Scot McKnight’s Kingdom Conspiracy: Pleated Pants

We’re discussing Scot McKnight’s latest book Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church.

In contrast to the Skinny Jeans kingdom approach, Scot speaks of the Pleated Pants theorizing of academia.

A little more completely, [the Pleated Pants academics’] questions are:

Is the kingdom already here, or is it still in the future?

And is the kingdom a dynamic rule of God or the realm over which God rules— that is, a nation or a people or a territory, such as the kingdom of Denmark?

What kingdom mission or kingdom work looks like, if those directions are even pursued among this crowd, flows from answering these two sets of questions. We can summarize the Pleated Pants crowd’s answers to these questions in two statements: the kingdom is both present and future, and the kingdom is both a rule and a realm (over which God governs). Not very exciting conclusions, I agree, especially when compared to what the Skinny Jeans adherents talk about and do.

(pp. 9-10)(paragraphing modified to facilitate Internet reading throughout these posts).

The Kingdom is both present and future

Scot does not spend much time in scripture demonstrating that the Kingdom is post present and future. On the future side of the ledger, he quotes,

(Mar 1:14-15 ESV)  14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God,  15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

(Luk 17:20-21 ESV) 20 Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed,  21 nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” 

“Behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” Seems plain enough. But other passages speak in futurist terms.

(Mar 14:25 ESV)  25 Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

(Luk 19:11 ESV)  11 As they heard these things, he proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.

Then again, these passages speak as of the time Jesus walked the earth in the flesh. What about later? Scot doesn’t address the question, but the answer is the same.

Some passages plainly speak of the Kingdom as yet to come.

(1Co 6:9-10 ESV) 9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,  10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 

(2Ti 4:18 ESV) 18 The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. 

(2Pe 1:11 ESV)  11 For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

But other passages are just as plainly present tense —

(Col 1:13-14 ESV)  13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,  14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. 

(Rev 1:5-6 ESV)  To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood  6 and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

So it’s hard to deny the claim. Yes, the Kingdom is somehow both present and future. But what does this mean for my and my church and my relationship with God? The Pleated Plants crowd can be frustratingly uninterested in the question.

It was, to use the terms of the arch-Pleated Pants scholar George Eldon Ladd, “present without consummation.” This is a profound truth, but the Pleated Pants scholars have made the kingdom so theoretical and abstract, peppered at times with French and German terms, that church people cry out for clarity.

To say, as they often do, that the kingdom is “eschatological existence” or “living between the times” or “dwelling in the tension between the now and the not yet”— frankly, that might work in some lecture hall, but when it comes to kingdom mission or to kingdom work, we want to know what kingdom looks like in ministry.

What is kingdom mission? Is it worship? Social activism? Evangelism? Family life? Culture making? What is it in the concrete realities of this world?

Is this crowd’s habit of not taking us to the next level, to the level of church life itself, an example of turning kingdom study into what Karl Barth called “blowing bubbles”? Yes, this is precisely what sometimes (maybe oftentimes?) happens.

(pp. 10-11).

The Kingdom is both reign and realm

Scot is especially unhappy with the conclusions of the Pleated Pants crowd on this question.

Somewhere along the line, someone in the Pleated Pants crowd argued that the Hebrew word “kingdom” meant “rule” or “reign” or “sovereignty” but not “realm”; the final bell was [rung], the game was over, and they retired to a sitting room to chat and enjoy evening drinks with not a few of them smoking expensive cigars. Nearly everyone (but not all) fell in line, and a consensus arrived: kingdom meant “rule” and not “realm.”  

Since God as King is also Savior of Israel (Ps. 74: 12; Isa. 33: 22; 44: 8), the kind of rule God brings is a saving, redeeming rule. The shift in meanings was heard throughout the land: the word “rule” became the word “redemption.”

(p. 12). And thereby the Pleated Pants crowd gave justification for the views of the Skinny Jeans crowd. We can redeem a polluted creek without preaching Jesus while we do it. We can dig a well, redeeming the water supply and the health of a village, without preaching Jesus.

It’s only people who need to know Jesus to be redeemed, and perhaps they’ll ask us why we’re motivated to help them when we send them money to build trade schools. But it’s not necessary because we are participating in God’s redemptive mission by simply making the world a better place.

And here is a quotation demonstrating why we read good books:

And Stanley Hauerwas [in Resident Aliens: A Provocative Christian Assessment of Culture and Ministry for People Who Know that Something is Wrong (which you absolutely must read)] created a near marvel of expression when he said the first task of the church “is to be the church and thus help the world understand itself as world.” He clarifies: “For the church to be the church, therefore, is not anti-world, but rather an attempt to show what the world is meant to be as God’s good creation.”

But this makes the church God’s mission to the world for the sake of the world so the world will become what it is meant to be. When we reverse this posture the church ends up serving the world, or, as Hauerwas poignantly put it, we end up “running errands for the world.”

Eugene Peterson, in The Message, in an apparent gloss on Paul’s words to the Ephesians, has “The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church” (at 1: 23).

(p. 18). And that a very important question. Is the church what the world is meant to become? Or is the world, with clean creeks and village wells and vocational centers throughout the poorest areas, what the world is meant to become?

In Postmillennial terms, will digging wells bring about the Millennium? In amillennial terms, is the role of the church to make the world a better place for the world to be the world?