Evangelical discourse about cultural engagement betrays a dichotomy that was never meant to be. As we bicker and quarrel about what the priority of the Church should be—are we to make disciples or transform culture?—we bifurcate the tension at the core of the apostolic Gospel, separating into competing camps. At its heart, this tension is eschatological, having to do with the last things, the end of the world. It concerns the manner in which the boundary between this present age and the age-to-come is porous. And if this barrier is fuzzy, a solidified system that attempts to encapsulate the Church’s mission in one breath will certainly miss part of it. Yet that is what the bulk of evangelical discourse has done. The antidote to our thinking is the renewal of a properly Christian eschatological framework, which can show us how the chief concerns of each of these camps—the Church’s distinction from the world and the Church’s mission for the world—ultimately spring from the same source: the presence of the future age-to-come within the history of this present age.
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