The direct mandate of the Church is to make disciples, by means of word and sacrament. The “word” that discipled nations are to be taught, however, is principally the commands of Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:20), observance of which is fraught with social, and even political, implications. There have are many different views of the social and political implications of the fact that the Church is the present and visible locus of the Kingdom of God. But it is certain, because of the nature of the Church and the scope of her mission, that she is implicated in the life of society. The Gospel of the Kingdom does not prescind from the life of the world.
Any interpretation which insists that the Church is strictly other than the Kingdom is working with a manifestly non-Eucharistic understanding of “church.” In support of the notion that Church and Kingdom coalesce in the Eucharist (not being inclined just now to provide my own argument), I appeal to Scott Hahn’s discussion of the Davidic Covenant fulfillment in Luke-Acts, especially wit regard to the Institution Narrative in Luke 22, in his recent book, Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God’s Saving Promises (Yale, 2009), 217-37 Here is a bit of Hahn’s comments on the significance of Luke 22:29-30 for our understanding of the relationship of Church and Kingdom:
This present conferral of the kingdom militates against those scholars who acknowledge a present kingdom in Luke–Acts, but limit it to the person and ministry of Christ [i.e., in his physical presence]. As Bock comments with respect to an earlier passage (Luke 11:20): ‘An appeal only to the presence of God’s kingly power in the person and message of Jesus misses the significance of this transfer of power to others and ignores the kingdom associations Jesus makes in explaining these activities.’ (228, emphasis original)
Regarding Acts 1:3-8, Hahn notes that Our Lord’s final instructions, before his Ascension, are about the kingdom, and that in response to the Apostles’ query about the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, Jesus promises to them power and assigns to them a mission, not only to Israel, but to “the end of the earth.
There is no reason to think that the disciples could take Jesus’s mission to the nations without reproducing , in and on behalf of those nations, the very works that Jesus did, which characterized his Davidic Kingship (cf., Luke 7:19-23; Luke 4:17-21; John 14:11-12). Those works, and Our Lord’s teaching concerning acts of mercy (Matthew 25:31-45), form the basis of the Church’s social teaching and activity, which is not conceived of as something extrinsic to the Gospel, though ministry to the temporal needs of man is by no means simply conflated with the Gospel. In short, Our Lord shows us that the Gospel itself has a social dimension, is “the Gospel of the Kingdom,” (Matthew 24:14). This dimension of salvation is brought into focus, here and now, in and through the Church (Luke 22:25-30).
The Eucharist is at the center of this mission. But this center does not push other actions to the margin. Rather, it draws the multi-national people of God to itself, to Christ. This is why the Gospels are absolutely the most important documents for the Church. It is impossible for the Church to carry out the Great Commission while marginalizing, in the discharge of that commission, the teaching and example of Jesus Christ himself. The Church has, throughout the ages, always manifested “love and concern for the poor and sick and outcast,” precisely because these were among her Lord’s deepest concerns during his first Advent.
None of this entails anything, that I can see, concerning some inevitable progress of the Kingdom of God in relation to the civil sphere. Christian culture is a blessing, but it is not a guarantee. We only know that the Church is the Body of Christ, therefore a visible embodiment of the Kingdom of God, which can never be destroyed.
So far as I can tell from the historical record, the Church has at some times and places played a large part in the reformation of society, and at other times and places she has had little discernible impact upon society. After all, while the poor and sick are usually ready to accept help, the larger society has a lot of say concerning its own general reformation, including who helps whom (and how). Furthermore, no society other than the Church, even the societies she most deeply formed, has any promise of permanent endurance through the ages, neither has any, other than the Church, been constituted as the pillar and ground of truth, the fullness of him that fills all in all. But these uncertainties in no way imply the non-responsibility of the Church towards the sanctification of society.
So all of that is a long way of saying, yes, “It is God who brings about his own Kingdom, in his way and in his time….” And yes, the claim that the Church not taking responsibility for “bringing about” the Kingdom is true in the sense that the Church is a manifestation of the Kingdom (though not in a complete or exhaustive sense), and no thing brings about its own existence. It is also true in the sense that the reformation of temporal societies is not the direct, or proper, mission of the Church. However, since (living) things do bring about their own actions (not, of course, to the exclusion of divine causality), and since rational beings are responsible for their actions, and since corporal acts of mercy, having social effects and implications, do pertain to the mission of the Church, the Church does bear some responsibility for the general work of the Kingdom, including the reformation of society.
The Church, as a unique society, is the visible minister (steward) of the Kingdom of God on earth. As such, she shares, whether directly or indirectly, in the ministry of the King. Of the course the Church, as a heavenly society among earthly societies, is like her Head a sign of contradiction to the world. But she is also a sign that, like a sacrament, contains and conveys grace, which is transformational.
Christ, to be sure, gave His Church no proper mission in the political, economic or social order. The purpose which He set before her is a religious one. (11) But out of this religious mission itself come a function, a light and an energy which can serve to structure and consolidate the human community according to the divine law. As a matter of fact, when circumstances of time and place produce the need, she can and indeed should initiate activities on behalf of all men, especially those designed for the needy, such as the works of mercy and similar undertakings. (Gaudium et Spes, 42)
[footnote (11): Cf. Pius XII, Address to the International Union of Institutes of Archeology, History and History of Art, March 9, 1956: AAS 48 (1965), p. 212: "Its divine Founder, Jesus Christ, has not given it any mandate or fixed any end of the cultural order. The goal which Christ assigns to it is strictly religious. ... The Church must lead men to God, in order that they may be given over to him without reserve.... The Church can never lose sight of the strictly religious, supernatural goal. The meaning of all its activities, down to the last canon of its Code, can only cooperate directly or indirectly in this goal."]
(I wrote a bit more about the Church, the Kingdom of God, and the State, here, and here.)
