In the World but Not of the World

There has been much discussion of two dimensions of the kingdom of God in scholarship: the temporal (already/not yet) and the embodied (spirit/flesh). Russell proposes that there is a third parallel dimension, a social dimension. Using Victor Turner's concepts of structure, antistructure, and liminality, Russell explores how these concepts are consistently expressed in Jesus' teaching, in Paul's writing, and through the writers of the second and third centuries. She demonstrates how, from the very beginning of the Jesus movement, Christ followers were unique, not because their members were to live liminal lives apart from structure, but because they lived out new antistructural relationships within existing structures and thus transformed them. They lived liminally within their structure.

A. Sue Russell is Professor of Mission and Contextual Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. She holds PhDs in Linguistics and History of Early Christianity. She is the author of Conversion, Identity and Power (1999), Relationshift (2018), and Loved (2019).