How radical is the kingdom of God?

This is a book review of a brand new book by Frank Viola titled, "Insurgence".  This is a call to live out the radical kingdom of God, and to reject the many American substitutes for the kingdom.

Viola describes this radical kingdom with these words.  He wants American Christians to "unleash the titanic, explosive, cataclysmic, earth-shaking, life-altering gospel of the kingdom."

This book contains many good and important biblical truths; it comes close to delivering its promise, but, in the end, Viola backs away from fully understanding and endorsing the radical justice that the biblical kingdom calls for.

Viola is superb on social evil, evil social order, the demonic world system, the rich, American nationalism and American capitalism.  The only weakness I detected in the area of social evil was that apparently Viola does not know about the 555 references to oppression in the Old Testament; therefore he does not understand that oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslaves and kills people created in the image of God.

From page 363 we find this quotation:
"If you live in the West, the two main idols or false gods are nationalism and capitalism.  I live in America and these two idols have this nation in its grip.  People kill, sacrifice, and die for these idols. Anything is justified for love of country (nationalism) and love of money (capitalism).  And this mindset has even bled into the Christian community."

In terms of justice being central to the kingdom of God, Viola ignores the all important messianic passages from Isaiah.  All six of which stress justice as characterizing the kingdom.  These six Isaiah passages can be found in 9:7; 11:1-4; 16:5; 28:16-17; 42:1-4; 61:1-4.

For me this was the number one weakness in the book.  These passages define the kingdom.  Viola says there are no New Testament passages which define the kingdom.  Not quite true if you read Mathew 6:33, "seek first God's kingdom and his justice" (NEB). Two other clues warned me about this potential neglect of justice.  Glancing at the biography I saw no black names listed, such as:
John Perkins, John Skinner, Barbara Williams Skinner, Martin Luther King.  As far as I could tell it was an all white list.  He also listed his four mentors; I think all four were white.  One of them was
A.W. Tozer.  I sort of detected that Viola would like to be in the same vein of A.W. Tozer who was widely respected as maybe the most spiritual leader in America in the the last century.

Let me tell you something my wife discovered about Tozer. Towards the end of his book the biographer reveals this story.  Tozer's church was located in south Chicago.  As time went by more and more poor blacks moved in around the church.  Tozer's white congregations saw these poor blacks as a dangerous threat.  His biographer described the black community as "irreparably damaged."  In other words, nothing could be done to repair or rebuild that community.  So this white church might as well move out to the suburbs.  The church, with Tozer's approval, planned to move.

Tozer's Almighty God could not help the church address this problem.  Had John Perkins been pastor, he would have seen this as a golden opportunity for the church to minister to the needs of the community through what he called Christian Community Development.  Neither Tozer nor his church had such a vision, so they cut and ran.  The radical kingdom of God would have stayed and ministered.  So for me, anything that looks like Tozer now is suspect.

Though Viola would deny it, Tozer represents a spirituality without justice, and in the final analysis, I conclude that Viola's understanding of the kingdom is also without justice.  Viola is fairly good on the
Old Testament and justice, but tragically weak on the New Testament and justice as are almost all white American biblical scholars.

So in spite of great promise, great potential, Viola's book, "Insurgence", does not deliver.  Being forwarded I still recommend you read it.