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The Church Not a Kingdom

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 24, 1914

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 91, No. 40.

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The Church Not a Kingdom

By S. E. TABB

S. E. TABB
IN THE REVIEW OF MAY 21, 1914, Lee S. Wheeler quotes from Cardinal Gibbons's “The Faith of Our Fathers,” page 23, the following:—
“The church is called a kingdom: ‘He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.’ Now in every regulated kingdom there is but one king, one form of government, one uniform body of laws, which all are obliged to observe. In like manner, in Christ's spiritual kingdom there must be one chief to whom all owe spiritual allegiance, one form of ecclesiastical government, one uniform body of laws which all Christians are bound to observe; for every kingdom divided against itself shall be made desolate.”
Mr. Wheeler very pertinently adds: “If the assumption that the church is the kingdom be granted, the whole [papal] system appears logical and Scriptural.
“Consequently, if this interpretation is to be allowed, all the decrees of intolerance and all the crusades of extirpation waged against infidels and heretics must be conceded to be but the exercise of the legitimate authority of the church over the state. Protestantism has no defense.”
“If the assumption . . . be granted;” “if this interpretation is to be allowed.” Aye, there's the rub.
The cardinal's “The church is called a kingdom,” brings to mind the conundrum that used to be sprung on us rustics back in boyhood farm days: “How many legs has a calf if you call its tail a leg?” If the farmer said five, the laugh was on him; but not infrequently the rustic was shrewd enough to answer: “Four; for calling a calf's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.” Calling the church a kingdom doesn't make it a kingdom. Nowhere in the Scriptures is the church ever called a kingdom, nor is Christ ever called the king of the church. To be sure, “King” is one of his divine titles (Ps. 10:16), and he is “King of the Jews” (Matt. 2:2), but “King of the church” never.
“Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5:23), and the church is his body, for “he is the head of the body, the church” (Col. 1:18). Again, Christ “is the bridegroom” (John 3:29), and the church is his bride, who at “the marriage of the Lamb” becomes “his wife” (Rev. 19:7). In that wonderful passage, Eph. 5:23-32, the apostle Paul uses marriage to set forth the relation between Christ and his church — husband and wife. He may be “king” to others, but not to the church. Of that he is “head” and “husband,” and the church is his “body,” his “wife.” The cardinal's application of Luke 1:33 to the church — “He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end” — should not confound even a tyro in exegesis.
The Jews rejected their “King” and his Messianic kingdom. The kingdom movement was thus halted. The kingdom, therefore, is for a time in abeyance, and Jesus is now as “a certain nobleman” who “went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return,” Luke 19:12. The time parenthesis between his rejection and return is the church period, the time for taking out from among the Gentiles “a people for his name” (Acts 15:14), that is, a church; and after this he “will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down” (Acts 15:16), setting up the prophesied and promised kingdom of which Luke speaks. The church is thus an out-called, chosen, selected body that serves its purpose during the kingdom-interregnum period and is then removed from the earth, caught up “to meet the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17), thus in its earth form coming to an end.
To confound the Roman Catholic Church with the true Scripture church, which is made up of all who by truly believing in Jesus become of his “body” (Col. 1:24), most of all to make the true church a “kingdom,” is an inexcusable error. This exegesis stands on a quicksand foundation, and the superstructure of a Roman Catholic kingdom church which the cardinal in the quotation has so pretentiously builded thereupon, tumbles into ruins; and great is the fall of it.
Yet his disallowable interpretation is no more invalid than much on which the Roman Church builds. Another instance: How much the hierarchy makes of the “power of the keys,” assuming all prerogative and supreme power in the church, from the text which Christ speaks to Peter, “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Matt. 16:19. In a footnote on this passage, in the Douay (Romanist) Bible, we are told that thus Peter should become “chief pastor, ruler, and governor; and should have accordingly all fulness of ecclesiastical power signified by the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Ecclesiastical power! Did Christ mean what he said, and say what he meant? He said “kingdom of heaven,” and did not say “church.” While it is true that the church and the kingdom of heaven have much in common, it is also true that, according to the Scriptures, they have characteristic differences that utterly preclude their being considered in their entirety to be one and the same thing. The fond assumption that the new Pope, Benedict XV, or the whole Roman hierarchy, now holds the keys to the church is simply absurd. If not now, never.
No, the church is an ekklesia, not a basileia — a called-out company, not a kingdom.