I have been studying the theology of Jurgen Moltmann recently – he is one of the most significant theologians to write in this century. In his book God in Creation I came across the following quote which summed up the heart of where much of evnagelical theology has taken a wrong turn:
“1. The first reduction of heaven to something quite different was made in the Christian church itself. As the realistic eschatology of the kingdom of God receded, heaven was increasingly – and to the same degree – declared to be the place of salvation for the soul. The prayer for the coming of the kingdom ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ was replaced by the longing ‘to go to heaven’ oneself. The kingdom of God’s glory and the salvation of the whole creation was reduced to heaven; and heaven was reduced to the salvation of the soul.
This religious reduction led to the heedless neglect of the earth and to the surrender of its future. Anyone who confuses the kingdom of God with heaven transforms his hope into resignation.
2. If heaven is reduced to God himself, it ceases to be a part of creation, and is as uncreated and eternal as God himself. It is then God’s essential Being before he resolved to become the creator. A heaven divinized in this way contains the potential for creation’s destruction. The reduction of heaven to God himself therefore delivers the earth over to the apocalyptic ‘annihilation of the world’.”[1]
Basically, what this is saying is that we have lost the correct understanding of salvation as the coming of the Kingdom of God and have reduced it to the salvation of the soul in heaven. The net result of this is that we no longer see the relevance of any meaningful engagement in the world as Christians, except for the purpose of “getting people saved.” We have lost the heart of Jesus message that “The Kingdom of God is at hand” and have thereby abdicated our responsibility to bring it about, to the degree that it is in our power to do so. And in the vacuum that has been left by our abandonment of our vocation to “bring the kingdom” or “build for the new creation” (to use the terms I have been using so far in this blog), other forces have been free to shape culture and society in ways that are unjust, dehumanising and in many ways obviously evil.
In order to recapture the world with the vision of what God intended it to be, and what human existence within this world was meant to look like, we need to again understand what heaven is and what it’s relationship to the earth is. It is the place where God reigns and which is open to his possibilities. God’s destiny for the creation below (as opposed to heaven, the creation above, since is heaven is clearly one of God’s created works) is that it would become the place where is will is done ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. Until this becomes a central part of our gospel again, we will continue to neglect our vocation to bring Christ’s lordship into this creation and we will allow the world to be shaped by what is not from God, and ultimately, by what is evil.
[1] J. Moltmann, God in Creation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 181.
