Kingdom of God: Reevaluating “Already / Not Yet”
The Present Kingdom and Future Kingdom of George Eldon Ladd
For much of the 20th Century, Dispensationalists taught that the kingdom is strictly a future event. My first Bible was the Ryrie Study Bible. I loved that Bible! I still own it (though I hadn’t opened it for twenty years until I took this picture of it!).
Charles Ryrie was a leading theologian in the Dispensational movement in the late 20th Century. In his book, A Survey of Bible Doctrine (Chicago: Moody Press, 1972), he explains the Dispensational view of the kingdom:
“The millennial kingdom is that period of 1,000 years during which our Lord Jesus Christ will rule the earth in righteousness and will fulfill to the Jews and the world those promises of the Old Testament covenants.”
Amillennialists refuted the idea of a future kingdom, insisting
(God’s rule) “is going on now, and will be until Christ returns. Hence the term realized millennialism is an apt description of (this) view…if it is remembered that the millennium in question is not an earthly but a heavenly reign.” (Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future (Eerdmans, 1979).
Then Along Came George Eldon Ladd
While doing his doctoral studies at Harvard, George Eldon Ladd studied the kingdom debates in Germany. Beginning in 1964, with the first publication of Jesus and the Kingdom (later retitled The Presence of the Future: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism). he advocated the German construct of “Already/Not Yet.”
Ladd wrote,
“The Kingdom of God is the redemptive reign of God dynamically active to establish his rule among men…This Kingdom, which will appear as an apocalyptic act at the end of the age, has already come into human history in the person and mission of Jesus to overcome evil, to deliver men from its power, and to bring them into the blessings of God’s reign. The Kingdom of God involves two great moments: fulfillment within history (already), and consummation at the end of history (not yet)” (Ladd, The Presence of the Future, 1996).
For Ladd, the kingdom of God manifests itself in two stages:
The “already” of God’s reign in the lives of Christians, and
The “not yet” of when God will rule over the full realm of the cosmos.
The Inner Rule of God in Individual Hearts?
Ladd’s view is an example of the interior kingdom (see my previous post where I delineate the 8 very different ways various Christians view the kingdom of God), where the manifestation of God’s rule in our present day is not in the realm of the material created cosmos. Rather, for Ladd, it is the dynamic redemptive rule in the hearts of individuals.
If Ladd’s view of the kingdom of God is correct, then the mission of God’s people is to proclaim a gospel that God is to be the ruler of each person individually in the present as a means for guaranteeing the bliss of entering into the King’s material rule/realm in the future, when the internal spiritual experience comes to consummation in the more external tangible experience.
You may not have heard of George Eldon Ladd, but his influence on American evangelical Christianity cannot be understated.
“In a 1984 survey that Mark Noll sent to members of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) and the Institute for Biblical Research (IBR), Noll asked, ‘Please list the three individuals, living or dead, who have exerted the dominant influence on your scholarly work. You do not have to share the conclusions of these individuals but they should be the ones whose work influences you most.’ For ETS members, the number one individual was John Calvin. Number two was George Ladd. For IBR members, number one was George Ladd.” (Andrew David Naselli, “Three Reflections on Evangelical Academic Publishing,” in Themelios, Volume 39, Issue 3, ed. D. A. Carson (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014).
While the “Already/Not Yet” construct has been helpful in understanding that the kingdom of God can be both present and future, it raises other tensions:
Is the kingdom of God individual or social?
Is the kingdom particular to the church, or does it include the entire cosmos?
Scot McKnight, in his book Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church, summarizes Ladd’s take:
“The word ‘kingdom,’ then, is not a place or a space or a realm or a people with boundaries and kings and a temple. No, ‘kingdom’ refers to the abstract dynamic that God is now at work redeeming individuals in Jesus Christ in this world, and this rule in Jesus Christ will be completed and universal at the eschaton when the kingdom arrives fully.” (McKnight, Kingdom Conspiracy, Brazos Press, 2014, p13).
What About Redeemed Community?
While it cannot be denied that Jesus Christ’s lordship includes the redemptive rule of Christ over individual Christians, Ladd’s proposal does not emphasize God’s call on these individuals to live in community.
It also does not provide a theological foundation for God’s people to participate with God in his mission for the redemption or reconciliation of the entirety of his creation. (More on this in the next post).
What do you think?
Is the present manifestation of the kingdom of God primarily or even exclusively about God’s rule in the hearts of individual believers?
Is the kingdom also about his authority over the entirety of the created cosmos?
Should Christ’s rule also include other aspects of this present world? Is Jesus the Lord of business? Of education? Of the arts? Of governing? etc.?