"Jesus proclaimed the 'fulfilling of the time' which had brought the 'Kingdom of God near' (Mark 3:15). The problem with the question - which continues to be discussed and answered today in terms very little different from those used by the church Fathers - whether the kingdom which fulfilled Israel's time was a 'political' or a 'spiritual' one is that it treats the terms 'political' and 'spiritual' as known quantities, As though the competing answers, 'political', 'spiritual', or 'both political and spiritual' could make us wiser, when in fact we need to know what the alternatives posed by the question could mean! Political theology must explore the meaning of the alternatives and show why the question, though of fundamental importance, could never be given a straightforward answer. For the terms 'political' and 'spiritual' take us to the very substance of the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, which spans the two. We have to let ourselves be instructed, even surprised, by what each of them contains: to rediscover politics not as a self-enclosed field by human endeavour but as the theatre of the divine self-disclosure; to rediscover God as the one who exercises rule.
Yet, as in speaking of the Incarnation itself, we cannot affirm the hypostatic union without the two natures, so with the Kingdom of God we cannot conceive the henosis of political and spiritual without the duality of the two terms held together in it. That is why those who have asserted that a conception of Two Kingdoms is fundamental to Christian political thought have spoken truly, though at great risk of distorting the truth if they simply leave it at that. The unity of the kingdoms, we may say, is the heart of the Gospel, their duality is the pericardium. Proclaiming the unity of God's rule in Christ is the task of Christian witness; understanding the duality is the chief assistance rendered by Christian reflection."
- Oliver O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations, p. 82.
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