is being quite deliberately portrayed, albeit with much irony, as the king marching on Jerusalem, asserting the ultimate triumph of the kingdom, and ascending the throne of the cross. The cross itself always did have ironic enthronement connotations with its built-in seat—a small wooden protuberance—upon which the dying victim would pathetically rest. As Wright points out, this accession via humiliation is really only part and parcel of the radical kingdom redefinition that had been so central a part of all of Christ’s teaching throughout his ministry: “the cross is the sharp edge of kingdom redefinition, just as the kingdom, in its redefined form, is the ultimate, meaning of the cross.”30
Plenty have noted the strong notes of glory through suffering, glory the other side of suffering, but, in this view, the suffering of the Messiah, as portrayed in all four Gospels, is actually the very means itself of Christ asserting his sovereignty.31 It is itself the messianic victory.32 This crucified Messiah is hence given the titles that belong to Caesar: Savior, Lord, King (Phil 3:20), and the cross itself—not even Christ’s triumph over the cross in resurrection and glory, but the suffering and humiliation of the cross—is the power of God (1 Cor 1:18). The crown of thorns is more than incidental, the robes and mockery are not there by accident, and the titulum announcing that this is Jesus the King of the Jews is central to the picture being painted by the Gospel writers. The crucifixion is the moment the rightful king ascends his throne. The kingdom of God, which forms the heart of Christ’s teaching, begins to actualize at the cross.
This view requires a fundamentally ironic way of looking at the cross, which seems to have its beginnings in Paul but reaches a climax in Mark’s Gospel. The cross is the opposite of a cross: an image that Paul deploys sparingly and in response to contexts where hubris of some kind is the main problem (as with the Corinthians!). At other times Paul finds himself addressing people who would have lived all their lives in fear of curses, spells, magic, and evil spirits (arguably the audience of Ephesians) and to them this message of an ironic victory is not routinely deployed. To reassure them, Paul does not tend to go via the rather convoluted and subtle route of the cross as ironic victory but cuts straight to the chase: Christ is Lord, has the name above all names, is head over all principality and power. It is certain situations that especially inspire him take his eye down from the heavenly throne of Christ to the seat of the cross, there to glory in the honor found only in shame.
Atonement, Kingdom, and Gospel
In the mid-twentieth century the trend in New Testament studies was to say “the answer is the delayed parousia; what was the question?” The assertion consequently was that New Testament pneumatology and the Pauline in-Christ doctrine emerged as remedies to the delay, as consolation prizes. Emphases that are integral to New Testament theology from its very beginnings were taken to be hasty re-writings of the original teachings of Christianity’s founder. There seems here to be a failure to recognize the fundamentally experiential nature of earliest Christianity. James Dunn has been exceptional in truly recapturing this emphasis, that the risen Christ was experienced as the Spirit.33
A way of looking at Christian origins that is less dismissive of the experiences that informed it is to say that, until Pentecost, the “already” aspect of the kingdom had only been implicit. Even seeing the cross as the inauguration of a reign required a certain way of looking at things that was not, by itself, obvious. Now, the already in-breaking reign of God came in the outpouring of “this that you both see and hear” (Acts 2:33). The Spirit came and gave the people such a foretaste of the age to come that they could now already taste it and became indomitably assured of its ultimate consummation in a new creation.
Reflection
1. Recall any experiences of the Holy Spirit, whether your own or experiences others have reported. What “epistemic advantage” took place? What were the main insights? A clearer vision of the saving work of Christ, or something else?
2. Esler believes that religion always exists in a dialectical tension with the surrounding culture. In other words, the culture is pulling in one direction and our faith is pulling in another. Where are the pressure points for you as you seek to live out your faith in your culture? Where do you find yourself rubbing up against a completely different dominant narrative?
3. What do you think of the way I have tried to harmonize kingdom and cross by using Pentecost?
1. Especially Esler, Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts. See also Esler, The First Christians in Their Social Worlds, 1–18.
2. Studies of the political Paul and possible traces of a critique of empire in his writings are of related interest. For a recent summary of the scholarly positions see Mackenzie, “The Quest for the Political Paul.”
3. Hengel, Crucifixion, 22–38.
4. Gunton, Actuality of Atonement, 46.
5. Harding, “Comment on Hekman’s ‘Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited,’” 382–91.
6. Hartsock, The Feminist Standpoint Revisited and Other Essays, 107 and elsewhere.
7. Cockburn, “Standpoint Theory,” 335.
8. Standpoint theory apparently originates with Hegel’s parable of the master and the slave (Phenomenology of Spirit IV, 26, B), which is thought to have been influential in the development of Marx’s concept of class struggle. Marxism in turn clearly provides standpoint theory with much of its essential coloring.
9. Hartsock, The Feminist Standpoint Revisited, 108.
10. Thanks to the delegates of the Erhardt Seminar at the University of Manchester for pointing out this, in retrospect, rather obvious fact.
11. Some older studies of the relationship of Paul’s conversion to his theology also speak of this triumphalistic element in the origins of Paul’s gospel, especially Beker, Paul the Apostle, but also (though presenting a very different argument to Beker’s) Bruce’s, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, and the work of Bruce’s student Seyoon Kim, The Origin of Paul’s Gospel. See also the discussion of these in Gaventa, From Darkness to Light, 17–21.
12. Vickers, “The Kingdom of God in Paul’s Gospel,” 52.
13. Luc, “The Kingdom of God and His Mission,” 94. William Abraham is similarly remiss in his classic work: The Logic of Evangelism. The gospel is defined as the proclamation of the reign of God and defined entirely in these eschatological terms. The death and resurrection is subsumed into that framework without any effort to really explain the salvific value of events so momentous as these.
14. Luc, “The Kingdom of God and His Mission,” 94.
