Time and History: Tensions in Ladd

I tend to cringe a bit when in a song for worship or in everyday conversation the Christian hope of the life to come is described as a flight from planet earth or a cessation of creaturely existence in time. On the latter, I resonate with Bavinck: "Time is the necessary form of the existence of the finite" (Reformed Dogmatics, 1:429). Yet, in the new creation, "Time is charged with the eternity of God" (Reformed Dogmatics, 4:729). To develop this a bit further, time just is the creaturely mode of existence and it seems odd to expect this feature of reality to come to a halt with the eschaton and the advent of the new creation. After all, eternality is an incommunicable divine perfection. However, we can expect that the intensification of the presence of God among us, beautifully laid out in Revelation 21, will somehow rework the "feel" of creaturely existence in time. Time continues for us creatures, albeit in an eschatologically revamped sort of way.

With this as a backdrop, I appreciated the comment from Ladd: "In biblical thought, eternity is unending time" (A Theology of the New Testament, 44). But later on he avers, "The Kingdom of God involves two great moments: fulfillment within history and consummation at the end of history" (ibid., 90). To give him the benefit of the doubt, Ladd may not mean that, strictly speaking, history as such reaches its conclusion with the consummation of redemptive history. However, I wonder if it might be better to say simply that the inbreaking of the kingdom has two great moments: an inaugural one in the mission of Christ and a consummative one in the future ("future" instead of "end of history"). I don't mean to pick on Ladd, but I think that, in the name of recovering in the church the earthy, presumably temporal contours of resurrection life, selecting different terminology does have some value. Thoughts?

Ladd Parses the Kingdom

Given the pervasiveness of the concept of the kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus and of the Synoptic Gospels, I think the church should still be capitalizing on George Ladd's work to get a handle on the meaning of the kingdom. It's a much thicker feature of the Lord's teaching than not a few churches let on.

In A Theology of the New Testament Ladd treats the kingdom as an integral part of the two-age dualism underlying Jesus teaching. By speaking of a "two-age dualism" he attempts to express only that the people of Israel expected a divine deliverance which would change all the facets of human existence under the rubric of eschatological blessing, distinguishing the present age from the age to come. Ladd champions an "inaugurated eschatology" in which the inbreaking of the kingdom is launched in the mission of Christ and awaits its future consummation. He unpacks the multiple layers of the concept of the kingdom along three lines: 1) "the kingdom" may indicate simply the rule of God; 2) "the kingdom" may indicate the eschatological act of God in which he brings judgment and salvation and thus manifests his kingly power; and 3) "the kingdom" may indicate the future realm in which we will enjoy the blessings of salvation (p. 68). Ladd adds that the kingdom can also be construed as the present realm of salvific blessing or even the present gift of eternal life (pp. 68-71).

For my money, this kind of exposition of such an important theme is pregnant with possibilities for shaping the church's and the Christian's self-understanding between the two advents of the Lord. Has anyone heard a really rich sketch of the kingdom in the local church? Any other thoughts on this?