Revival: The Economics of the Kingdom of God (1927)

Paul B. Bull

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351339995
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The utterances of those entitled to speak for different groups of Christians on the industrial problem are scattered over many books, journals and pamphlets. The attempts of industrialists to show the way towards its solution, in Britain and the Dominions, and in the United States, have been many and various.

What is offered here is a statement of the Christian ideal – The Kingdom of God, a collection of representative Christian utterances on what its realization today would mean, and a selection of attempts which are being made or suggested to move towards its realization in practice.

THE ECONOMICS OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

CHAPTER I

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

I. WHAT IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD?

THE Gospel of the Kingdom of God was more than the dominating note of the message of our Lord. It was the consuming passion of His Sacred Heart. Ninetynine times over in His recorded sayings He refers to it. It was the Gospel He came to preach. “After that John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent ye, and believe in the Gospel’” (S. Mark i. 14). And as it was the first utterance of His Ministry, so it was the last subject of His discourse as, after the Resurrection, He appeared to His disciples “speaking the things concerning the Kingdom of God” (Acts i. 3). While He says very little about the salvation of the individual soul, the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven or of God was the burden of all His preaching, the meaning of His parables, the centre of all His thoughts, the flaming passion of His heart.

What did those who first heard Him understand by this phrase? We must remember that the crowds who gathered round Him had been educated on one book alone—the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the writings of the Prophets, the Poetry and History of their race. From these they had learned the meaning of the words, though that meaning had often been obscured and misinterpreted by a narrow patriotism and by a mis-understanding of God’s purpose in electing them as His chosen people, and by ceremonial substitutes for ethical values. We may define the Kingdom of God as the organization of human society in obedience to the will of God and for the fulfilment of His purpose.

We may note three points in the revelation of the Kingdom in the Old Testament.

1. The Kingdom is Supernatural.

It may be well at once to make clear in what sense this word supernatural is used in what follows. By “natural” we mean the energizing of those forces which God has implanted in created things. By “supernatural” we mean the activity of a force or Person who is not included in the sum total of created things. By “Kingdom” we mean the Dominion of a King, the sphere in which His will is dominant and His authority recognized. The belief in the doctrine of the absolute dominion of God rests on the belief in God as Creator. He reigns over inanimate creation by necessity, over the animal kingdom by instinct, over man by inspiration and free response. If this free response to God’s will had always been given by man, the Kingdom of God would have rested on a Creation basis. But since the fall of man, that bias to selfishness, frustrates this, the moral Kingdom must be won by Redemption and Regeneration. Vital Union with our Lord, the reception of His Person and Message, faith in Him, surrender to Him, the keeping of His commandments that is, doing the will of God—this is the Kingdom of Grace. The Kingdom of God is supernatural, then, because it is revealed by God to men, and has the fulfilment of His will as its purpose, and its power to fulfil His will from His grace.

2. The Kingdom is Ethical.

The basis upon which the Kingdom of God is founded is the two commandments, with their threefold reference, laid down in the Old Testament and reaffirmed by our Lord.

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hangeth the whole law and the prophets.”

This bases the Kingdom of God upon the revealed dogma of the Love of God and provides an ethical test of social life, to love our neighbour as ourselves.

It should be noted that the love of God for man is not a sentiment or emotion, but a will—“an eternal will to all good for all men.” And so our love for Him must be not merely a sentiment or emotion, but a love of the will—the will to do His will. Both for Jew and Christian God is not merely an Idea. He is Energy, a Righteous Will which has dynamic force, and expresses Himself in life and history. Christianity “has always believed in the importance of events, in the Time-process, as the embodiment of a Divine Purpose in a Divine Community, which represents a cause to be lived for and died for, in the ultimate consummation which will bring the cause to triumph and give its meaning to human history. And some such view of the world is apparently felt by modern thinkers to be most philosophically satisfying.” “It is the view which sees the universe as a process embodying a Purpose—the Purpose of God, the end to which it is directed being the realization of values through the voluntary self-determination of finite spirits under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit” (Edwin Bevan in The Pilgrim, vol. iv, No. i, p. 22).

The Prophets discerned and proclaimed this Will of God to be a Just and Righteous Will. “Clouds and darkness are round about Him; Righteousness and Judgment are the Foundation of His Throne” (Psa. xcvii. 2). “Righteousness and Judgment are the Foundation of Thy Throne, Mercy and Truth go before Thy face” (Psa. lxxxix. 14).

In the name of the Lord they thundered against the social iniquities of their time. They denounced the ceremonialists with their incense and new moons and church-going. “Hear the word of the Lord…. Bring no more vain oblations…. I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth.” God will turn away His eyes from them, and will not hear their prayers. “Your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil: learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” Their princes are rebellious and companions of thieves; everyone loveth gifts (bribes) and followeth after rewards; they judge not the fatherless. So the wrath of God is on them (Isa. i. 13–24). “The Lord will enter into judgment with the elders of His people, and the princes thereof: it is ye that have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What mean ye that ye crush my people, and grind the face of the poor? saith the Lord, the Lord of Hosts” (Isa. iii. 13—15). They denounce the landlords. “And they covet fields, and seize them; and houses, and take them away.” “They abhor judgment and pervert all equity. They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity” (Micah ii. 2; iii. 9). They have dared to interfere with the poor man’s rights (Isa. x. 2). One gathers from the denunciations of the Prophets that for long periods Israel was almost as religious and corrupt as England and America are to-day.

3. The Messianic Hope.

But amidst all this corruption their hope never failed them. They saw a remnant of honest men, and they held fast to their faith in a righteous God, and in His promise to send a Reedemer to found His Kingdom among men.

The Messianic Hope began with an individual—Abraham, in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed. It expanded into a Chosen Race who should be the “servant of the Lord.” It then was concentrated upon a single individual, the Messiah, the King who would establish God’s Kingdom. This was fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. And it was expanded once more into the Holy Catholic Church, the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost. In this we see the fundamental principle of the Kingdom illustrated: it is that all healthy social life is dependent on the redemption and sanctification of the individual, and that the individual can only be redeemed and sanctified in the Divine Fellowship, to which further allusion will be made.

II. OUR LORD’S TEACHING.

“And Jesus went about in all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of diseases and all manner of sicknesses among the people.”

1. His Redemption is Corporate.

The Gospel is not the proclamation of the way in which individuals one by one may be saved. Christ taught a corporate redemption. Sin is selfishness. Man can be saved from selfishness only by being incorporated into Brotherhood. Man can be saved only by losing the hard, isolated individual self in the larger self of Fellowship. So our Lord fashioned this Corporate Life by knitting together the Apostles into a Brotherhood which was animated by union with Him, and empowered by the gift of the Spirit. Both in time and in emphasis the Corporate Life is prior to the individual. He would not allow His Apostles to preach a word of the Gospel nor to convert a single soul until the Spirit had welded them together into a Fellowship. “Tarry ye in the city until ye be clothed with power from on high” (S. Luke xxiv. 49). When, after the Resurrection, the Apostles, not yet entirely free from the narrow patriotism they had learned in their youth, asked Him, “Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?” He answered, “It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within His own authority. But ye shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judaea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth” (Acts i. 7–8). When, on the Day of Pentecost, the Spirit had fallen on the Apostles and bound them together in the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost, then individual souls were incorporated into this divine and human Fellowship, the Holy Catholic Church. The Church is not coterminous with the Kingdom; it is the instrument for the establishment of the Kingdom, and the representative of the Kingdom on Earth: just as the Army is not coterminous with the Kingdom of England or ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• CHAPTER I THE KINGDOM OF GOD
• CHAPTER II THE ETHICS OF THE KINGDOM
• CHAPTER III MATERIALISTIC ECONOMICS
• CHAPTER IV THE CLASS WAR AND THE WAGES SYSTEM
• CHAPTER V CAPITAL AND LABOUR
• CHAPTER VI RELIGION AND POLITICS
• INDEX