As far as understanding King's missions in life, Stetzer and Seifert only talked about the eradication of racism. Though eliminating racism was important to King, he fought 2 other battles: economic exploitation and militarism/war. And it is only when we include all of those issues together along with what it will take to adequately address those issues that we get to meet the real Martin Luther King Jr. For the real Martin Luther King Jr. was calling for moral and structural revolutions in America. The moral revolution was concerned with society turning from being 'thing-oriented,' where gadgets, profits, and property rights were counted as being more important than people, to being 'person-oriented'. The structural revolution stood against the materialism that came with Capitalism. In fact, King stated that Capitalism's materialism was just as evil as Communism's materialism though they were significantly different.
Consider the following two quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. (click here for the source):
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
and
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."
In terms of eschatalogical issues, what is missing is how the eschatalogy one adopts limits the degree in which individual Christians and the Church should work for and expect justice and heaven to be realized on earth. Not that there are no Christians who think that we should not try to work for any justice. Rather, the issue is how much justice on earth should Christians work for and whether that work is to be done by the individual Christians alone or with the Church. Though I disagree with R. Scott Clark's approach to this issue, he does provide some useful distinctions on the different kinds of eschatology (click here for the source):
There are essentially three kinds of eschatologies: completely realized (e.g., full-preterism, Jesus has returned and this is the new heavens and the new earth); semi-realized (the dominant view among the Reformed and usually described as Amillennialism); and unrealized (or futurist; which would include most forms of chiliasm, premillennialism). Postmillennialism as we know it today has features that align it with the semi-realized and with the futurist views. It says that the Kingdom of God has been introduced into history but it also looks forward to an earthly golden age (prior to Christ’s return).
Having identified 3 kinds of eschatology, not to be confused with 4 schools of eschatology, Clark gives a mixed message in terms of how much the Church should be involved in bringing justice to earth. From the same previously cited article, Clark says the following:
We see modern versions of this over-realized eschatology in contemporary evangelical rhetoric about “social justice.” Some of them speak openly about bringing heaven to earth in ways that the apocalyptic Anabaptists would have understood entirely. We should not assume that such rhetoric is either biblical or Reformed.
Certainly Christians as individuals and even as groups should seek to approximate social and civil justice, insofar as lies within them. The Reformed do not share the Anabaptist eschatology, however. We expect both the church and the state to be an approximation, to reflect a semi-realized eschatology. This is not heaven. Social action cannot bring about heaven on earth. It cannot bring the Kingdom of God.
and:
Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom of God on the earth but the Kingdom is not to be found in social action, marches, or power politics. The visible, institutional manifestation of God’s kingdom is much more humble. It is more like Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey than it is Caesar entering Rome. Remember, the disciples frequently pestered Jesus about when he was going to institute a glorious, earthly kingdom (e.g., Mark 10:37; Acts 1:6). They did not understand. Jesus explained to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). They would not understand that until Pentecost, when Peter announced that Jesus was reigning now (see his sermon in Acts 2) from heaven, that he was arranging all things for the progress of the gospel. That progress, however, did not mean earthly glory. It meant persecution (Acts 7), martyrdom, and death. The visible, institutional manifestation of the Kingdom is the preaching of the gospel, the use of the two sacraments, and the use of church discipline (see Matt 16 and 18; 28:18–20).
Indeed, there is no evidence in Acts that the Apostles sought to bring heaven to earth except insofar as the ministry of Word, sacrament, and discipline brought the elect into contact with the realities of the new heavens and the new earth by anticipation (Acts 2:42). They wrote no petitions. They conducted no rallies. They chanted no slogans, even as their brothers and sisters (c. 65 AD) were arrested unjustly, covered with tar, and set on fire to cover up Nero’s failed urban renewal program.
It is important to read the previously cited article by Clark along with this article being linked to here. For though Clark does well in warning us against reducing the Gospel to a social gospel only, his rigidity in thought and excessive loyalty to his theological heroes from the past prevents from him borrowing anything from those whose eschatology is too faulty--that is whose eschatology carried expectations that were too great. And in comparing today's world with that of the New Testament Church, Clark's call on the Church to simply imitate what was done then assumes that there are no significant historical changes between then and now.
Certainly, King's eschatology would be considered faulty in Clark's eyes--and we should note that Stetzer and Siefert inadequately described King's eschatology. But does that mean that Christians should not have joined and worked with King and his movement?
Though we really talked more about Clark than Stetzer and Siefert, the point of these citations from Clark is to show that Stetzer and Siefert did an inadequate job in talking about King's eschatology just as they underrepresented King's work by reducing his mission to opposing racism--which ironically is the typical white American's view of King's work. And King and his work are too important to inadequately write about.
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