@Dan_Bowdoin @brianmclaren @BrianZahnd 2/3 It may help to say what the Messiah means by the 'reign of God' or 'Kingdom' or 'basileia' in NT Greek. It isn't heaven, a futurity, or where we go once we die. Rather, it's close at hand; a break-through into the Realness of _this_ realm; on Earth as it is in Heaven."
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Copy of tweet here: 1/7 The hermaneutic, deeply vexing, though, isn't it? How on earth do we sensibly communicate an experience of the staggering meaningfulness and plenitude of a Depth Realm conceived and experienced only through an obedience to love turning the world upside down? (Acts 17:6) We only have the first fruits of the Kingdom in this world, but we experience enough to know that it’s the only thing that will ever satisfy us. Once we have had the truth, half-truths do not satisfy us anymore. In its light, everything else is relative, even our own life. -Rohr Ragaz: "Not only does Jesus not bring a new religion, he does not bring any religion at all. One can't make this fact clear enough. He does not want a new religion, but rather a kingdom, a new creation, a new world." Thus, "We must teach spiritual things spiritually," 1 Cor. 2:13
@richvillodas end/ 'Inherit the Earth'? Put another way, only the Kingdom gives access to Paradise, but only Paradise renders the Kingdom fully concretized - the Heaven of Earth of 'on earth as it is in heaven', "which is to say, in Dante's words, 'the beatitude of this life.'" (Agamben)
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Copy of tweet and subtweet here: Castillo: "Integral liberation cannot be separated from the process of integral communion." Ellen Davis: "The threefold communion with God, neighbor, and earth properly constitutes Christified space." We are called, in other words, to the salvation of "an ecological conversion." end/ Our hope for redemption, for personal and corporate resurrection? Plain, human-centered miscalculation, if it doesn’t include our partnered indivisibility with Creation. Concrete reality is the covenantal realm in which redemptive time comes to ground.