The disconnect from and justification of the blatant evil in Gaza by many American Christians reveals the dark side of a faith, apparently open to genocide.[1] Rather than heightening empathy and taking up the cause of defenseless women and children and a starving population, could it be the faith enables support of mass slaughter, as it did in previous colonizing tendencies? The forced resettlement and genocide carried out on the American native population (in the name of America as the new Zion) is being repeated and consciously embraced in modern Christian Zionism, or simply evangelical or Christian nationalist sensibilities. The incapacity to recognize annihilation cannot be “deserved,” no matter the evil that may have been perpetrated or the “practical necessities,” demonstrates not only a mental but a moral failing. The question is, how is it that the Christian faith, as it is commonly practiced in this country, has become a force for evil?
Jesus Confrontation with Evil is Displaced by Legal Theories of Atonement
While there is probably no singular reason, what is clear is that Christianity as the defeat of evil has been displaced with a religion focused on individual salvation and legal justification, allowing evil to run its course. Rather than seeing the cross as a defeat of Satan and the inauguration of the reign of Christ over evil, the satanic is left undisturbed. This church is not a counter kingdom deploying the nonviolent ethics of Jesus in his reign over evil, but is a waiting room for saved souls. There is a complete disconnect between the cross and the kingdom, as the work of the cross provides legal benefits rather than constituting a real-world defeat of evil. The captivity to sin, death, and the devil, is not addressed in legal theories of the atonement, and the the cross is emptied of its kingdom purposes.
This is evident in such theories as Christian Zionism, premillennialism, and dispensationalism (see here), but all of these theories arose in the vacuum created by legal theories of atonement such as penal substitution and divine satisfaction, which displaced the New Testament understanding that Christ releases from captivity to sin, death, and evil. Legal theories deal in the theoretical realm of imputed righteousness, and what is lost is the need for a kingdom of atonement, a counter kingdom to the kingdoms of this world, in which a people can be shaped and redeemed in a practical sense (rather than in a legal or theoretical sense). The embodied, social, and practical nature of redemption means salvation is corporate and by definition a community of practice, but legal theories fragment salvation into the particular, the individual, and the disembodied, leaving aside political and social practice. Where salvation is not real-world redemption, evil is a practical necessity to participate in the politics of the kingdoms of this world. Christians are taught they must be violent, they must participate in the killing machine of nation states, as the practical necessities of this world demand wielding the sword. Enemies must be excluded and slaughtered, not loved and ushered into the kingdom. The evil of the world is too great to lay down the sword.
Sin is Participation in a Counter-Kingdom
What is missed in this worldly Christianity is that sin is participation in a kingdom. The kingdoms of this world are in rebellion against God and in league with evil, not in some abstract legal sense, but in the deadly sense of being willing to destroy the other. Salvation and safety require that the stranger, the foreigner, the enemy, be excluded, and when they encroach on “our land” or presume they can gain citizenship in our country they must be taught a lesson. Crosses outside the city, walls of exclusion, Alligator Alcatraz’s, ice agents in masks, will save us from being the door mat of the world. Where the church is a universally open kingdom, and for this reason is not a kingdom of evil, the kingdoms of this world are exclusive and this exclusion is definitive of the kingdom of sin.
While we might refer to the church as a “spiritual kingdom,” what is meant by spiritual has come to mean not embodied or practiced, and thus is a means to not love the enemy, to not turn the other cheek, or to refuse taking up the cross. These are “spiritual” and other worldly and not meant for kingdoms of practice. In other words, sin is rebellion against God (not just weakness or sensuality), a defiant will to power, in which we would live from our resources, from our strength, from our kingdom, and not God’s. Spiritualizing the commands of Jesus and his kingdom is one way to remain good citizens of the kingdom of sin.
To continue to bow to the “god of this world” and submit to the idolatry of Mot (the god of death) the realm of this aeon must maintain its integrity as a kingdom unto itself. It cannot be perceived as a counter-kingdom, dependent upon separation, rebellion, and alienation from God. The demonic servitude, evident in pro-genocide policies, can endure only where the power of the cross is evacuated by refusal to recognize the monstrous evil all serve in the kingdoms of this world. Sin is dismissed as “error” or “weakness” or “legal guilt” and the demonic delusion Christ exposed and defeated is allowed to continue.
To transfer our allegiance out of the kingdoms of darkness into the kingdom of Christ, we have to recognize Christ, the Lord of history, has defeated the principalities and powers. The old aeon of sin continues, but the reign of Christ has begun, which is not to say it is the consummate kingdom but it is the inaugurated kingdom of the new age (now and not yet). The reign of God in Christ is a present reality in which new birth, heavenly citizenship, new creation, resurrection life, is entry into this kingdom. Where legal atonement theory can hardly be connected to the kingdom, Christ’s defeat of evil can only be understood in a kingdom context. Exodus is not only for ancient Israel, but the cross means all are released from bondage to the Pharaohs of this world through serving a new King and kingdom.
Jesus is the Presence of His Kingdom
The passage from John the Baptist to Jesus, is from one of preparing for the kingdom to announcing the kingdom has come. “The time has come, . . . the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (1:15). Jesus “went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people” (Matt 4:23). In Paul’s view Christ has undertaken “an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things” (Eph 1:10). This administrative summing up is not a delayed or future reign. As Jesus says, “The kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt 12:28; Luke 11:20).
According to Leslie Newbigin, “If the New Testament spoke only of the proclamation of the kingdom there could be nothing to justify the adjective “new.” The prophets and John the Baptist also proclaimed the kingdom. What is new is that in Jesus the kingdom is present.”[2] “Jesus came into Galilee announcing the good news of God and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, the reign of God is at hand: repent and believe the good news'” (Mark 1:14-15). Jesus proclaims the message of the kingdom and he does the work of the kingdom as in him the kingdom is dynamically active and present.[3] He said, “If I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt. 12:28). He casts out demons, and this is the sign that Satan is bound: “Or how can anyone enter the strong man’s house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house” (Matt 12:29). As Paul describes, “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way” (2 Thess 2:7). This is enacted at the cross, “Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself” (John 12:31-32).
In addition to casting out demons and binding Satan, the third mark of the presence of the kingdom are the miracles of Jesus. Jesus replied to John the Baptist’s question about the coming Messiah, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor” (Matt 11:4-5). These are signs the kingdom of salvation has come: the healing of the blind points to Jesus power to heal spiritual blindness; the healing of the lame means Jesus can heal spiritual disability; the healing of leprosy testifies Jesus can purify; the healing of the deaf shows Jesus can penetrate obtuseness and deception; and the raising of the dead demonstrates Jesus’ power over death and the capacity to give life. This sign points to Jesus’ resurrection and the resurrection already available in Christian baptism (Rom 6:1). According to John (in Revelation 20), the resurrection from the dead has already occurred, and we need not wait on the millennium. According to Paul, we have already been raised up and made alive together with Christ (Eph 2:6; Col 2:12-13; 3:1).
Matthew provides a fourth indicator of the presence of the kingdom in his record of Jesus answer to John: “the good news is preached to the poor” (Matt. 11:5). The good news of the promised kingdom is specifically for the poor, the broken, and the enslaved (Is 61:1). A fifth sign of the kingdom, also predicted in Isaiah (as well as Jer 31:34; Mic 7:18-20; Zech 13:1) is the forgiveness of sins: “The people who dwell there will be forgiven their iniquity” (Is 33:24–Is 34). Jesus heals the paralytic to demonstrate he can forgive sins: “‘But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—He said to the paralytic, ‘I say to you, get up, pick up your pallet and go home’” (Mk 2:10–11).
The sixth mark of the kingdom’s presence was Jesus new teaching about its internal realization: “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20-21). To say it is internal does not, of course, exclude its corporate and embodied nature. His is a spiritual kingdom in that it is not the nationalistic kingdom Israel expected – a caution to those who would equate Christ’s kingdom with territorial or material kingdoms. As Paul says, “The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17).[4]
Universal Salvation Through the Church
As Newbigin sums up, in Christ “we are talking about the reign and the sovereignty of God over all that is, and therefore we are talking about the origin, meaning, and end of the universe and of all human history within the history of the universe.”[5] The Bible describes the blessing of all nations, not just one, and the completion of God’s purposes in all of creation and not just some part, as the history it records is bringing all of creation and history to its divine end. The body of Christ is the means of an all-inclusive salvation: “there is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:6).
According to Sergius Bulgakov, “One should not diminish the ontological significance of this unity by transforming it into merely a figure, a simile: like a body or similar to a body. On the contrary, the apostle speaks precisely about one body (Eph. 4:4–6), in direct relation with the unity of God. The Church is not a conglomerate, but a body; and, as such, it is not quasi-one, but genuinely one, although this unity is not empirical, but substantial, ontological.”[6] The unity increases in and through God as it “grows with a growth which is from God” (Col 2:19). It is the realization of the ontological unity of the Trinity, the experience of the foundation of creation experienced in the perfection of creation. This unifying work has no limit: “Christ is the head of humankind and therefore lives in all humankind.”[7] Bulgakov ties this universality directly to the church: “The Church is the general foundation of creaturely being, its beginning and goal. The problem of the Church is posed here outside of historical concreteness, outside of the limits of space and time, outside of specific church organizations.”[8] There are no limits to the church mystically or ontologically, anymore than there are limits to the incarnation: “the incarnation of the Lord as the divine-human person of Christ consisted in the assumption of the whole Adam, “perfect” humanity. There are no limits to this assumption, either external or internal.”[9]
Christ is the goal of all humanity, and thus all humanity “belongs to the Church.” The good tidings are for “all people” (Luke 2:10–11) and the salvation is “before the face of all people: a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel” (vv. 30–32). “The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men” (Titus 2:11). God “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). Those who would limit the number or who would divide the means, contradict the identity of Christ. There are no limits to the Logos’ assumption of humanity (“becoming flesh,” in John 1:1) or limits to the Holy Spirit. As Peter says on the day of Pentecost, quoting the prophet Joel, ‘it shall come to pass in the last days, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh’” (Acts 2:17). The “whole universe belongs to the Church. The universe is the periphery, the cosmic face of the Church.”[10] To put a limit on the work of Christ, by means of Israel or an institutional church, or to imagine the purposes of God can be delayed or thwarted by human means, or that God is only concerned with some of creation or some people is to refuse the “all in all” work of Christ.
Conclusion
How does the kingdom of God come if not in the incarnation? If it is dependent upon physical and political Israel, or on the kingdoms of this world, it will come through killing, (killing Palestinians, starving their children, killing their doctors, destroying their water, blowing up Iranians, assassinating nuclear scientists, committing murder mayhem and bloodshed). Christians who reject the cross as the reign of God demonstrate their worldly citizenship in their commitment to violence. Christians who follow Christ practice the way of the cross, not by putting people on crosses but by taking up the cross, knowing this is the cosmic reality unfolding in His millennial kingdom.
[1] There is no possible debate about the facts, or about the use of the term genocide, as this is the term chosen by two Israeli human rights organizations and by multiple Israelis. The New Yorker this week cites Moshe Ya’alon, former defense minister under Netanyahu calling it “ethnic cleansing.” Omer Bartov, a leading historian of the holocaust and a veteran of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, says what is happening in Gaza is not a war but “genocide” – “it is the attempt to wipe out Palestinian existence in Gaza.” Ehud Olmert, a former Prime Minister of Israel, says “What we are doing in Gaza is a war of devastation: indiscriminate killing of civilians. He calls it war crimes.” He says, “It is not a few bad soldiers, but government policy knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.” Two hundred and fifty former officers in the intelligence establishment, including three ex-chiefs of Mossad, signed an open letter of Protest. A thousand Israeli Air Force veterans signed a letter describing it as a useless political and personal ploy.
[2] Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,1978) 44.
[3] See Kim Riddlebarger, A Case for Amillennialism: Understanding the End Times (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2013) 122.
[4] I am following Riddlebarger, 122-124.
[5] Nebigin, 32
[6] Sergius Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb (p. 258). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Kindle Edition.
[7] Bulgakov, 261.
[8] Bulgakov, 265-266.
[9] Bulgakov, 266.
[10] Bulgakov, 267.
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