Where Has the Kingdom Gone? Eschatology and Ecclesiology in Luke-Acts

The fulfillment of the ancestral promises to Israel is the theological context of Luke’s two-volume narrative.

This is the unmistakable emphasis of the infancy narrative (1.16-17, 31-33, 46-55, 68-79; 2.4, 10-11, 25-35, 38). Unmistakable also is Jesus’ role as the locus of the fulfillment of these promises. So Gabriel announces to Mary: “the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end” (1.32-33). The great irony, of course, as every reader of the gospel has known, is that the promises never were fulfilled, at least not in any obvious sense. Jesus was crucified and most likely Jerusalem was destroyed only decades (at most) before Luke wrote. When the prophetess Anna thus speaks of the “redemption of Jerusalem” (2.38) the author writes boldly and blatantly counter-factually. Luke tells a riddle and implies that the answer is forthcoming.

So, where has the kingdom gone?

The fulfillment of promise is the theme of Jesus’ ministry (4.18-19). The dawning of the eschatological age occurs in his Spirit empowered activity (4.18-19, 43; 10.8-9; 11.20). It is of the greatest significance then that the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles are held together by the announcement of the promise of the Father (24.48-9) and the fulfillment of that promise in the descent and empowerment of the Spirit upon the church at Pentecost (Acts 1.4, 8). Here we are presented with the church as being empowered with God’s Spirit, the same Spirit which inaugurates the fulfillment of the promises of the kingdom of God.

The church is thus closely related to the kingdom, but it does not exhaust the fulfillment of promise. Luke does not collapse eschatology into ecclesiology. To the contrary, Luke anticipates the physical manifestation of God’s kingdom, the fulfillment of the kingdom promises to Israel (Acts 1.3, 6-7; 3.19-21). The caveat concerns both the manner and the timing of this kingdom’s arrival.

The parable of the ten pounds (Luke 19.11-27) addresses both these questions and I hope to return to it anon.