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68 the Kingdom of God and the Church: a Baptist Reassessment The Kingdom of God and the Church: A Baptist Reassessment Russell D. Moore and Robert E. Sagers Russell D. Moore is Senior Vice Introduction “quiet times.” President for Academic Administration The United States Constitution isn’t a The past century, though, has seen a and Dean of the School of Theology at sacred document; it isn’t even a grammati- renewed emphasis among evangelical The Southern Baptist Theological Semi- cal one. That was the claim of E. B. White Christians on the Kingdom of God both nary, where he also serves as Associate who, as one-half of Strunk and White, the in its present and future manifestations. Professor of Christian Theology and twentieth century’s most famous team This ongoing reflection on the Kingdom Ethics. Dr. Moore is the Executive Direc- of style-writing experts, probably ought has yielded, and promises to yield further, tor of the Carl F. H. Henry Institute for to know. In an essay in the New Yorker in great insights on the mission of the church Evangelical Engagement and a Senior 1936, White pointed to the preamble’s lan- in the present age. Editor of Touchstone: A Journal of guage of forming a “more perfect union.” This article argues that Baptist ecclesi- Mere Christianity. He is the author of The Perfection is perfection, White noted, and ology particularly has much to learn from Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical degrees of more or less perfection have and contribute to the debate about the Perspective (Crossway, 2004). “turned many a grammarian’s stomach.” relationship between the Kingdom of God A grammatically-correct author, White and the church. Some of the emphases Robert E. Sagers serves as Special concluded, would have written simply being recovered by other Christians on Assistant to the Senior Vice President for “in order to form a perfect union—a thing this score resonate with central aspects Academic Administration at The South- our forefathers didn’t dare predict, even of the Baptist vision of the church. The 1 ern Baptist Theological Seminary, where for the sake of grammar.” The founding contention of this article is that under- he is a Doctor of Philosophy student in statesmen, of course, were reacting to standing the church as a colony of the Christian theology. something virtually all generations of Kingdom in this already/not yet struc- humans have known—kingship, includ- ture makes most sense within a Baptist ing a divine right to rule. The American ecclesial framework. The church, then, in skepticism of such claims to monarchy its relationship to the Kingdom of Christ, has had an impact on more than simply is made up of subjects of the Kingdom, the grammar of our founding docu- announces the onset of the Kingdom, and ments. The hostility to monarchy and of lives out the ethics of the Kingdom. A his- utopianism—rightly placed hostility, in toric, confessional Baptist ecclesiology has this present age—has left a Western cul- the exegetical and theological explanatory ture in which “kingship” and “Kingdom” power lacking in some contemporary means very little, apart from a fast-food expressions of evangelical ecclesiology. logo or the latest bored trivialities of the A Baptist reassessment of the interplay British royal family. It is little wonder, between the church and the Kingdom, then, that Western Christians often read then, can serve to preserve Baptist dis- “Kingdom of God” in their Bibles as either tinctives in a post-denominational age, “when the roll is called up yonder” or a to press our Christian brothers outside of denominational program or a sermon our fellowships toward more consistent series or the sum total of their individual applications of Kingdom theology to 68 church life, and to begin the process of represented a mystery people, promised revitalization and reform in local Baptist heavenly blessing. The Kingdom, how- churches. ever, was yet future, and belonged to ethnic Israel over whom Jesus would rule The Church, the Kingdom, from David’s throne in a rebuilt Jerusa- and the Development of lem. When the church is raptured out of Evangelical Ecclesiology the world at the end of the age, and the Reformed theologian B. B. Warfield kingdoms of this world are judged in the famously remarked that the Protestant Great Tribulation, then the Kingdom of Reformation represented the triumph God will come with Jesus in the Eastern of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over skies, the dispensationalists taught. This 2 Augustine’s doctrine of the church. In church/Kingdom distinction was helpful fact, Warfield contended, Augustine’s to American fundamentalists in the early soteriology and his ecclesiology were twentieth-century when many (though two children “struggling in the womb not all) of them were influenced by the 3 of his mind.” This is partially true, at dispensationalist paradigm of the Scofield least as it relates to apostolic succession Reference Bible and Dallas Theological of bishops and the sacramental economy. Seminary. After all, many of them were On the relationship of the church to the marginalized by churches and denomina- Kingdom of God, however, Augustinian tions that, just as the Church of England, themes remained to varying degrees were falling to Protestant liberalism and within Protestant church thought, espe- ethical latitudinarianism. cially within the Lutheran and Reformed The distinction between the Kingdom wings of Protestantism, for over a millen- and the church was further affected by nium. Augustine identified the Kingdom American revivalism, from the Great as virtually synonymous with the church, Awakenings onward, and accelerated both on earth and in heaven, ruling with rapidly with the explosion of parachurch Christ in the “thousand years” between ministries within the fundamentalist and 4 his first and second comings. Contempo- evangelical movements of the twentieth rary evangelical Christianity saw some century. Revivalism rightly sought to attempts to distance the church and the emphasize personal regeneration, and to Kingdom, seeing the Kingdom as future- speak against any illusion of reconcilia- oriented, standing in judgment over the tion with God based on church member- church, and indeed serving as the crite- ship. Revivalist evangelicals also sought, rion by which the institutional churches again rightly, to embrace a unity that tran- would be found faithful or apostate on scended denominational particularities— the last day. especially as the secularizing culture and Faced with what was deemed a doc- the mainline Protestant establishment trinally and morally falling Church both reacted with hostility against what of England in the nineteenth century, evangelicals took to be the gospel itself. dispensationalism radically severed Some of the most effective evangelistic, the church and the Kingdom of God, social ministry, personal discipleship, and seeing the church as a “parenthesis” in political action organizations in Ameri- God’s redemptive program. The church can evangelicalism were intentionally 69 trans-denominational, accountable to a the Kingdom to the present-day church. constituency of individuals rather than If Christians were indeed to “seek first” to a particular fellowship of churches. the Kingdom of God, as Jesus says, then As a result, discussion of the church was how could conservative Protestants offer often abstract and almost incidental to a united front of Kingdom activity when, the Gospel. New believers were told, for for instance, dispensationalists and the instance, in evangelical gospel tracts to Reformed were at odds over whether the join a good church after conversion, but Kingdom was here, yet future, or whether this seemed to be simply for the purpose it even belonged to us at all? Moreover, of additional instruction and fellowship, how could evangelicals speak to issues of not as an essential aspect of the gospel ecclesiology when evangelical institutions itself. were filled with those who could not agree Dispensationalism and revivalism, on issues as basic to church life as whether along with a Reformed emphasis on the to “baptize” infants? The solution to this “spirituality of the church,” both dis- problem was found, at first, not in the tinguished themselves from the kind of denominational structures or cooperative Kingdom of God envisioned by mainline initiatives of the evangelicals, but in the Protestants, who often fused a Puritan area of biblical scholarship. postmillennial optimism with a distinc- It is difficult to overestimate the impor- tively modern view of human progress tance of Fuller Theological Seminary’s through social and political action. Thus, George Eldon Ladd in discussing the Social Gospel proponents pictured a evangelical understanding of the King- Kingdom of God that had more to do with dom as it relates to the church—or to the labor union and city hall than with anything else, for that matter. Ladd was the local church. In fact, Walter Rauschen- a Baptist, but like many of his evangeli- busch, the pioneer of the Social Gospel cal contemporaries—including luminar- movement, argued for a distinctively non- ies such as Billy Graham and Carl F. H. churchly understanding of the Kingdom. Henry—Ladd was identified more as As Rauschenbusch put it, the church was, an “evangelical” than as a Baptist. Ladd for early Christians, a “temporary shelter” drew upon the concept of inaugurated that, unfortunately, grew into “the main eschatology, the idea that the Kingdom is 5 thing” throughout history. “The church both a present and a future reality with an is one social
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