalms Canonically. He talks quite a bit about the canonical approach in each of the lectures and I found them rather enlightening. Certainly, they have stimulated my thinking about this whole issue.

So what does everybody think about it all?