In the World but Not of the World: The Liminal Life of Pre-Constantine Christian Communities

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 Turners concepts of structure antistructure and liminality Russell explores how these concepts are consistently expressed in Jesus teaching in Pauls 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.