Cees en Anneke Noordzij — Eschatology
b5 — Putting Your Hand to the Plough
The Kingdom of Heaven as Present Spiritual Reality
Noordzij argues that the kingdom of heaven is not a future earthly reality but a present spiritual one. On the meaning of the new covenant he writes: “in the ‘new’ covenant everything applies to spiritual, heavenly realities. And therefore also to a spiritual people. With that people God does ‘new things’ (Isa.42:9, 48:6). With that people He makes a ‘new’ covenant to deliver them from the true ‘Egypt’ (the ‘fleshly’) and to bring them to a better ‘promised land’, the kingdom of heaven” (Noordzij, ‘Putting Your Hand to the Plough’, §Cutting Straight).
On the immediacy of this kingdom experience: “This is not something for later. Whoever follows Him experiences it here and now” (Noordzij, ‘Putting Your Hand to the Plough’, §Cutting Straight).
Interpretation: Noordzij explicitly situates the kingdom of heaven in the present, not in a future apocalyptic setting.
Critique of Literal Second-Coming Interpretation
Noordzij formulates explicit criticism of a literal-eschatological expectation of the return of Christ: “Is, for example, the waiting for Jesus’ coming on clouds of water vapour and the rapture of believers in a flash not rather a naïve interpretation of unspiritual teachers?” (Noordzij, ‘Putting Your Hand to the Plough’, §Cutting Straight).
This connects to his hermeneutical principle of ‘cutting straight’ (orthotomeo): “Whoever still thinks this way, interprets all prophecies and events in the Bible with an eye to earthly, visible, temporal shadows. His way of thinking is then still that of the ‘old’ covenant” (Noordzij, ‘Putting Your Hand to the Plough’, §Cutting Straight).
Interpretation: Premillennial or dispensationalist thinking is characterised by Noordzij as ‘unspiritual’ and as bound to the old covenant.
Citizens of the Heavenly Kingdom
Noordzij directly links the new covenant to citizenship of a heavenly kingdom: “whoever has entered the kingdom of God and has become a citizen of a kingdom in the heavens, applies the word of truth consistently to spiritual realities and sees that those truths concern himself (Phil.3:20)” (Noordzij, ‘Putting Your Hand to the Plough’, §Cutting Straight).
As a hermeneutical calling for the believer, Noordzij cites Col. 3:1-2: “‘Set your mind on things above (=spiritual and true), not on things on the earth’ (Col.3:2). And ‘seek the things that are above, where Christ is’ (Col.3:1)” (Noordzij, ‘Putting Your Hand to the Plough’, §Cutting Straight).
Eternal Life as Spiritual Reality
Noordzij defines ‘eternal life’ not as future immortality but as the authentic life in spirit and truth. On the basis of Matt. 19:27-30 he writes: “will receive many times more in return and inherit ‘eternal’ life (=the authentic life in spirit and truth)” (Noordzij, ‘Putting Your Hand to the Plough’, §The Calling of Elisha).
Interpretation: The parenthesis ‘=the authentic life in spirit and truth’ is a deliberate redefinition of ‘eternal life’ in a spiritually present sense, over against a future bodily resurrection expectation.