Dear Editor,
I was glad to read Al Gibbs’ article on the question of two kingdoms in the January issue of en, but with some caveats. The ‘transformation view’ may have been more clearly articulated by Kuyper, but Christians have surely always been believed in transformation. Christ announced His arrival by proclaiming good news to the poor and freedom for the oppressed, saying that this Scripture was fulfilled that day (Luke 4:18-21). The very word ‘gospel’ is to proclaim the arrival of a new king who is bringing in a new order.
Gibbs contrasts ‘everyday life’ with ‘eternal spiritual reality’ which clearly shows the influence of Plato. In His Sermon on the Mount, however, Jesus argues that ‘treasures in heaven’ are when heavenly values are lived in daily realities, where the poor, the hungry, the needy are cared for, enemies are loved, and people forgive each other. Jesus is our King, and we are to follow Him in how we live our lives today, so that ‘your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.’ Far from creating a dualism between physical and spiritual, we are called to follow our King in our everyday lives to bring heaven to earth.
Yours sincerely,
James May
Hackney, London
Dear Editor,
I am grateful to Al Gibbs for his very clear and helpful summary of the ‘two kingdoms’ and ‘transformationist’ viewpoints. It is true that the church has always struggled to engage with society in the right way, and sincere Christians take different views on this issue. I would only point out that the main weakness of the ‘transformationist’ view is that we have no Biblical promise that we can transform anything. As Al Gibbs concludes, the church is a spiritual reality or, as the apostle Peter puts it, we are ‘pilgrims and exiles’. We wait for the new creation; we do not achieve it.
In the meantime, though, we should still ‘seek the welfare’ of our earthly city (Jer. 29). In his commentary on Galatians, Martin Luther beautifully summarises how we do that, with a well-understood ‘two-kingdoms’ approach:
‘When I have this righteousness [of faith] within me, I descend from heaven like the rain that makes the earth fertile. That is, I come forth into another kingdom and I perform good works wherever the opportunity arises…’
Yours sincerely,
Stéphane Simonnin
Twickenham
