An Unexpected Email
An introduction to the teachings of Frank Viola.
Recently, I was surprised to receive an email from my former pastor. We hadn’t had any contact for many years. There was no personal greeting indicating that he had sent it specifically for me, (which for some strange reason, disappointed me). The subject line simply said, “Viola”. My former pastor’s first name coincidently is the same as mine, so to avoid any confusion, we’ll call him Pastor Dale.
This is his email in its entirety.
Why did Paul and the other apostles risk their lives and suffer untold horrors to bring the gospel to world?
The common evangelical answer is to save individuals from hell.
There’s no question that the gospel brings life to individual souls, eternal life both in the present age and in the age to come.
However, as I argued in From Eternity to Here, the mission of God goes far beyond the salvation of individual souls from eternal judgment.
God has an eternal purpose that reaches before humans fell, before they were ever in need of salvation.
God’s timeless purpose is to secure a body for the Son, a house for the Father, a bride for the Son, and a family for the Father. All through the Holy Spirit.
Put another way, the ageless purpose of God is to expand the fellowship and communion of the triune God.
This epic idea is wrapped up in the phrase the kingdom of God, which was the central message of Jesus Christ.
The kingdom of God is the joining together of heaven and earth just as it was in the beginning (and as it will be in the end). That God’s perfect will be done on heaven as it is in earth.
Paul and the other apostles sought to bring the gospel message to all who never heard it.
That gospel wasn’t just about salvation from eternal judgment. It was primarily about fulfilling God’s eternal purpose, which in a fallen world, begins (and not ends) with salvation.
The apostolic mission, therefore, was to establish kingdom communities throughout the Roman Empire which would express God’s eternal purpose.
Those kingdom communities – ekklesias, as the New Testament calls them – were a colony of heaven on earth. Through them, God was reclaiming the nation that had fallen under the grip of evil powers.
God’s intention, as it was in the beginning, was and is to recover the earth from the power of His enemy and establish His reign throughout the world, so that His good creation will reflect Him perfectly in the world and that God and humans may joined together in perfect union.
As one philosopher famously said, “He who has a why to live, can bear almost any how.” (Nietzsche said that, a man who I don’t often agree with, so calm down. The quote is fitting.)”
In future blogs we will more closely examine Frank Viola’s emotive ideas, but for now let me share with you my initial response to Pastor Dale.
Dear Pastor Dale,
I was surprised to see that I had received an email from you. It didn’t take long to realize that it was not a personal email to me, but that you had just cut and pasted someone else’s words as your message. I was disappointed, to say the least, but I was even more disappointed when I read what Frank Viola had to say.
I don’t know if you know yet, but several years ago I simply let go of Christianity. It was an awaking experience for me. So, I read the words of Viola with eyes wide open and, not surprisingly, found his ideas ridiculous (at best) and dangerous (at worst).
Here are a few examples.
I did some research on Viola and found this statement in some of his other writings.
Viola: “The kingdom of God knows no injustice, no racism, no inequality, and no cruelty. And the gospel of the kingdom produces a community of people who PUT ON DISPLAY what it looks like when God is in charge. This is one of the many things that the Insurgence has to offer this broken, lost, hostile world.”
I have come to know quite a few Atheists and must say that we also would like a world with no injustice, no racism, no inequality, and no cruelty. If Christians are the one who are going to usher in the Kingdom of God, shouldn’t they be the ones who already practice such qualities? But to be honest, that’s not what we see within Christian circles. There seems to be plenty of injustice, inequality, and cruelty among those who profess to be followers of Christ. Why is that?
When he says that the gospel of the kingdom produces a community of people who “PUT ON DISPLAY” (all in caps) what it looks like when God is in charge, it’s pretty scary. We only need to look at the Old Testament to find out what it looks like when God is in charge. Atheists have a different view of what it looks like when God is in charge. Atheist Richard Dawkins, in his book, The God Delusion, addresses just how appalling biblical ethics really are. He writes,
“The book of numbers tells how God incited Moses to attack the Midianites. His armies made short work of slaying all the men, and they burned all the Midianite cities, but they did not kill the women and children. This merciful restraint by his soldiers infuriated Moses, and he gave orders that all boy children should be killed, and all the women who were not virgins. ‘But all the women children, that have not known a man by laying with him, keep alive for yourselves’ Numbers 31:18.
Do the people who hold up the bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually written in it? What makes my jaw drop is that people today should base their lives on such an appalling role model as Yahweh – even worse, that they should bossily try to force the same evil monster (whether fact or fiction) on the rest of us.” (Dawkins)
So, why does the Bible tell us to repent because the Kingdom of God is at hand?
The christian answer is, “Because when the kingdom that we all pray to come “Thy Kingdom come” actually does come, it will first wipe out all evil and wrong doers from the face of the earth. So, to survive this we must start to go on the path of righteousness meaning we must abide with the standards of God that are stated in the bible.”
Is that what you believe? Is that what happens when God is in charge? Did you know that there are Christians out there who still advocate for the death penalty for homosexuals? Is that what we’ll get in Viola’s Kingdom of God? How can any moral person support such behavior?
In some of Viola’s other writings he says that “love” is not the real message of the gospel. From where I stand, “love” would do a lot to heal this broken, lost, hostile world. It’s really a pity that Christians aren’t the ones who actually show that kind of love. For a recent project, I evaluated the mission statements of Evangelical churches. I did a word search to see just how many times the word “love” actually appeared in Evangelical mission statements. I wrote a blog about this topic. I wasn’t surprised to find that “love” was rarely mentioned, if at all. I also did this for South Fellowship (Pastor Dale’s former church) and found that the word “love” was mentioned only once. Try it for yourself. (On a side note, the congregation that took over the old church building, mentions “God’s love” eight times in their mission statement.) It’s what the world needs now.
Therefore, I have concluded that Viola’s Kingdom of God, has nothing to offer this broken, lost, hostile world. So, no thanks. I’ll pass on the ridiculous ideas of Frank Viola.
Sincerely, Dale Crum
From Where I Stand
Oct 13, 2025
Dale Crum