THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS NOT UTOPIA

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 65, 3 April 1937, Page 12

THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS NOT UTOPIA

"There are two opposing views oi history whicli havo becu widely held by these who would think it 'unscientific' to take. account of tho spiritual i'actor. Either history is a ehapter oi accidents, or it is an evojutionary process. Iteligion can, in theory, come to terms with either view," says Dr Dodd at the close oi the lecturo delivered at Uxford, ' "It, as in some Eastern religions, the whole order of space and time is relegated to the sphere of illusion, then religion is well content to abandon history as at bottom senseless, and to turn to tlie eternal order in a 'flight of the alone to the Alone.' "In the West, however, in recent times, an optimistic and idealistic type ot religion has made terms with tlie evolutionary view of history. It hai Msumed that the dh'eetion of change

in the process is of the nature of 'progress' and it has introduced the spiritual factor by a dootrin© of immanence, according to which the supposed law of progress is identified wfth the activity of the divine Spirit. The Inevitability of Progress "In its Christian form it has often attempted to reinterpret eschatology in terms of afi evolutionary teleology. The Kingdom of God is identified with a Utopiaoi goal of social evolution upou earth, and he magnificent affifmations of faith in its coming haVe been buttressed by a professedly scientifio theory of the jnevitability of progress. "The evolutionary doctfine of progfess has been thq object of searching criticism in recent years. With it 1 will not concern myself here. But . . . the theological form of that doctfine td which I have referred betrayS a miscolx-' ception of tlie nature of Christian eschatology. The Kingdom of God is not Utopia. "The Gospel does not speak of 'progress", but of dying and rising again, The pattern of history is revealed less in evolution than in crisis. Once ili the coufse of the ages the spirit of man Was donfranted, within history, with the eternal God in His kingdom, power, and glory, and that in a final and absolute sense. There was a great encolinter, a challenge, and response, a death and resufrection ; and divine judgment and life eternal eame inte human experience. By That Supreme Gfisls "By that snpreme crisis the meaning of all history is controlled. As it is reconstituted, by faith, in the esperience of sticcessive individuals and gener.itlons of mankind, the inward reabty of history is revealed. Ihe divine challenge reaches the soul of man. For his response to the challenge, ^ positive or negative, and for its immediato consequences, he must bear responsibil'ty, for good or ill; and the nature of his response maj' skape the cOnditioos of the next crisis. "The whole course of history, however, remains plastic to the will of God. This world of things, persons, and eventa can never forfeit, because oi human sin, its one title to reality-— namely, itg fitness to mediate the cajl of God to man. For it has once been the field upon which the great etlPMinter was fougbt to a decision, and it bears the marks of that encount^r for ever. "Beyond the proximate efiejts Of his choice the mind of man canttot fotesee. He can never fotcast the sliape of things to come, except in B.ymbniC myth. Th© true prophet always fereshortens the future, because he, of ej! men, discerns in history the -terual issues which lie within and yet beyond it. Th© least inadequate mytli of the goal of history is that which woulds itself u^on the great divine event oi the past, known in its concrete actuality, and depicts its final issile in a lorm which brings time to an end and places man in eternity — the second coming of the Lord, the Last .Judgment." To the layman the most vivid ehapter in the, book is Dr Dodd's analysis of the "Primitive preaching" of St. Patil. His survey of the times and the Jivos of the Apostle, based on scholarship and knowledge of Biblical history whichi few outhors passess, give distinction to a volume Which should inspire and help .men not only to preach but to live.