The cleansing, restoring and reconciling of creation depicted in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy featured above is to be inaugurated but not fully realized in the dispensation that succeeds it. The Kingdom of God is arriving in two stages; the rolling together of eschatological events having been both re-ordered and re-structured. According 618 Jn12:31
619 Mt11:12
620 Mt3:7b-8
621 Acts13:46
622 1Pet2:9
623 2Cor3:3
624 Heb9:14
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to Isaiah, when the promised redeemer arrived, the wicked were to be dealt with (i.e., removed), the remaining people are chastened but brought to peace with their God and each other, the animal Kingdom is tamed and at peace with itself and humanity, and God’s Holy Mountain, referring to Jerusalem, is safe and secure under its divine Head. Moreover, the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of God for the Lord would have become King of the world:
“When that day arrives, living waters will issue from Jerusalem, half towards the eastern sea half towards the western sea; they will flow summer and winter. Then JHWE
will become king of the whole world”625
Note: “God will become King of the World”. The Creator and Sustainer of the universe does not exercise His kingship on planet earth626, yet one day He will do so in a more executive sense, through Christ with His people. Then how beautiful on the mountains shall be the feet of him who comes in the name of the Lord and announces to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!” For as Paul well knew such a proclamation was not valid at the inception of the gospel age, which is why the apostle subverted that prophecy from Isaiah in his letter to the Romans627. The messenger has been pluralized for Paul now relates it to the preaching of the gospel by the Church, whilst the apotheosis of Isaiah’s message concerning the reign of God on earth has been omitted. When God’s Kingdom is realized it will correspond in scope and shape to Paul’s eschatological expectations set out in Romans 8:21-25. That will be when Jesus Christ commands His angels to bind the prince who continues to have authority over sickness and death and destroys his power base in the world. That eradication of wickedness cannot be subsumed within the current mission of the Church, who along with the rest of the world must wait patiently, for what has been subverted for the greater good has not been forgotten628. Such is the “inaugurated but yet to be realized” nature of the Kingdom of God as we currently perceive it. It is inaugurated being present in mystery through the Church, intended to function as a counter-kingdom. For acknowledging Christ as her Sovereign Head and observing His Charter, she is to exercise authority quite differently from the kingdoms of this world, both in terms of her self-governance and outreach. For just as Jesus’ Kingdom was not of this world, likewise the Church’s authority is not derived from this world order - otherwise her servants would crusade through the world and seek to convert her by force629.
Everyone incorporated within the Church through baptism can be said in a sense to be in the Kingdom of God. Yet Paul had warned Christian disciples at Derbe, “we must all experience many hardships before we enter the Kingdom of God”630; and as Jesus indicated, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter it. He also told His would-be disciples carefully to evaluate the cost of discipleship, like someone intending to build a tower or a king about to go to war631. That cannot be referring to obtaining Church membership, receiving a sacrament or making a profession of faith; rather 625 Zech14:8-9
626 Cf. Lk4:6
627 Is52:7 cf. Rom10:15
628 Cf. Rom11:15
629 Cf. Jn18:36
630 Acts14:22
631 Lk14:28-33
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it is the assessment to be made by those who are to enter pilgrimage as learners of the Christ. Such who are called of free grace and cooperate with it can be fitted for Kingdom service in eternal partnership with the One before Whom every knee must bow, whether on earth or in the heavens or under the earth when He is shortly revealed as Lord of all.
That is the context of the resurrection and imperishable crown for which Paul strove and disciplined his body like an athlete so as not to be disqualified from the prize632. It would be achieved through personal self-discipline aided by grace: - “Strive to enter (the Kingdom of God) by the narrow gate, for many I say to you will seek to enter and will not be able” says Jesus. The irony is that those who take up the challenge of the gospel and in Paul’s words, “aim for glory, honour, incorruptibility and eternal life by persevering in good works”633 will find that as they take the Master’s yoke upon them and learn from Him, He is gentle and lowly of heart, and they will find rest for their souls.
This chapter has been distinctly short for Scripture does not provide any detail concerning how Christ will restore all things or the exact nature of His people’s involvement in it; only that matters will be set in motion at His coming. Knowing more detail at this stage could compromise the role of faith. In view of the timeline, what has become essential is a better understanding of the Good News message (the gospel) within the churches so that a suitably unified witness can be provided to the world. Given the Church’s current configuration that cannot be a painless process, still less the purging and regeneration of creation that shall follow it – “the great and dreadful day of the Lord”634.
632 1Cor9:24-27
633 Rom2:7
634 Mal4:5 or 3:23-24 some Catholic editions
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Holy Scripture does not set out the totality of God’s plan for His creation but concerns His stratagem for the reconciliation of the world to Himself and the key structures and players within that plan. The fuller picture is alluded to in Scripture but only matters directly relating to the key human agencies involved within the reconciliation (Israel and the Church) have been illuminated. Yet for many the sub-plot has been mistaken for the whole
salvation story. That has distorted an understanding of the fuller picture (divine providence) whilst not preventing the salvific recruitment and enlightenment operation within it proceeding according to plan. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but that through Him the world might be saved635. The whole matter has been in accordance with God’s stratagem for the Church and the world, being progressive
revelation.
Natural law – the dark matter of Scripture
Given the divine intention that all true humanity was ultimately to be restored and come to understand the truth636, it was necessary, especially following the breakdown in relationship between man and his Maker depicted in the Eden incident that mankind be given some awareness of the Creator, His laws, and how people should relate to their fellows and manage the creative order set under them. This was to be by means of natural law, a concept referred to indirectly by Paul and accepted to a degree by today’s Catholic Church, having earlier been influenced by thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas and his formulations on its primary and secondary precepts, and more recently by John Henry Newman’s reflections on universal revelation and the role of conscience, the latter having had a substantial impact on the Second Vatican Council’s articulation of broader benign providence in the 1960s.
Many Evangelicals on the other hand will be uncomfortable with the concept of
natural law playing any positive role in human salvation. Yet that description is something of a misnomer for it pertains to eternal laws and divinely provided precepts within man that enable him, even in his fallen state, to discern good from evil and endeavour to choose the former for his own well-being and everyone else’s. Moreover, it pertains to what is spiritual, even the essence of Christ Himself, and is directly associated with His atoning death. For the fruits of the Passion avail at the forensic level for all who respond positively or “faithfully” to such precepts, but as we shall see in the next chapter, not all do (hence the three salvific categories). Natural law provides an object of faith, independent of special revelation, for God foreknew that the Christian message would become confused and distorted, indeed entirely obscured for many through historical cultural and religious developments.
Natural law is associated with Christ himself since it pertains to an underlying faith in
Logos by which little children can do no other than “believe” in the Saviour637. This should 635 Jn3:17
636 1Tim2:4
637 Mt18:6 – note the preceding verses – the statement cannot be referring to His adult disciples 95
not be so surprising given that “natural law” is really Christ’s law, for all things, nature herself and the precious human soul were created by the pre-incarnate Christ as Logos, through Him and for Him638. Amongst the earliest Church Fathers such as Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria, this principle was also articulated in terms of the divine Logos (Word or Reason) whom they recognized had provided every age, race and each individual with seeds of divine truth – the “Logos spermatikos”, leading everyone to some knowledge of God and His law, however fragmentary. Origen specifically regarded the seed of reason provided to all men equipping them with a measure of wisdom and justice as the essence of Christ Himself, as did Justin Martyr639. From such a perspective Christianity does not supersede natural law but rather builds on it. Even pagan literature, philosophy and mythology contain wisdom that could be regarded as a preparation for the gospel, and that is how the apostle Paul utilized it. He drew upon a Greek poet Epimenides and a Greek philosopher Aratus in his sermon in Athens (below), but firstly in addressing a pagan audience in Lycaonia, the apostle states:
“We have come with Good News to make you turn from these empty idols to the living God who made sky and the earth and the sea and all that they hold. In the past He allowed all the nations to go their own way; but even then He did not leave you without evidence of Himself in the good things He does for you: He sends rain from heaven and seasons of fruitfulness; He fills you with food and your hearts with merriment”640
So, unlike His chosen people of the Old Testament whose inexcusable idolatry was not tolerated and was punished severely, God permitted primitive people to go their own way in terms of their search for God, hoping as Paul said that they would recognize the
goodness of His nature through the natural provisions made for them. According to this apostle’s natural theology, God expected primitive man to grope after Him and find Him to an extent:
“And He has made from one blood, every nation of men to dwell upon the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwelling so that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us, for in Him we move and have our being; as also some of your poets have said, “For we are also His offspring”641
This was in response to the Athenian pagans setting up an altar inscribed “To the unknown God”. Paul concluded his message:
“Truly, these times of this ignorance God overlooked but now commands all men everywhere to repent”642
Paul affirms that God had been willing to tolerate past sins; He was not as it were bound to Himself to punish them, and that was in part due to His Son’s atonement for the 638 Col1:16
639 The first apology of Justin Martyr chap. 46
640 Acts14:15-17
641 Acts17:26-28
642 Acts17:30
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totality of human sin in the middle of history643. This is in marked contrast to how the Lord dealt with His own people Israel:
“You alone have I intimately known of the families of the earth. That is why I shall punish you for all your wrongdoing”644
When it comes to judgement, God has no favourites; on the contrary He has always made generous allowance for the unenlightened but expects a higher standard from those who have been privileged to be acquainted with His decrees, still more so if they have a personal knowledge of His Son; for such have been given inestimable privileges, resources and opportunities for a glorious inheritance.
“How shall we possibly escape if we neglect so great a salvation?645 How much worse a punishment will those deserve who have trodden underfoot the Son of God and have counted the blood of the covenant by which one is sanctified as a common thing and so outraged the Spirit of grace?”646.
For the Lord shall judge His people. As for the rest, He has not left them entirely in the dark so the irreligious are neither entirely without excuse nor hope.
The Bible is distinctly cryptic concerning God’s wider providence as a result of which the Catholic Church, having been set back centuries in this regard by the theology of Augustine in particular, has only very recently come to ascertain and articulate the true scope of divine magnanimity, whilst many other Bible believing Christians do not perceive the matter at all, strident in their assertion that those who do not come to Christian salvation are to be damned. The really good news has been saved for last647. Such is the procession of progressive revelation regarding providence, but it has also applied to an understanding of the nature of the inheritance of the elect which has been obscured and overly spiritualized through the influence of Neoplatonism:
“(May God) give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him; the eyes of your understanding being enlightened that you may know the nature of the hope of His calling and the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints”648