The Coming of the Kingdom, Part I

The Long Shadow of A Certain Bishop of Hippo

Our Lord instructed us to pray, “Thy Kingdom come.” Clearly this is an important issue and construct, for it is the first request of the model prayer, occurring immediately after the doxological “hallowed be Thy name”. (Matthew 6: 9,10). The coming of the Kingdom. Here is something to conjure with indeed—and many have. And we all need to.

Getting our theology right on the coming of the Kingdom is as important in our day as it has ever been. Fortunately, we are not left in any doubt as to what the Kingdom actually looks like as and when it comes. Our Lord provides the necessary insight in the next, parallel petition in the model prayer:

Thy Kingdom come
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

So the matter is pretty clear. Firstly, the realm of the Kingdom of God is upon earth. Secondly, the presence and reality of the Kingdom consists in the will of God being done upon the earth. The Kingdom has come and is present as men obey God. Thirdly, there is a qualitative aspect to God's will being done on earth: it is to be carried out in the same way it is obeyed in heaven (mutatis mutandis, of course). Intuitively we can understand how God is obeyed in heaven. He is obeyed there without any distortions of sin, disobedience, or rebellion. Obedience is joyful, comprehensive, total, instant, intuitive, natural, habitual, and complete.

Our Lord instructs us to pray that this same reality will come to pass upon the earth. But how does it come to pass? This is one of the most crucial questions of our age—particularly as Unbelief grows stronger and more pervasive in the West.

Now at this point we need to delve back into redemptive history to see how this has been understood in the past. Essentially there are two, and only two views: all of historical Christian theology on this matter consists of variants of these two basic constructs. The first is the construct proposed by Augustine, bishop of Hippo.

Augustine lived in post-Constantinian times. The Empire had become Christianised in the sense that it now had (by-and-large) professing Christians as emperors; the Church was an established and protected institution; civil and criminal law was increasingly influenced by Christian teaching. It was clear that a radical transformation had taken place between the Rome of pagan emperors and the Empire as inherited and moulded by Constantine. It was easy to believe that the kingdoms of this world had become the Kingdom of Christ.

But all was not well. Augustine lived at a time when pagan barbarians sacked Rome. The old empire had become weak and was more and more destabilized. Augustine did not wish to identify the glorious Kingdom of God with the far-from-perfect and decomposing empire of Rome. In his magisterial City of God, Augustine developed the first construct of the Kingdom of God.

Throughout human history, argued Augustine, there have been two cities: the City (or Kingdom) of God and the City of Man. These two cities exist in parallel. The City of God is populated by the redeemed upon earth, as visibly organised into the Church. But apart from the Church, the City of God largely remains invisible to the naked eye. There is nothing particularly distinctive about it by which one can identify it.

In this dispensation of human history there is a radical and pervasive “not yet” about the Kingdom. Its coming and impact upon the City of Man is largely invisible and unknown. The "doing of God's will upon the earth as it is in heaven" is radically truncated and limited. Its extension and growth is via the conversion of souls to the Christian faith. Therefore, when Augustine looked at the first petition of the Lord's prayer, “Thy kingdom come” he fundamentally understood it to be a prayer for the final advent of our Lord. The doing of God's will upon earth as it is currently being done in heaven would occur only when our Lord returned to earth at the end of human history as we know it. Then, when all sin was removed, and all things were restored to perfection could we say that the first petition was answered.

For Augustine in this age the coming of the Kingdom was restricted to the regeneration of individual souls and their mystical union with Christ in and through the Church. That is the extent of the doing of God's will upon earth in our lifetimes: anything further would have to wait until the Final Advent of our Lord.

The Augustinian construct of the Kingdom and its coming has been widely influential and remains so to this day. One implication of this construct is that it leads one to focus intensively on evangelism and the conversion of souls. The coming of the Kingdom in this age means seeing souls converted—as many as the Lord shall call.

In subsequent posts we will present the second construct, then compare and contrast the two. To reiterate, these matters are not relatively unimportant or minor considerations. They are central to the faith insofar as they form the first, and therefore the most important, petition in the Lord's prayer. If we do not get this right, there are lots of other things we will get wrong.