The Kingdom of God in Jesus' Teaching

T. Paige

1. The OT Antecedents of the Hope for God's Kingdom:

Sinai:
forming of a nation, with God as law-giver and king, esp. since there is no monarchy at this point (Ex 15.18; Num 23.21, "the Lord their God is with them, acclaimed as a king among them"). God determines the national destiny and political fortune, gives direct guidance through prophets beginning with Moses. God is the only "king" Israel needs, as is seen in the critical comment on the nation's wish for a monarch, 1 Sam 8.7.

Psalms:
The Psalms speak of God's "dominion" and "throne", not only over Israel but all the nations: Ps. 22.27-31; 29.10; 45.6; 47.2; 93; 145.11-13.

The Hebrew term translated "kingdom"
Note Heb. malkuth, translated "kingdom" refers primarily to the rule or reign of a king (so the expression, "in the x year of the malkuth of so-and-so", 1 Chron 26.31; 2 chron 3.2; etc.). Used of God's authority to rule as king: Ps. 145.11-13; 103:19.

The decline of the monarchy and rise of a new prophetic hope:
Monarchy: Israelite and Judean rulers are disappointing from God's perspective. They become greedy, practice idolatry and encourage the nation to worship false gods, and are blinded by their passion for power to the point where some even persecute the prophets of Israel's God. Injustice warps the business practices, law, and politics of the two Israelite nations (Amos 5.7-24; Isaiah 1.12-23; 3.13-17; 5).

A vision begins to arise of a kingdom that will restore justice and God's righteousness to every area of life. It will be a kingdom run by God, righteous and holy, whose rule extends over all the earth and which will be ruled by a king chosen by God, and designated rarely as God's "Son" (Ps. 2; 110). The prophets of the OT predicted punishment on Israel and Judah for their sins. Yet they also looked forward to a time beyond Israel's punishment and captivity, when God would visit the earth to punish the nations and restore Israel in every way (geographically, politically, economically, agriculturally). Hos. 14:4-7; Amos 9:11-14; Micah 4:1-4; 5:8-9; Isa. 65:17-19, 25; Joel 3:16-17; 2:23-32. So note in Isaiah, immediately after the prophet predicts a disastrous refining process for his people, he tells us that God says, "I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city" (Isa 1.26). The Psalms too look forward to a visitation by God to judge the world and thus establish without doubt his malkuth, his sovereign rule: Ps. 96.10-13; Ps. 98. This is also described as a time of great joy for his faithful people.

The "Day of the Lord":
This expected future visitation by God is described as the "Day of the Lord" in the prophets. It will be a two-edged "day" of visitation, for it will mean joy and salvation for God's people but judgment and destruction for the wicked, including the wicked among God's people: Amos 5.18-20; 9.11-14; Isa. 2.9-21; 4.2-6; 65.17-19; Micah 1.4-5; Joel 2.23-32; 3.14-18).

This restoration of Israel's fortunes was connected with the hope for a leader who would be a great King like David, surpassing David even in his supernatural invincibility and world rule. This figure eventually came to be called "Messiah," or "anointed one," as in Ps. 2.2 (see Mic. 5:2-5; Isa. 9.2-7; 11.1-5; 42:1-9; Ps. 2; 110).

2. The Kingdom of God in the Synoptic Gospels

2.a. The Kingdom of God as Future Kingdom in the Synoptics:

1. The Kingdom of God will be a time of eschatological (final) punishment, and a time when his faithful people inherit eternal life, represented also as reclining at the table of the great Messianic Banquet. Mt. 10:17-31 (a warning against future tribulation); 8:11-12 (the banquet) // Lk. 13:28-29; Lk. 17:24, 25-37 (a future apocalyptic appearance of Jesus); Mt. 24:27-35 (an apocalyptic coming heralded by signs).

2. `In that day' echoes the same phrase used in the OT prophets, which points to the day of deliverance and punishment, the day of God's great intervention in the future (hence it is not yet here, Lk. 10:12).

3. Several parables imply a wait for a future arrival of the Kingdom: Mt. 25:1-13; Lk. 19:11-27. So also Jesus' exhortations to `watch' and be ready: Mt. 24:43-44; Lk. 12:39-40 (coming of the Son of Man will be like a thief). The parables of growth: Mk 4:30-32 (the mustard seed); Mt 13:33 (yeast).

2.b. The Kingdom of God in the Synoptics as Already Present.

1. The `signs of salvation' in Jesus' ministry: healing, exorcisms.
Exorcism: Mt. 12:28 // Lk. 11:20; Mt. 12:29; Mk. 1:21-28; Lk 10:18 `I saw Satan fall as lightning from heaven ...'
Healing: the answer to John the Baptist's question, Mt. 11:2-6; Lk. 7:18-23; cf. Isaiah 29:18-19; 35:5-6.

2. Jesus' own comment on his ministry: see Mt. 11:2-6; Lk. 4:16-21 (Jesus' sermon at Nazareth; cf. Isaiah 61:1-2); Lk. 17:20-21; 19.9, "today salvation has come to this house".

3. Jesus' ministry as the fulfillment of the Old Testament images, hopes, prophecies:
Mt. 11:3-6 John the Baptist's question and Jesus' response.
Mt 13:16-17 Jesus is the longed-for hope of the righteous.
Mt. 5:17 Jesus has come to fulfill
Lk 4:17-21 Isaiah 61 is fulfilled `today'.
The choosing of 12 disciples // 12 tribes of Israel.

2.c. Understanding Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God: previous solutions

1. 19th cent. Liberalism:

Nineteenth century liberalism tended to picture Jesus as a perfect man, God's representative or prophet, but no more than human. His teaching was boiled down and reduced to a fine consumme of ethical admonitions. All elements that were distasteful to the cultured elite had been filtered out of Jesus' teaching. Pictures of future judgment, an apocalyptic end to the world, Jesus as divine Judge, and similar supernatural elements were judged to be contaminants that had been introduced to Jesus' original and pure teaching after his death. We could characterize this period as "Non-eschatological," since Jesus' teaching was stripped of its essential eschatological elements. Its best known representative was Adolf Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentum (The Essence of Christianity). Eschatology was viewed as the cultural “shell” of Jesus’ real message: fatherhood of God; brotherhood of man; universal love command.

Advocates: A. Ritschl; A. von Harnack

2. Futurist (or Consistent) Eschatology

This school argued that Jesus in his preaching viewed the Kingdom of God exclusively as something future, associated with the eschatological consummation of this age. Jesus' concept of the kingdom was stamped by Jewish apocalyptic thought, using its ideas and imagery. The Kingdom would soon be inaugurated, starting the Messianic Age--something completely different from life as it is now known. The Kingdom is something wholly other than this world.

The `consistent eschatology' was first powerfully argued for by Johannes Weiss and A. Schweizer.

Existentialist interpretation of futurist eschatology
R. Bultmann believed the "futurist" and eschatological language did indeed go back to Jesus' own teaching without question. But he saw the apocalyptic message of an imminent crisis in world history as a mythological shell expressing the existential truth that the `hour of decision' is here and God demands an answer from man. This was his Existentialist interpretation of the significance of Jesus' message:

"The dominant concept of Jesus' message is the Reign of God. Jesus proclaims its immediately impending irruption, now already making itself felt. Reign of God is an eschatological concept. It means the regime of God which will destroy the present course of the world, wipe out all the contra-divine, Satanic power under which the present world groans--and thereby, terminating all pain and sorrow, bring in salvation for the Peole of God which awaits the fulfilment of the prophets' promises. . . .
"All that men can do in the face of the Reign of God now breaking in is this: Keep ready or get ready for it. Now is the time of decision, and Jesus' call is the call to decision. . . . Yet the historical Jesus of the synoptics does not, like the Johannine Jesus, summon men to acknowledtge or "believe in" his person. He does not proclaim himself as the Messiah . . . but he points ahead to the Son of Man as another than himself. He in his own person signifies the demand for decision.
". . . . in view of the fact that the proclamation of the irruption of God's Reign was not fulfilled--that is, that Jesus' expectation of the near end of the world turned out to be an illusion--the question arises whether his idea of God was not also illusory. . . . But it is a fact that prophetic consciousness always expects the judgment of God, and likewise the time of salvation to be brought in by God, in the immediate future, as may be clearly seen in the great prophets of the Old Testament. And the reason this is so is that to the prophetic consciousness the sovereignty of God, the absoluteness of his will, is so overpowering that before it the world sinks away and seems to be at its end. The consciousness that man's relation toward God decides his fate and that the hour of decision is of limited duration clothes itself in the consciousness that the hour of decision is here for the world, too. The word which the prophet is conscious of having to speak by God's commission takes the form of the final word by which God summons men to definitive decision."
(Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, vol. 1 [London: SCM, 1952], pp. 4, 9, 22-23)

Bultmann's famous students, Hans Conzelmann and Ernst Käsemann, moved away from the idea that Jesus' concept of the kingdom was stamped by Jewish apocalyptic thought. They de-emphasized (or denied) the role of end-time prediction, and emphasized more the present demand: the future casting its shadow in the present.

3. Realized Eschatology

This is the view that Jesus believed and taught that the Kingdom of God was already being `realized' during his own time of ministry. C. H. Dodd championed this view: "Jesus declared at once that the Kingdom of God had come, and that He Himself must die." The kingdom is already here, though its working may be hidden or mysterious. "Kingdom of God" does not point to an area or time; it refers to God's rule and to God's sovereign working. Jesus pointed to the inbreaking of the Kingdom in the present:

"So far, the use of the expression "The Kingdom of God" in the Gospels falls well within the framework of contemporary Jewish usage. The Kingdom of God may be "accepted" here and now, and its blessings will be enjoyed in the end by those who have fulfilled the necessary conditions.

"But there are other sayings which do not fall within this framework. "The Kingdom of God has come upon you" (Mt. xii.28 = Lk. xi.20). Here the Kingdom of God is a fact of present experience, but not in the sense which we have recognized in Jewish usage. Any Jewish teacher might have said, "If you repent and pledge yourself to the observance of Torah, then you have taken upon yourselves the Kingdom of God." But Jesus says, "If I, by the finger of God, cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you." Something has happened, which has not happened before, and which means that the sovereign power of God has come into effective operation. It is not a matter of having God for your King in the sense that you obey His commandments: it is a matter of being confronted with the power of God at work in the world. In other words, the 'eschatological' Kingdom of God is proclaimed as a present fact, which men must recognize, whether by their actions they accept or reject it."
(C.H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom, rev. ed. [London: Nisbet & Co., 1936], pp. 43f.)

4. Inaugurated Eschatology

"Inaugurated eschatology" is a position which attempts to take seriously both the "kingdom is present" type sayings and the "kingdom is future" type sayings as coming from Jesus himself. If they are both from Jesus there must be some scheme or some internal logic that holds these apparently opposite poles together.

Joachim Jeremias probably began the movement toward a mediating position with his formula, `eschatology that is in the process of realization'. He is criticized by Goppelt for tending to simply conform Jesus' eschatological statements to what is known of
Jewish apocalypticism (Goppelt, Theology of the New Testament I:54 n.10).

J. Jeremias, Jesus als Weltvollender, 1930; The Parables of Jesus, 1954 (second revised ed., 1972); New Testament Theology, 1971.

Rudolf Otto (The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man, 1943) also held that Jesus believed the Kingdom was in the process of coming (so Lk. 10:18, Satan is already overthrown). The Kingdom comes as heavenly power breaking into the world through Jesus.

Oscar Cullmann gave masterful expression to this idea in Christ and Time (SCM, 1951). The centerpoint of history has arrived in Christ's incarnation and ministry, and shifts everything that comes after. Cullmann's used the illustration of "D-Day" and "V-Day" in World War II to show how Jesus' decisive victory on the cross (= "D-Day") must still be followed by a period of conflict before all resistance is ended and judgment comes ("V-Day"): "that event on the cross, together with the resurrection which followed, was the already concluded decisive battle" (Christ and Time, 84).

W. G. Kümmel may be said to have one foot in this school. Though primarily seeing the Kingdom as the future, eschatological age, he acknowledged that "the Eschaton" [i.e., God's ultimate Kingdom reality] was already present in the person of Jesus--but not in the fellowship or activity of his disciples. (Kümmel, Promise and Fulfillment, 1957).

A. M. Hunter seems to have actually coined the phrase, "inaugurated eschatology" (Introducing New Testament Theology, 1950). But the British scholar C.K. Barrett came up with a summary best loved by students: the Kingdom is “Already but not yet.”

George E. Ladd is perhaps the best-known Evangelical expounder of the inaugurated eschatology perspective: A Theology of the New Testament (1974); The Presence of the Future (1974). Along with Ladd we would also place George Beasley-Murray (Jesus and the Kingdom of God, 1986); N. T. Wright; and Ben Witherington III, though he is careful to say that "there is little or not eivdence tht Jesus thought he was bringing in that dominion [of God] in a way that would cause cosmological change during his ministry. Human history and human lives re the arena into which he sees the dominion breaking . . ." (The Christology of Jesus [1990], 214). Many contemporary British NT scholars (such as Wright) would fall in this camp.

Summary:

The kingdom of God is present in the Gospels in the person and ministry of Jesus; and power is available to heal and to save for all who come to him and have faith in him. "Kingdom" signifies not a territory but a dynamic reign, the rule of God.

The people who ought to enter the Kingdom are the children of Israel, referred to as the `sons of the Kingdom'; but they will not if they do not have faith (Mt. 18:11-12).

To enter the Kingdom one must follow Jesus, have faith (=worshipful trust) in him, and persevere in faithful obedience to the end. Mk 8:34-38; 13:12-13; 16:16; Lk 17:7-10; Mt. 24:45-50. Note the parables exhorting to watching and waiting: Lk. 21:34-36; Mt. 24:37-44.
The children of the Kingdom (and hence the presence of the Kingdom) are recognized by the new ethic, coupled with faith in Messiah Jesus.

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