{"id":320,"date":"2015-03-20T14:53:31","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T14:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nevisonhardy.co.uk\/chaplaincy\/?page_id=320"},"modified":"2016-02-11T18:18:35","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T17:18:35","slug":"can-we-bring-about-the-kingdom","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/chaplaincyresource.canterbury.ac.uk\/?page_id=320","title":{"rendered":"Can we bring about the Kingdom?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Chaplaincy brings about the Kingdom of God\u2019 would make for a striking slogan, but it is almost certainly untenable. If one thinks, initially at least, about the full realisation of the Kingdom as the new creation of all things, then manifestly its realisation lies beyond the bounds of any potentialities immanent in creation. It is not a possibility for the world. It thus lies far beyond human achievement. Its realisation is rather the gift of God. J\u00fcrgen Moltmann introduces a very helpful distinction between the historical future and the eschatological future on the basis of two Latin terms. Futurum<\/em> is that future which emerges by the selective realisation of the possibilities immanent in the world \u2013 future in its commonplace sense, the future we can create. Adventus<\/em> is the future that comes to the world from God, transcending that of which the world is capable \u2013 the future only God can bring about. The Kingdom\u2019s highest realisation comes via adventus <\/em>(see, for example, God in Creation<\/em> (1985), pp.132-5; The Coming of God <\/em>(1996), pp.23-29).<\/p>\n

Ed Sanders\u2019 (1993) more cautious historical approach comes to a compatible conclusion. All Jesus asked people to do was to \u2018live right\u2019 that they might enter<\/em> the Kingdom of God. There was nothing they could do to bring<\/em> the Kingdom; that is God\u2019s work alone. If the Kingdom is like leaven or a mustard seed all we can do is look around now for clues to the presently invisible Kingdom that one day will erupt as a full loaf or a large tree. It grows on its own (p.178f).<\/p>\n

Precisely for this reason – that the Kingdom comes as God\u2019s gift – it cannot be conceived by rational extrapolation from present trends in the world (which in fact, both for the individual and the current configuration of our universe, seem to point towards annihilation ). Rather, the kingdom can only be anticipated<\/em> by the theological imagination as it is prepared to be constrained by what we know of God\u2019s gracious action in Christ, yet reach out constructively to envisage what consummation might mean for any particular set of circumstances. Anticipation means imaginatively sighting a line of transformation from the world we presently know towards the promised fulfilment of our world in the new creation. In other words, it means risking an account of what, for Christ\u2019s sake, the flourishing of life might look like. By so doing, we construct a vision that calls the present world, the present cultural, political, social, economic, ecological, and material world, into question. This is one way in which chaplaincy can possess both a relevant and a public claim. It has a better story to tell than the perpetuation of the status quo<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That the future need not follow from the projecting of existing trends, that the future need not be a prolongation of the present, means that history can become the arena for action that seeks to anticipate something of what God\u2019s kingdom will bring. With God it is always possible to believe that things can be different, better, other than they are. The theological imagination which grasps a sense of the kingdom\u2019s content, and so calls the present into question, can thus direct and inspire action in the here and now which, while it cannot lead to the kingdom, can bring about a series of closer representations of what the kingdom will mean. In other words, the theological imagination shapes hopeful action in the service of the flourishing of life in anticipation<\/em> of God\u2019s defeat of every form of death. In Hope Against Hope <\/em>(1999) Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart put the matter well: \u201cChristian faith moves forward toward the realisation of God\u2019s kingdom in the slipstream of the statements it makes about that kingdom, the new creation of God\u201d (p.84). Chaplaincy is about learning how to \u2018slipstream\u2019 in the wake of the Kingdom’s anticipation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Chaplaincy brings about the Kingdom of God\u2019 would make for a striking slogan, but it is almost certainly untenable. If one thinks, initially at least, about the full realisation of the Kingdom as the new creation of all things, then manifestly its realisation lies beyond the bounds of any potentialities immanent in creation. It is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1098,"parent":314,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-320","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chaplaincyresource.canterbury.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chaplaincyresource.canterbury.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chaplaincyresource.canterbury.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chaplaincyresource.canterbury.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chaplaincyresource.canterbury.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/chaplaincyresource.canterbury.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1581,"href":"https:\/\/chaplaincyresource.canterbury.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/320\/revisions\/1581"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chaplaincyresource.canterbury.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chaplaincyresource.canterbury.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chaplaincyresource.canterbury.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}