There is a common argument given by Postmillenials that they believe Christ is Lord of all things but other eschatologies are somehow rejecting this. What I want to show here is that this is a case of category confusion. Everyone believes that Christ is Lord over all things. He is given all authority in heaven and earth. He has inherited all things.
This really is not the difference between the eschatologies. The difference is what one thinks Christ claims before He returns versus what He claims afterward. In other words, all things belong to Him, but not all things are subject to Him by His choice. And that statement, btw, is believed by all, including Postmillenials, since Christ did not choose to immediately take hold of His inheritance by removing all of the wicked from the earth, resurrected all believers and destroying the last enemy, i.e., death, transforming the world into its everlasting state, etc. In other words, Christ has chosen to take hold of His inheritance first through the spiritual transformation of God's elect and sometime after He begins this process in the first century AD, He will take hold of the physical aspects of the kingdom.
The difference between the eschatologies is when He does this, i.e., before or after He returns.
Until then, whether one believes that He will take hold of everything in the future before He comes, or one believes that He will take hold of everything in the future when He comes, everyone believes He takes hold of the physical in the future.
Now, one can say that He was doing it right away, since Christ takes hold of it through a necessary invisible process that begins at the cross and the work of Christ from the first century on will one day manifest itself in the political and natural takeover of the world, but all must agree that what it looks like, at least for now, is that Christ is successful in taking hold of the spiritual kingdom through the gospel, but has decided not to manifest the fruit of all of that physically for the past 2000 years.
If that is the case, then how exactly does proclaiming that Christ is Lord of all things have anything to do with the idea that all is being subjected to Christ right now? These seem to be two very different claims. Christ as Lord of all things in Scripture seems to mean that He sits on the throne, subjecting what He desires to subject to Himself in the "already" and saving other things to subject to Himself in the "not-yet." How is this different than any other eschatology?
At least one thing meant by "Christ is Lord over everything" is that God has something to say about every area of life. God has given direction about every sphere, mountain, or whatever your analogy is. "Christ is Lord over all things" at least means that the scriptures, in some way, should be our guide to what each area of culture should look like. HOW God's word applies is then the next discussion; but many Christians believe God has nothing to say into politics, education, art, or whatever...
ReplyDeleteSure, but that isn't distinctive of Postmill. One can hold to all of that within a variety of eschatologies. Much of how we define what that looks like, however, has more to do with one's view of whether there is one or two kingdoms, one's view of theonomy, etc.
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