Jesus and the Reign of God

Song's search for a "vision of life in God," inaugurated in his previous volume, , takes him from ancient Egypt and China to modern Singapore, from Gethsemane to Tiananmen Square and always pulls him back to the Gospel stories. In its earnest and intense quest for religious integrity in a world no longer dominated or defined by Christianity, Song's theology is a startling rebuke to Christologies centered either in historical-critical searches or church doctrines. For him theology is the biography of God, and Jesus' message of God's reign is evident in the densely packed histories of strangers and outcasts: in an Egyptian Muslim who composed a Christmas carol, in a Korean woman in Japan, in an old musician in a ruined church in China. Engaged by these stories, the reader is pulled ineluctably into the reality they evince. As Song says, the reign of God in Jesus "becomes manifest through movements of people to be free from the shackles of the past, to change the status quo of the present, and to have a role to play in the arrival of the future."