Abstract
‘Jesus is the kingdom. And this is good news’ (p. ix). The opening words from the foreword by Sara Wilhelm Garbers summarize the central argument of Christian T. Collins Winn. Jesus, Jubilee, and the Politics of God’s Reign unpacks what this means for Christian social relationships through a close reading of the biblical text.
This book is an outworking of Collins Winn’s long wrestling with the translation of Luke 17.21, commonly translated ‘the kingdom of God is within you’. Collins Winn instead prefers ‘the kingdom of God is in your midst’. This preferred translation is then fleshed out in relation to Collins Winn's overall thesis that Jesus is the kingdom: ‘In his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus is the quintessential demonstration of the rule of God’ (p. 8).
The structure of the book follows the biblical narrative as Collins Winn traces the kingship of God through the psalms, prophets and apocalyptic literature before turning to the witness of Jesus in the New Testament. He highlights three central themes as a ‘threefold cord’ in this witness: kingdom, Jubilee and apocalypse (p. 9). He goes on to demonstrate how these three themes are uniquely revealed in the person of Jesus: ‘In Jesus we are given a vision of the way that God is God. That is, in Jesus God is revealed as the partisan of the poor, the one who stands alongside the oppressed, and the liberator of the captives’ (p. 10).
Collins Winn does not merely confine his study of the kingdom of God to an exegetical exercise. He concisely relates the witness of Jesus as kingdom of God to contemporary struggles for liberation and emancipation. He returns to the ‘passion of Jesus … [as] an affirmation of the humanity of those society and the social order push to the margins’ (p. 158). He notes that ‘Jesus’ passion experience is radically similar to the kind of death-dealing control, exploitation, torture, and dehumanization that those on the bottom of the social order of our age continue to experience’ (p. 158).
This book is an important intervention in a popular topic of study. It will be useful for students studying the ‘kingdom of God’ at undergraduate and graduate level, clearly setting out a perspective resolutely focused on Jesus’ witness to the kingdom and the contemporary struggle for the kingdom of God to break through. It is also an important work for all those involved in the many contemporary struggles for that liberation and emancipation. It offers a scriptural witness and encouragement to those Christians and activists engaged in the daily task of seeking the kingdom in which: the Crucified lives. Justice has been done, and because justice is done for Jesus the victim, we can know that God intends to do justice on behalf of all victims. Jesus’s resurrection makes clear that the God of mercy, justice, and righteousness is faithful not only to the divine intention for creation but also to creation itself, and especially to those creatures who have been denied the flourishing life that God intended. (p. 205)