It is not often that two books are launched with the same title. Yet this has happened with two that, under the title The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus, have made their appearance within a few weeks of each other. The one is by Dr. Norman Perrin (S.C.M. Press) and the other by Bishop Gösta Lundström, whose work, originally made available in Swedish in 1947, has been brought up to date by a postscript written specially for this English translation (Oliver and Boyd). The two books are concerned chiefly with what German scholars label Forschungsbericht; that is, they seek to state the progress of research in biblical scholarship and science. For that reason names and theories feature largely in their treatment of a common theme, and we are introduced to a host of past and present scholars and to a bewildering variety of suggestion and (it must be confessed!) speculation.

The following is a brief summary of what these books contain in voluminous detail, in the hope that readers will gain a nodding acquaintance with the way in which the Kingdom of God has been understood in the last half century. A question mark is placed against some of the modern conclusions, with a view to provoking further thought on this important biblical topic. At this point mention should be made of the recent issue, in English translation, of Dr. Herman Ridderbos’s massive The Coming of the Kingdom (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co.), which is a conservative contribution to the current debate, offering a breathtakingly comprehensive survey of the scriptural evidence and of recent (mainly Continental) discussion. The subject was treated briefly by Dr. Ridderbos in his article “Kingdom of God” in the New Bible Dictionary (Inter-Varsity Fellowship).

Although the subject before us has to do mainly with the past half century or so, we must go back to the middle and the latter half of the nineteenth century for our true perspective. The name of Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89) has proved influential in Christian theology. In his view of Christ’s Kingdom, all is explained on the assumption that Jesus came to establish on earth a fellowship of people who, accepting his moral code as the inspiration of their lives, were pledged to carry on the work of Jesus and themselves set up that Kingdom in human society. It is a formula of ethical action that is deceptively attractive and simple, with all the niceties of theology ironed out—or conveniently forgotten. The Kingdom becomes the equivalent of the Church as a people “standing under ethical laws,” to use the phrase of Kant, to whom Ritschl owed his inspiration. It is certain that he did not owe that inspiration to the New Testament.

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With Ritschl’s successor Harnack, the idea of the Kingdom was seen and interpreted through the spectacles of liberalism. True, it was the New Testament that Harnack was anxious to interpret; but his philosophical outlook clouded his vision of the text, and all he could see was the ideal of the spiritual communion of an individual soul and God. This preoccupation with the individual quite naturally provoked a reaction, especially in America, and Christian thought flew to the opposite extreme. This was responsible for the so-called social gospel, which transposed the biblical message of the Kingdom of God into a political and economic manifesto.

A new beginning was made with Johannes Weiss, whose work has had an incalculable influence. For him, the term “Kingdom of God” is altogether a religious one and stands in a theological frame of reference. Moreover, so far from being a cipher for an earthly, this-worldly community, it stands for something transcendent and miraculous. It does not evolve out of the existing social order but breaks into this world order from outside. The simile which describes it is that of an overpowering divine storm which erupts upon the world’s historical scene and changes it completely. It is God’s Kingdom, moreover, which man can neither bring in nor bow out. According to Weiss, Jesus came as the herald and proclaimer of this supernatural Rule of God which he announced as “at hand,” that is, just around the corner (Mark 1:15). He called upon his hearers to repent and prepare themselves for this divine inbreaking; his ethical teaching is geared to a dramatic, catastrophic event which God is about to accomplish, and men are bidden to “get ready.” This idea became known as “ethics of the Interval,” i.e., the breathing space which God has allowed before his Kingdom crashes in and history, as we know it, is wound up.

Focus On The Scriptures

The great merit of Weiss’s interpretation was that it turned attention to the actual text of the Scripture and sought to do justice to the undoubted element of crisis and warning which sounds through our Lord’s teaching. It refused to see him through nineteenth-century glasses, and tried to set him in the context of his times and in the setting of the apocalyptic literature (notably the literature associated with the name of Enoch) which supposedly influenced him. The desire to take the Scripture seriously was admirable; but like many pioneers Weiss overplayed his hand. Keeping our metaphor of spectacles, we may say that he looked at the evidence in part by using only the top section of his bifocal lens. He viewed Jesus as one whose gaze was always set to the future scene, as He announced that the Kingdom was on the way. But much of the Lord’s teaching assumes that the Kingdom has actually arrived and is operative in the present. He claimed to be the Son of Man in person, and not, as Weiss declared, the Son of Man designate.

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Weiss’s views would possibly have gone unsung had it not been for the Alsatian scholar-musician-medical missionary who came under their spell and popularized them in a most attractive way. Albert Schweitzer’s famous Quest of the Historical Jesus gave us a picture of Jesus which had, for a while, tremendous vogue in spite of its startling novelty. Jesus was depicted as a strange, imperious figure obsessed by an apocalyptic dream in which he envisaged the imminent end of the age. This is the plain sense of Matthew 10:23, Schweitzer averred. But the Kingdom did not come, and Jesus became convinced that the dream would come true only by his death. He marched on Jerusalem, therefore, in the full expectation that the Kingdom would come by what he was about to do. At the price of his life he would “constrain” God to bring it in, “like a chess player who sacrifices his queen to get a mate” (T. W. Manson). But this was his “fate,” for the Kingdom still did not come, and he died in dereliction. Yet that was precisely his victory and his reign—and his Kingdom.

It is not difficult to fault Schweitzer’s reconstruction. All the evidence is pressed into the straitjacket of Matthew 10:23. Schweitzer turns a Nelson’s eye to those texts which speak of the Kingdom as a present reality in the ministry of Jesus, whom he makes the victim of a fixed eschatological program which holds him in its iron grip. And just as serious is the criticism that this theory is superimposed upon the scriptural data. It “sprang out of his head, already full grown,” commented Jülicher.

A similar charge that a theory can be championed only at the expense of ignoring conflicting evidence has been laid against the once popular “realized eschatology,” associated with C. H. Dodd. Many ministers today have been reared and nurtured in this particular school, so it is well that we inspect it with a critical eye. In its pristine form it said simply: “The Kingdom of God is not something yet to come. It came with Jesus Christ.… The hidden rule of God has been revealed, the Age to come has come.” Now Dodd’s case for the assertion that the Kingdom has actually arrived in the present ministry of Jesus in Galilee seems a convincing one, and such verses as Luke 11:20; 10:23 f. (= Matthew 13:16 f.), and 17:20, 21 (NEB) give some support. In much of what he affirms Dodd commands our assent, but in what he denies he compels us to leave him, for “he loses sight of the futuristic aspect of the Kingdom” (Lundström). Indeed, this looking through only the lower part of the bifocal spectacles and seeing only the present aspect of the Kingdom’s power is the major criticism which many scholars, like W. G. Kümmel, fasten upon him.

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But there is an equally vital objection. If the Kingdom came in Galilee, why did the Lord go to Jerusalem and to his death for sinners? Does not this view destroy what R. H. Fuller has called “the cruciality of the cross”? It should be noticed that the phrase “realized eschatology” is being more and more abandoned as a simple solution to Gospel eschatology; and Dodd himself would accept a modification in terms of “eschatology in the process of realization.” But a label like “inaugurated eschatology” seems better. Recent scholars are agreed that the two strands of a present reality (perhaps in an anticipatory form) and a future hope lie side by side in the teaching of Jesus on the Kingdom. In some sense the Kingdom appeared on the scene with his presence, his miracles, his exorcisms, his offer of forgiveness; yet he unmistakably looked to the future for a consummation and perfecting of what was inaugurated in his earthly life. “The Kingdom of God is among you,” and “upon you,” he declared; and yet he bade his disciples pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” and spoke of the coming of the Son of Man in his Kingdom.

Wrestling With The Paradox

Those scholars who have come under the impetus of Bultmann’s work are wrestling with the ways in which this paradox of present-future may be resolved. There is reluctance to follow Bultmann himself, who denied that Jesus regarded the Kingdom as a present actuality and who sought to impose an existentialist philosophy upon the New Testament message. Dr. Perrin’s book contains a valuable account of recent trends within the Bultmann school. New directions are being pointed; and in each instance the starting place is the way in which the Lord spoke and acted decisively, as though he saw his life and ministry as heralding a new age in God’s dealings with the world. Nothing seems clearer than the insistence which Jesus makes plain that with him there is “a shift of the aeons”; that is, the old order, represented by John the Baptist, is closed, and the new age of messianic salvation, foretold by prophets and seers, has begun. So far, so good. Yet two observations are called forth by a reading of Dr. Perrin’s stimulating final chapter.

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First, when he writes that “there is no single element in the teaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom as present which does not explicitly or implicitly relate directly and solely to the experience of the individual” (p. 186, my italics), has he not overlooked the mission of Jesus to call disciples to himself as his followers, to band them together as the messianic flock under the messianic Shepherd, as the Kingdom in a nutshell? And his overlooking of part of our Lord’s task makes him interpret Mark 10:15 as having a future reference (p. 192)—most improbably so. If Jesus spoke—and the saying is above critical suspicion—of men “receiving” and “entering into” the Kingdom, it seems clear that he had in view the gathering together, on the basis of allegiance to himself, of the nucleus of his Church, the ecclesia of God. This is not to equate the Kingdom and the Church, as the Roman Catholics and some popular studies do. At this point, Dr. Ridderbos writes a perceptive chapter on “The Coming of the Kingdom and the Church,” and shows that “the ekklesia is the community of those who, as the true people of God, receive the gifts of the kingdom of heaven provisionally now already since the Messiah has come, and one day in the state of perfection at the parousia (the Second Coming) of the Son of Man” (p. 354).

The second disquieting omission in modern discussion is the failure to give any explanation of the place of the Cross in the Kingdom teaching of the New Testament. Any doctrine of the Kingdom of God must address itself to the crucial question: Why did Jesus, who subordinated all his activity (proclamation, teaching, and signs) to his overriding conviction of the impending advent of the Kingdom of God, expose himself to crucifixion at Jerusalem? R. H. Fuller, who asks this in his book, The Mission and Achievement of Jesus (p. 77), criticizes both Bultmann and Dodd for failure to deal with this central issue, and supplies the answer in his demonstration that Jesus related the Kingdom, both present and to come, to his vocation as the sin-bearing Servant of Isaiah’s prophecy. His earthly ministry is full of tokens of the redemption which his Cross will accomplish and by which alone the Kingdom can come—and indeed did come in the apostolic preaching of the Cross and the Resurrection. Likewise, the Servant is promised a final vindication and dominion; Jesus thus looks beyond the trial, the death, and the grave to that final consummation of his redeeming work when “the Son of Man shall come in His glory.”

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It is at the Last Supper that all these notes are sounded; and it is at the Lord’s table today that we learn the mysteries of the Kingdom which came in Christ, was ratified by his blood at Calvary, is shared as we know his living presence in the midst of his assembled people, and is awaited as we do break the bread “until he comes.”

Ralph P. Martin is lecturer in theology at the London Bible College. A graduate of the University of Manchester, he has the Ph.D. degree from the University of London. His writings include An Early Christian Confession: Philippians 2:5–11 in Recent Interpretation.

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