Kingdom Without End: A Note on Marcellus of Ancyra

Extract

There is a suggestion in the fourth gospel that the saving lordship of Christ is finally manifest at his lifting up on the cross (cf. John 3.14, 8.28 and 13.32). Paul, in a letter to the Corinthian Church (cf. I Cor. 15.12 ff), proposed the anticipation of the general resurrection in the resurrection of Christ as the climactic moment of Christian belief. The church at Ephesus sang a hymn which celebrated the ascension as the triumphant manifestation of the Christian mystery (cf. I Timothy 3.16). The Apostles’ Creed, following the pattern of the old Roman Creed states that Christ’s glory is most tellingly declared at his return to judge the living and the dead. The credal affirmation here has set a number of theologians considering just how the eschatological judgement is related to the immediate judgement of human beings at their deaths. A deal of attention has been given to relating the future coming of the Son of Man ‘on clouds of glory’ to the promise ‘this day you shall be with me in Paradise’ (Lk. 23.43).

There has, however, been rather less modern discussion of how the belief, expressed in the Constantinopolitan-Nicene Creed, of Christ coming into a kingdom (or a reign) ‘without end’, is to be reconciled with Paul’s eschatological scenario of the Son being at the end subject ‘to him who put all things under him, that God may be all in all’ (I Cor. 15.28). Is there, then, one kingdom for the Father and another for the Son? ‘By no means’.