a

TWO
The Gospel
Any considered attempt to develop a coherent concept of evangelism that will be serviceable in the present must begin with eschatology.

TWO
The Gospel
Any considered attempt to develop a coherent concept of evangelism that will be serviceable in the present must begin with eschatology.

It was especially prominent among the prophets and among the writers of the apocalyptic tracts that circulated within Judaism.

What is at stake is the fundamental theo- logical horizon within which both Jesus and his followers con- ceive and carry out the first, and paradigmatic, evangelistic ac- tion of the church.

In order to read the coming of the kingdom of God in history we need discernment of heart and spirit; we need the ability to hear what God is say- ing to us through them and to be prepared to reorient our lives in the light of them.

In the traditions that enshrine the earliest witness to his activity we find ample evidence for the claim that Jesus and the disciples who gathered around him were convinced that the reign of God had already dawned.

Whatever evangelism may be, it is at least intimately related to the gospel of the reign of God that was inaugurated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

They turn to aspects of our current practice such as crusades or televi- sion evangelists; or they are directed to times of past glory, like the great revivals of the eighteenth century; or they focus on the expansion of the church and research on church growth; or they are taken up with the phenomenology of religious ex- perience as represented by the conversions of Paul and Augustine.

Indeed the two can be set side by side in a dramatic way to bring out the fact that the present events in history antic- ipate or foreshadow the climactic events of vindication and judg- ment that are anticipated at the consummation of history.

When the early Christians began evangelizing they may well have shared some of our sense of embarrassment.

The ambiguity is denied equally by the fundamentalist's simplistic affirmations of fulfillment and the rationalist's simplistic discernment of mistakes.

If God speaks in prophecy, he speaks in the history that follows on history and it is history, history grasped within the perspective of faith, that does what the prophet cannot do-namely, decipher prophetic symbol, translating image into event, schematic sequence into actual sequence, and symbolic time into real time.10
To be sure, the members and leaders of the early Christian com- munity were not operating as autonomous agents seeking to patch together such information as they had ...

Some of the miracles (e.g., those related to sight) properly can be construed as acted parables that call the observers to open their eyes and see the radical significance of what is now made manifest in Jesus' ministry.

Taken to- gether these constitute the fundamental loci in the Gospels for the conviction that God has moved dramatically in history to inaugurate his rule.

To look for consensus in such circumstances is utopian and unrealistic.

Biblical Studies: Essays ill Honor of William Barclay (Philadel- phia: Westminster, 1976), pp. 72-86; The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Lon- don: Duckworth, 1980), chap.

In this case talk about the rule of God makes little or no sense outside the tratlitibns of Israel that, taken as a whole, provide the particu- lar conceptual cradle and the more precise content of the specific claims about God's action that are at the heart of the Christian gospel.

For them eschatology had to do with events that had recently transpired in their midst; it was inti- mately related to their experiences of God.

Third, we must assume here that eschatologi- cal claims about the kingdom of God involve irreducibly a futur- istic dimension that defies adequate depiction.

All three Synoptic Gospels refer to an apocalyptic consummation when the Son of Man will come in glory to gather his elect (Mark 13:1-36; Matt.

Yet there is more to come; what we experience now is a foretaste and foreshadowing of those ultimate acts of God that
34
will bring history to its teleological denouement at the great and manifest day of the Lord, which is beyond literal description.

They assume the basic rudiments of theism, that is, that God exists and that God acts to fulfill certain intentions; they pre- suppose that God's reign is first articulated and promised in the traditions of Israel; and they propose that someday, somehow, history will come to an end and this present life will be incor- porated into the ultimate purposes of God.

Any vision of evangelism that ignores the kingdom of God, or relegates it to a position of secondary importance, or fails to wrestle thoroughly with its content is destined at the outset to fail.

The content of the parables of Jesus provides very strik- ing witness to the presence of the kingdom of God in history, a fact that is now commonly recognized.

To achieve this we need to articulate our understanding of the kingdom of God.

On their read- ing of the evidence, the kingdom of God was an entirely future, cataclysmic event that Jesus expected would happen almost im- mediately.

Such events as the resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit would have been enough to send most minds saturated in the hopes and promises of Israel into believ- ing that the end of the world could well be just around the next corner of history.l1

They are symbolic or sacramental acts that point beyond themselves to some further meaning and not only announce but also help to effect what they symbolize: effectual signs which cause what they signify.

Second, it is well-nigh impossible to keep the eager sense of delight and hope that correlates with the experience of the coming of God's rule here and now from welling up into pre- mature anticipation.

Thus it is not surprising that they go astray and lead the gullible pious in their train.

The beatitudes are shot through with a future hope of full satisfaction in the kingdom of God (Matt.

For them eschatology had to do with events that had recently transpired in their midst; it was inti- mately related to their experiences of God.

To be sure, no one is going to claim abruptly that we should ignore the concept of the kingdom of God, but we are not naturally going to gravitate toward it as the fundamen- tal starting-point or horizon of our reflections.

As Michael Grant nicely summarizes the matter,
the medically curative and philanthropic aspects of Jesus' healings were secondary to his main intention, which was
26
to signify that the Reign of God had begun.

On the historical side, we need to see the whole of Jesus' ministry as a mission to Israel that is firmly rooted in history and in the prophetic traditions.

Indeed the two can be set side by side in a dramatic way to bring out the fact that the present events in history antic- ipate or foreshadow the climactic events of vindication and judg- ment that are anticipated at the consummation of history.

Evangelism should be housed very firmly within the dynamic rule of God on earth.

It has engaged some of the best minds in modem theology and spawned an impressive body of literature, though no con- sensus has emerged.

Two pieces of background information, one historical and the other linguistic, are crucial at this point.

The Gospel
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THE LOGIC OF EVANGEUSM
it was terrified about the prospects that faced those who died without hearing about Christ; the Christian movement was not initiated by a band of professional evangelists eager to sign up a public relations firm and get the show on the road.

From the outset Jesus evoked a re- sponse that ran all the way from studied hostility and angry op- position through indifference, confusion, and bewilderment to joyful gratitude and wholehearted commitment.

They are symbolic or sacramental acts that point beyond themselves to some further meaning and not only announce but also help to effect what they symbolize: effectual signs which cause what they signify.

Indeed the two can be set side by side in a dramatic way to bring out the fact that the present events in history antic- ipate or foreshadow the climactic events of vindication and judg- ment that are anticipated at the consummation of history.

The world of eschatology is not our world; it is a strange universe of divine intervention and angelic activity, of Messiah and Son of Man, of woes and resurrections, of cosmic battles with powers of evil, of vindications and judgments, of the end of time and history.

17
THE LOGIC OF EVANGELISM
great stumbling block to belief and commitment in the mod- ern world.

It applied to those doctrines that were concerned with the ulti- mate destiny of the cosmos.

25:1-13); it is depicted as sim- ilar to the arrival of a master who has returned to find out how well his servants have used their talents in his absence (Matt.

When John the Baptist appeared on the scene in Galilee, he spoke in a context that was laden with eschatological expec- tancy.

God had acted to fulfill prophecy and the events re-
The Gospel
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THE LOGIC OF EVANGELISM
ferred to embodied a real foretaste of what God would do in the great and manifest day of the Lord.

Yet there is more to come; what we experience now is a foretaste and foreshadowing of those ultimate acts of God that
34
will bring history to its teleological denouement at the great and manifest day of the Lord, which is beyond literal description.

As Michael Grant nicely summarizes the matter,
the medically curative and philanthropic aspects of Jesus' healings were secondary to his main intention, which was
26
to signify that the Reign of God had begun.

Third, we must assume here that eschatologi- cal claims about the kingdom of God involve irreducibly a futur- istic dimension that defies adequate depiction.

They assume the basic rudiments of theism, that is, that God exists and that God acts to fulfill certain intentions; they pre- suppose that God's reign is first articulated and promised in the traditions of Israel; and they propose that someday, somehow, history will come to an end and this present life will be incor- porated into the ultimate purposes of God.

The main protagonists in the debate argue from within these assumptions.

The perceptive reader will have noticed by now that I favor some version of the third option.

First, it is easy to be misled when an author or speaker switches from a more literal to a more metaphorical use of eschatological discourse, especially when he puts penulti- mate events in history alongside the ultimate events that will occur when God will usher in the great and final hour of all his- tory.

These writers deployed a variety of images to describe the Lord's anointed, with a considerable diversity of opinion as to what precisely the Messiah would actually do.

This same stumbling block, however, is the cornerstone for the building we shall seek to erect.

It calls for a death to the old life and a resurrection to a new life in the Spirit; it involves a radical reworking of one's self-understanding and a decisive turning from a life of idolatry to one of service to one's neigh- bor.

In John's own ministry the kingdom was powerfully operative, even though Jesus' arrival was so significant to John that he considered the least in the kingdom to be greater than he was (Matt.

God's king- dom has come and all creation is invited to share in the bless- ings of salvation; God's kingdom is yet to come and all creation is invited to strain toward the final consummation of God's jus- tice and love with eager anticipation.

Jesus' ministry was directed almost entirely- if not exclu- sively- to Israel, for he came to fulfill the promises to her and to usher in the new age that was to radiate out from her.

Yet the word of proph- ecy was not itself a simple blueprint for God's action in history and at the end of time.

On their read- ing of the evidence, the kingdom of God was an entirely future, cataclysmic event that Jesus expected would happen almost im- mediately.

It is obvious from these cursory remarks about the com- ing of the reign of God that if we are to make any sense of es-
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THE LOGIC OF EVANGEUSM
chatology we need to stand back for a moment and identify at least three essential assumptions.

As Meyer has suggested, prophetic knowl- edge is not precise determinate knowledge, "as if [it] were a kind of empirical-knowlege-by-anticipation but with symbolic frills and trimmings."9

It was not just a mat- ter of some future hope that layout there on the horizon of his- tory and from which they then made certain inferences about a change in life-style.

If all of this is at all plausible, then it is clear that the scrip- tural references to the future are not the embarrassment that scholars often thought them to be.

It did not spread because of a carefully designed program of evangelism; nor did it start be- cause the early disciples meditated on the Great Commission and felt that they had better obey it to assuage their feelings of guilt.

It is obvious from these cursory remarks about the com- ing of the reign of God that if we are to make any sense of es-
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THE LOGIC OF EVANGEUSM
chatology we need to stand back for a moment and identify at least three essential assumptions.

In narrating his story they indicate that both his teaching and his deeds were satu- rated by the rule of God appearing now in history.

We are calling forth a universe of dis- course that is alien and immediately irrelevant.

But eschatology is not just an esoteric theory about the last things.

These writers deployed a variety of images to describe the Lord's anointed, with a considerable diversity of opinion as to what precisely the Messiah would actually do.

Moderns for the most part find this material repellent, for we are not used to the lit- erary genre in which it is expressed.

In his account of Jesus' visit to Nazareth, Luke proclaims that the great day of Jubilee and lib- eration has been inaugurated (4:16-30).

17
THE LOGIC OF EVANGELISM
great stumbling block to belief and commitment in the mod- ern world.

TWO
The Gospel
Any considered attempt to develop a coherent concept of evangelism that will be serviceable in the present must begin with eschatology.

If God speaks in prophecy, he speaks in the history that follows on history and it is history, history grasped within the perspective of faith, that does what the prophet cannot do-namely, decipher prophetic symbol, translating image into event, schematic sequence into actual sequence, and symbolic time into real time.10
To be sure, the members and leaders of the early Christian com- munity were not operating as autonomous agents seeking to patch together such information as they had ...

Thus understood, it had a secure place at the end of those theologies that sought to expound a comprehen- sive vision of life from its beginning to its end.

This hope was taken up and expanded by the apocalyptic writers, who extended it to embrace a final, cosmic transformation of the whole of creation.

The Debate about Eschatology
Immediately we are confronted with a dilemma.

The most illuminating account of the issues that I have encountered is in the work of G. B. Caird.

Hence the correlation between prophetic word and event is ambiguous.

Materially it focused on the last things, that is, it developed a kind of linear vision of the death
18
of the individual person, the intermediate state, the return of Christ, the general resurrection, the last judgment, heaven and hell, and so on.

If God speaks in prophecy, he speaks in the history that follows on history and it is history, history grasped within the perspective of faith, that does what the prophet cannot do-namely, decipher prophetic symbol, translating image into event, schematic sequence into actual sequence, and symbolic time into real time.10
To be sure, the members and leaders of the early Christian com- munity were not operating as autonomous agents seeking to patch together such information as they had ...

The ambiguity is denied equally by the fundamentalist's simplistic affirmations of fulfillment and the rationalist's simplistic discernment of mistakes.

People often describe ordinary events of history or of ex- perience in eschatological categories, using such terms as heaven, hell, purgatory, limbo, and paradise.

The issues at stake are so consequential for the deepest cosmic and theological questions that humankind has ever faced that it is ludicrous to think that one can adopt any position without it being fiercely contested.

It has engaged some of the best minds in modem theology and spawned an impressive body of literature, though no con- sensus has emerged.

The Kingdom and the Spread of the Gospel
These events were also enough to provide the early communi- ty with its primary motivation for evangelism.

Thus Jesus' action as an exorcist is compared to that of a strong man who has entered the palace of the enemy, disarms him, and plunders his goods (Mark 3:27; Matt.

In fact, to speak of the rule of God or the reign of God or the kingdom of God is fun- damentally to speak of the action of God in history-and it is difficult to begin to get purchase on this discourse without trad- ing on the idea of God as an agent analogous to the personal agents we know in experience and through which we learn the logic of language about agency.

God works mysteriously as well as openly in the establishment of his rule so that to demand prepackaged signs and wonders is to miss the possibility of his action here and now in the mundane events of history.

Expressed nega- tively, the coming of the kingdom~Qf God and all the activity of God associated with this cannot be exhausted by a description of events that are on the plane of history either in the present or in the future.

Finally, it would be amazing if the early church did not at times move in this direction.

More particularly, we must tread our way through the thicket of scholarship on this notion in order to identify the primary blocks required for the initial stages of our edifice.

The fundamental options for the modern scholar have not really changed since the emergence of three main positions that have developed over the last two generations.2 As is well known, the gauntlet was first thrown down by the pioneering work of Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer.

The ambiguity is denied equally by the fundamentalist's simplistic affirmations of fulfillment and the rationalist's simplistic discernment of mistakes.

Jesus endorsed John's ministry and began a ministry of his own, which even- tually led to his death at the hands of the authorities.

This is especially so when one senses that all of creation is in travail to realize its ultimate divine destiny and that the powers of evil are liable to break out repeatedly in a last-ditch effort to thwart the purposes of God.

The third alternative, as might be expected, was a synthesis of these two positions, which sought to do justice to both the present and the future coming of the kingdom of God.

It is to be preceded by the appear- ance of an evil personage and a terrible time of tribulation, which Luke explicitly depicts as a siege of Jerusalem and a his-
7.

As Meyer has suggested, prophetic knowl- edge is not precise determinate knowledge, "as if [it] were a kind of empirical-knowlege-by-anticipation but with symbolic frills and trimmings."9

Aside from evoking a pro- found sense of hope for the accomplishment of God's purposes for creation and history, they dramatically highlight the fact that God is now actively engaged in history in the events as- sociated with Jesus.

Central to the hope that was nourished in Israel was the expectation of a special agent of God who
4.

One of the leading champions of this view was C. H. Dodd, who coined the phrase realized es- chatology to describe the fact that the kingdom had really and definitively come in Jesus.

Indeed the two can be set side by side in a dramatic way to bring out the fact that the present events in history antic- ipate or foreshadow the climactic events of vindication and judg- ment that are anticipated at the consummation of history.

Taken to- gether these constitute the fundamental loci in the Gospels for the conviction that God has moved dramatically in history to inaugurate his rule.

God is active providentially in all of history to establish his kingdom: his intentions regarding jus- tice, peace, and love cannot be confined in principle to the inner lives of the pious and to the final events of history; they em- brace all of creation and all of history.

TWO
The Gospel
Any considered attempt to develop a coherent concept of evangelism that will be serviceable in the present must begin with eschatology.

In the modern debate about escha- tology much has been made of the failure of nineteenth-centu- ry liberalism when it spoke of the coming of the kingdom in terms of the moral transformation of individuals and society in the wake of the impact of Jesus and his teaching.

If God speaks in prophecy, he speaks in the history that follows on history and it is history, history grasped within the perspective of faith, that does what the prophet cannot do-namely, decipher prophetic symbol, translating image into event, schematic sequence into actual sequence, and symbolic time into real time.10
To be sure, the members and leaders of the early Christian com- munity were not operating as autonomous agents seeking to patch together such information as they had ...

Read on a pedestrian level, it looks as if Mark has tacked on to the end of his an- swer the answer to another question, namely, When is the world going to end?

Thus understood, it had a secure place at the end of those theologies that sought to expound a comprehen- sive vision of life from its beginning to its end.

First, we must assume that God is a transcendent agent who has created the world for cer- tain intentions and purposes.

Out- side those narrow circles that still seek to work out timetables of the end, doctrines of the last things tend to be an archaic res- idue from earlier generations.

This represents, as I see it, the most compelling analysis of the relevant evidence.4 What we need to do now is articulate as succinctly as possible the cen- tral ingredients in the vision of the kingdom, which will inform the account of evangelism that is to follow.

From the vantage point laid out above, however, these features of the text are entirely intelligible.

On the one side it is a historical dis- pute about what Jesus and his earliest followers believed and taught about the coming of the rule of God; on the other it is theological discussion about how and in what form the earliest Christian traditions about the kingdom can be appropriated today.

The Kingdom and Divine Action
We can now satisfactorily dispatch several important matters that hover in the neighborhood.

Such a hasten- ing of the end is common in both secular and sacred eschatolo- gies that see history heading for a final realization of its pur-
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THE LOGIC OF EVANGELISM
poses.

Various say- ings about entry into the kingdom clearly imply a future com-
5.

They turn to aspects of our current practice such as crusades or televi- sion evangelists; or they are directed to times of past glory, like the great revivals of the eighteenth century; or they focus on the expansion of the church and research on church growth; or they are taken up with the phenomenology of religious ex- perience as represented by the conversions of Paul and Augustine.

The traditions that articulated the hopes of Israel were varied and complex; particular patterns of divine ac- tion and promise were clearly discernible.

It is to be preceded by the appear- ance of an evil personage and a terrible time of tribulation, which Luke explicitly depicts as a siege of Jerusalem and a his-
7.

The overwhelming impression created by the traditions witnessing to the early evangelistic ac- tivity of the disciples is that the Holy Spirit was present in the community, bringing in the reign of God and inspiring the dis- ciples to speak boldly of the mighty acts of salvation that God had wrought through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

More particularly, we must tread our way through the thicket of scholarship on this notion in order to identify the primary blocks required for the initial stages of our edifice.

God is active providentially in all of history to establish his kingdom: his intentions regarding jus- tice, peace, and love cannot be confined in principle to the inner lives of the pious and to the final events of history; they em- brace all of creation and all of history.

Moderns for the most part find this material repellent, for we are not used to the lit- erary genre in which it is expressed.

The last thing we desire when we think of them is to be offered a religious insurance policy to cover the contingencies.

In the traditions that enshrine the earliest witness to his activity we find ample evidence for the claim that Jesus and the disciples who gathered around him were convinced that the reign of God had already dawned.

Mod- em usage of eschatological discourse can illustrate what we mean here.

What we need to articulate is the basic stance that we take on the rule of God; we shall soon see that this is more than enough to launch us on .our quest for an adequate and healthy concep- tion of evangelism.

In his account of Jesus' visit to Nazareth, Luke proclaims that the great day of Jubilee and lib- eration has been inaugurated (4:16-30).

The Gospel
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THE LOGIC OF EVANGELISM
would have a crucial role in God's activity in the end times.

Where both liberal and existentialist theologies have erred is not so much in what they have affirmed but in what they have denied.

So the coming of the kingdom is compared to a burglar who shows up unexpectedly (Matt.

The common orthodoxy on this position is that it has been smashed once and for all by Weiss and Schweitzer.

Hence the correlation between prophetic word and event is ambiguous.

It is to be preceded by the appear- ance of an evil personage and a terrible time of tribulation, which Luke explicitly depicts as a siege of Jerusalem and a his-
7.

Holding fast to the subtleties of eschatological language also helps us to understand why so many are led astray down false paths of date setting and speculation.

This is especially so when one senses that all of creation is in travail to realize its ultimate divine destiny and that the powers of evil are liable to break out repeatedly in a last-ditch effort to thwart the purposes of God.

Biblical Studies: Essays ill Honor of William Barclay (Philadel- phia: Westminster, 1976), pp. 72-86; The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Lon- don: Duckworth, 1980), chap.

This represents, as I see it, the most compelling analysis of the relevant evidence.4 What we need to do now is articulate as succinctly as possible the cen- tral ingredients in the vision of the kingdom, which will inform the account of evangelism that is to follow.

Thus after the dramatic com- ing of the Holy Spirit-which is made manifest in a profound awareness of God, in speaking in tongues, and in a bold pro- claiming of the mighty works of God-Peter's sermon inter- prets these phenomena as a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel.

The world of eschatology is not our world; it is a strange universe of divine intervention and angelic activity, of Messiah and Son of Man, of woes and resurrections, of cosmic battles with powers of evil, of vindications and judgments, of the end of time and history.

Hence the kingdom is said to be similar to a treasure hidden in a field, which leads the finder to sell all he has to procure it; it is also like a pearl of great price that the enthusiastic collector takes drastic steps to obtain (Matt.

People often describe ordinary events of history or of ex- perience in eschatological categories, using such terms as heaven, hell, purgatory, limbo, and paradise.

The former position appears to miss the full force of the eschatology enshrined in the traditions about Jesus, while the latter seems to dehistoricize eschatology by lifting it completely out of his- tory into a numinous realm of subjective experience.

These scholars derived their primary evidence for this proposal from a general theory about the meaning of the kingdom of God and related ideas in first-century Judaism, and from the varied texts in the Gospels that speak of the com- ing rule of God.

Evangelism is at the very least a continuation of vital elements in the work of the early apostles, prophets, and martyrs who found themselves dramatically caught up in the reign of God in the world.

Read plainly, the texts appear to speak of an early end to history, something that the inexorable march of events has shattered as patently false.

TWO
The Gospel
Any considered attempt to develop a coherent concept of evangelism that will be serviceable in the present must begin with eschatology.

In modern times much of this stems from the craving for national and personal security in the midst of social chaos and political turmoil.

Such events as the resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit would have been enough to send most minds saturated in the hopes and promises of Israel into believ- ing that the end of the world could well be just around the next corner of history.l1

All three tenses are required if we are to begin to do justice to its inner complexity and dy- namic.

We live now suspended between the times.

Expressed positively, the coming of the rule of God is consummated by the end of history as we know it; it in- corporates a mysterious taking up of the earth and of history into a radically transformed plane of existence that is presently beyond our capacity to imagine or to describe satisfactorily.

Expressed nega- tively, the coming of the kingdom~Qf God and all the activity of God associated with this cannot be exhausted by a description of events that are on the plane of history either in the present or in the future.

The prodigal son and his elder brother are both invited now to attend the
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THE LOGIC OF EVANGELISM
feast that their waiting father has prepared (Luke 15:11-32).

But it ends with dramatic apoc- alyptic language:
And I will show wonders in the heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned into darkness
and the moon into blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and manifest day.

He announced the arrival of the Coming One and called the people of Israel to baptism and repentance.

To look for consensus in such circumstances is utopian and unrealistic.

Useful reviews of the literature can be located in Norman Perrin, Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), and George Eldon Ladd, Jesus and the Kingdom (Waco, Tex.:

To achieve this we need to articulate our understanding of the kingdom of God.

Expressed positively, the coming of the rule of God is consummated by the end of history as we know it; it in- corporates a mysterious taking up of the earth and of history into a radically transformed plane of existence that is presently beyond our capacity to imagine or to describe satisfactorily.

It calls for a death to the old life and a resurrection to a new life in the Spirit; it involves a radical reworking of one's self-understanding and a decisive turning from a life of idolatry to one of service to one's neigh- bor.

The issues raised are tangled and numerous; sensitive and contested philosophical and theological considerations im- pinge on the materials of the debate; and there is no denying that the outcome is self-involving in the extreme.

In fact, it is unlikely that scholars will ever agree upon a solution to the problems facing them in this domain.

In this case talk about the rule of God makes little or no sense outside the tratlitibns of Israel that, taken as a whole, provide the particu- lar conceptual cradle and the more precise content of the specific claims about God's action that are at the heart of the Christian gospel.

In fact, to speak of the rule of God or the reign of God or the kingdom of God is fun- damentally to speak of the action of God in history-and it is difficult to begin to get purchase on this discourse without trad- ing on the idea of God as an agent analogous to the personal agents we know in experience and through which we learn the logic of language about agency.

Third, we must assume here that eschatologi- cal claims about the kingdom of God involve irreducibly a futur- istic dimension that defies adequate depiction.

Moreover, the shepherd is out looking for the sheep that has been lost in the wilderness and the widow is rejoicing over the coin that has been found (Luke 15:4-10).

They proclaimed the word about Jesus boldly, and when martyrdom and persecution drove them out of Jerusalem they continued to wait upon the guidance of God and gossiped the good news of the kingdom to those who would listen.

Contrary to this widely held opinion, however, this mate- rial can bear an entirely different interpretation which, if well founded, provides a vital clue to a healthy reading of the rela- tion between the initial and ultimate comings of the kingdom of God.

On the one hand the church had the oral traditions about Jesus transmitted by disciples, who were convinced that Jesus was the supreme agent of God sent to redeem Israel and the world.

They have lost sight of the sophisticated link between pres- ent and future that is at the heart of eschatology and thus they tended to collapse the whole of eschatology into the present.

The Debate about Eschatology
Immediately we are confronted with a dilemma.

It is precisely the eschatological framework of early Christianity that is the
1.

They are symbolic or sacramental acts that point beyond themselves to some further meaning and not only announce but also help to effect what they symbolize: effectual signs which cause what they signify.

What is especially striking is the way in which the gospel of the kingdom initially spread.

In modern times much of this stems from the craving for national and personal security in the midst of social chaos and political turmoil.

The issues at stake are so consequential for the deepest cosmic and theological questions that humankind has ever faced that it is ludicrous to think that one can adopt any position without it being fiercely contested.

These writers deployed a variety of images to describe the Lord's anointed, with a considerable diversity of opinion as to what precisely the Messiah would actually do.

Eschatology is a vision of the com- ing of the kingdom of God that was initiated in Jesus of Nazareth, was experienced and cherished by the community that arose after his death and resurrection, and is now within
38
the grasp of those who will repent and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit; yet it remains to come in all its glory and fullness.

In modern times much of this stems from the craving for national and personal security in the midst of social chaos and political turmoil.

It was not just a mat- ter of some future hope that layout there on the horizon of his- tory and from which they then made certain inferences about a change in life-style.

30
dictory: on the one hand, Jesus knows that the Son of Man will come within a generation; on the other hand, no one knows when the end will come, for only God is privy to such information.

The Kingdom and Divine Action
We can now satisfactorily dispatch several important matters that hover in the neighborhood.

Rather, the gospel spread and the church grew because the sovereign hand of God was in the midst of the community that found it- self surrounded by people who were puzzled and intrigued by what they saw happening.

It has engaged some of the best minds in modem theology and spawned an impressive body of literature, though no con- sensus has emerged.

Materially it focused on the last things, that is, it developed a kind of linear vision of the death
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of the individual person, the intermediate state, the return of Christ, the general resurrection, the last judgment, heaven and hell, and so on.

More particularly, we must tread our way through the thicket of scholarship on this notion in order to identify the primary blocks required for the initial stages of our edifice.

In narrating his story they indicate that both his teaching and his deeds were satu- rated by the rule of God appearing now in history.

The point about the contradiction is this: when construed as an event in history, the day of the Lord would come in a genera- tion; in its full literal reality the time of the day of the Lord is known only to God.

He works within and through nations, and he achieves his purposes through events like the crucifixion of Jesus or the fall of Jerusalem or the summons of a group of fishermen.

Such a hasten- ing of the end is common in both secular and sacred eschatolo- gies that see history heading for a final realization of its pur-
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THE LOGIC OF EVANGELISM
poses.

These scholars derived their primary evidence for this proposal from a general theory about the meaning of the kingdom of God and related ideas in first-century Judaism, and from the varied texts in the Gospels that speak of the com- ing rule of God.

The issues raised are tangled and numerous; sensitive and contested philosophical and theological considerations im- pinge on the materials of the debate; and there is no denying that the outcome is self-involving in the extreme.

We have not defined exactly what evan- gelism is as yet but, whatever it is, it must draw its fundamen- tal content and inspiration from the early community that gave birth to its initial efforts in this domain and from the same God who inaugurated his rule through the coming of Jesus Christ into the world.

Evangelism is at the very least a continuation of vital elements in the work of the early apostles, prophets, and martyrs who found themselves dramatically caught up in the reign of God in the world.

Those who held this position con- strued references to a future coming of the kingdom as merely an accommodation of language.

Thus, the kingdom that Jesus inaugurated began in Israel and was constituted by the restoration of Israel, symbolized in the calling of the twelve.

Contrary to this widely held opinion, however, this mate- rial can bear an entirely different interpretation which, if well founded, provides a vital clue to a healthy reading of the rela- tion between the initial and ultimate comings of the kingdom of God.

All three Synoptic Gospels refer to an apocalyptic consummation when the Son of Man will come in glory to gather his elect (Mark 13:1-36; Matt.

The fundamental options for the modern scholar have not really changed since the emergence of three main positions that have developed over the last two generations.2 As is well known, the gauntlet was first thrown down by the pioneering work of Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer.

Many of the entry sayings could apply to either a present entry or a future entry; but in many cases pres- ent entry would seem to signify participation in the kingdom that will arrive in its fullness at the judgment?

If God speaks in prophecy, he speaks in the history that follows on history and it is history, history grasped within the perspective of faith, that does what the prophet cannot do-namely, decipher prophetic symbol, translating image into event, schematic sequence into actual sequence, and symbolic time into real time.10
To be sure, the members and leaders of the early Christian com- munity were not operating as autonomous agents seeking to patch together such information as they had ...

The point about the contradiction is this: when construed as an event in history, the day of the Lord would come in a genera- tion; in its full literal reality the time of the day of the Lord is known only to God.

The overwhelming impression created by the traditions witnessing to the early evangelistic ac- tivity of the disciples is that the Holy Spirit was present in the community, bringing in the reign of God and inspiring the dis- ciples to speak boldly of the mighty acts of salvation that God had wrought through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Materially it focused on the last things, that is, it developed a kind of linear vision of the death
18
of the individual person, the intermediate state, the return of Christ, the general resurrection, the last judgment, heaven and hell, and so on.

Mod- em usage of eschatological discourse can illustrate what we mean here.

In this case talk about the rule of God makes little or no sense outside the tratlitibns of Israel that, taken as a whole, provide the particu- lar conceptual cradle and the more precise content of the specific claims about God's action that are at the heart of the Christian gospel.

Moreover, although there are no cast-iron proofs or physical signs of the kingdom, it is now within reach of those exposed to Jesus; one can now experience its saving power (17:21).

It was especially prominent among the prophets and among the writers of the apocalyptic tracts that circulated within Judaism.

The table of banqueting is al- ready laid out and the invitations have been given.

From the outset Jesus evoked a re- sponse that ran all the way from studied hostility and angry op- position through indifference, confusion, and bewilderment to joyful gratitude and wholehearted commitment.

Yet the last thing that would have been in their minds was that eschatology was merely a matter of things yet to come and that their first responsibility was to buy celestial fire insurance.

This hope was taken up and expanded by the apocalyptic writers, who extended it to embrace a final, cosmic transformation of the whole of creation.

The ruler of the kingdom is like an extravagant employer who offers the last to be called the same sovereign goodness that he has given to the first (Matt.

We also often need access to a word of prophecy that on the basis of divine revelation makes known the actions and intentions of God that are being realized in his- tory.

For a sustained analysis along these lines see Ladd, Jesus and the Kingdom.

Even dramatic actions like miracles and exorcisms, although in a sense they constitute signs of his pres-
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ence, do not coerce assent.

They have lost sight of the sophisticated link between pres- ent and future that is at the heart of eschatology and thus they tended to collapse the whole of eschatology into the present.

Moreover, the shepherd is out looking for the sheep that has been lost in the wilderness and the widow is rejoicing over the coin that has been found (Luke 15:4-10).

If God speaks in prophecy, he speaks in the history that follows on history and it is history, history grasped within the perspective of faith, that does what the prophet cannot do-namely, decipher prophetic symbol, translating image into event, schematic sequence into actual sequence, and symbolic time into real time.10
To be sure, the members and leaders of the early Christian com- munity were not operating as autonomous agents seeking to patch together such information as they had ...

What is remarkable about it, however, is the restraint exercised in the content.

He works within and through nations, and he achieves his purposes through events like the crucifixion of Jesus or the fall of Jerusalem or the summons of a group of fishermen.

The issues raised are tangled and numerous; sensitive and contested philosophical and theological considerations im- pinge on the materials of the debate; and there is no denying that the outcome is self-involving in the extreme.

It is perfectly possible to be exposeci to such events and remain totally bewildered and confused by their appearance or to be tempted to explain their occurrence in terms of the piety and power of their agent or in terms of demonic activity (Acts 3:12; Mark 3:30).

Expressed positively, the coming of the rule of God is consummated by the end of history as we know it; it in- corporates a mysterious taking up of the earth and of history into a radically transformed plane of existence that is presently beyond our capacity to imagine or to describe satisfactorily.

It is perfectly possible to be exposeci to such events and remain totally bewildered and confused by their appearance or to be tempted to explain their occurrence in terms of the piety and power of their agent or in terms of demonic activity (Acts 3:12; Mark 3:30).

Without this assumption it will make no sense whatsoever to speak of God making promises and then fulfilling them, of God entertaining certain plans for creation, and of God acting both in history and at the end of all history to bring those plans into being.

If God speaks in prophecy, he speaks in the history that follows on history and it is history, history grasped within the perspective of faith, that does what the prophet cannot do-namely, decipher prophetic symbol, translating image into event, schematic sequence into actual sequence, and symbolic time into real time.10
To be sure, the members and leaders of the early Christian com- munity were not operating as autonomous agents seeking to patch together such information as they had ...

Thus after the dramatic com- ing of the Holy Spirit-which is made manifest in a profound awareness of God, in speaking in tongues, and in a bold pro- claiming of the mighty works of God-Peter's sermon inter- prets these phenomena as a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel.

Useful reviews of the literature can be located in Norman Perrin, Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), and George Eldon Ladd, Jesus and the Kingdom (Waco, Tex.:

Hence the kingdom is said to be similar to a treasure hidden in a field, which leads the finder to sell all he has to procure it; it is also like a pearl of great price that the enthusiastic collector takes drastic steps to obtain (Matt.

They turn to aspects of our current practice such as crusades or televi- sion evangelists; or they are directed to times of past glory, like the great revivals of the eighteenth century; or they focus on the expansion of the church and research on church growth; or they are taken up with the phenomenology of religious ex- perience as represented by the conversions of Paul and Augustine.

Hence the kingdom is said to be similar to a treasure hidden in a field, which leads the finder to sell all he has to procure it; it is also like a pearl of great price that the enthusiastic collector takes drastic steps to obtain (Matt.

Thus the disciples are taught to petition God: "Thy kingdom come" (Matt.

A more plausible way to read both traditions is to see them as embodying entirely legitimate extensions of the language of
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THE LOGIC OF EVANGELISM
eschatology.

What is particularly striking in Jesus' ministry is the authority and scope of his activity as manifested in his miracles and his exorcisms.6 It is entirely natural to see here the power of God breaking into history in a unique way and to interpret it as a pledge of the full eschatological kingdom that is yet to dawn.

Indeed the two can be set side by side in a dramatic way to bring out the fact that the present events in history antic- ipate or foreshadow the climactic events of vindication and judg- ment that are anticipated at the consummation of history.

In other words, evangelism was rooted in a corporate ex- perience of the rule of God that provided not only the psycho- logical strength and support that was clearly needed in a hostile environment but that also signified the active presence of God in their midst.

God gave them the land of promise and established them, but over time the people refused to submit to God's rule, thereby facing discipline and judgment.