| 2. The Kingdom of God | ||||
What then is the meaning of "the Kingdom of God?" How is it to be conceived? The simplest answer is: the Kingdom of God is deliverance for men. It is that eschatological deliverance which ends everything earthly. This deliverance is the only deliverance which can properly be so called; therefore it demands of man decision. It is not something which man can possess along with other good things, which he may pursue along with other interests. This deliverance confronts man as an Either-Or. | ||||
Thus it is meaningless to call the Kingdom of God the "highest value," if by this is meant the culmination of all that men consider good. And the phrase would still not express truly the distance between the Kingdom of God and all other values, even if the relativity of these other values to this highest value is emphasized. A "highest value" always remains in connection with the relative. The Kingdom of God as eschatological deliverance is diametrically opposed to all relative values provided that the idea of eschatology is wholly and radically understood; and such an understanding must now be sought. | ||||
It is already clear that the Kingdom of God is no "highest good" in the ethical sense. It is not a good toward which the will and action of men is directed, not an ideal which is in any sense realized through human conduct, which in any sense requires men to bring it into existence. Being eschatological, it is wholly supernatural. Against all impatience which would bring in the Kingdom by force, the parable speaks: | ||||
"The Kingdom of God is as if a man throws seed on the land. He sleeps and rises up, as day follows night, and the seed sprouts and grows up, he knows not how. The earth brings forth fruit of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the ripe grain in the ear. When the grain is ripe, he sends the reapers, for the harvest is ready." (Mark 4:26-29) | ||||
Such a parable must not be read in the light of the modern conceptions of "nature" and "evolution." The parable presupposes that the growth and ripening of the seed is not something "natural," within man's control, but that it is something miraculous. As the grain springs up miraculously and ripens without human agency or understanding, so marvelous is the coming of the Kingdom of God. If we need proof that we must lay aside our modern view-point in order to understand such a saying in the sense of primitive Christianity, let us consider a very similar parable of the early Christian tradition. It is found in the first Epistle of Clement, dating from the end of the first century, and there the interpretation is given. The parable is to show how inevitably the divine judgment comes. | ||||
"O you fools, consider a plant, a grapevine for example. First it sheds the old leaves, then the young shoots sprout, then leaves, then flowers, then the green grapes, finally the ripe grapes appear. You see how quickly the fruit is ripe. Even so quickly and suddenly will God's final judgment come, as the Scripture testifies: He will come quickly and will not tarry, suddenly the Lord will come to His temple, the Holy One for whom you wait." (1 Clem. 23:4, 5) | ||||
The Kingdom of God, then, is something miraculous, in fact the absolute miracle, opposed to all the here and now; it is "wholly other," heavenly (cf. R. Otto). Whoever seeks it must realize that he cuts himself off from the world, otherwise he belongs to those who are not fit, who put their hand to the plow and look back. The stories of the calling of the first disciples are legends (Mark 1:16-20, 2:14); he who seeks for a historical kernel in them by attempting to explain psychologically the behavior of the disciples misunderstands them. But these legends are the historical witness for the meaning of Jesus message concerning the Kingdom, which tears men up by the roots from their business life and from their social relationships and commands the dead to bury their dead. "The saints," the company of disciples of Jesus soon called themselves those who are separated from the present world and have their life in the beyond. | ||||
Although the metaphor of "entering into" the Kingdom of God often occurs that does not imply any possibility of conceiving the Kingdom as something which either is or can be realized in any organization of world fellowship. Naturally both the Greek word and the Aramaic behind it can be translated as "Realm of God." However, this translation is a dangerous one, for all modern conceptions of citizens or members of the state, of fellow-countrymen and the like, are utterly mistaken. The Kingdom of God is not an ideal which realizes itself in human history; we cannot speak of its founding, its building, its completion; we can say only that it draws near, it comes, it appears. It is supernatural, superhistorical; and while men can "receive" its salvation, can enter it, it is not they, with their fellowship and their activity, who constitute the Kingdom, but God's power alone. Even if the parables of the mustard-seed and the leaven really applied originally to the Kingdom of God, they were certainly not intended to denote the "natural" growth of the Kingdom, but were meant to show how inescapable will be its coming, however easily ignored or misinterpreted may be the signs of its coming which are conspicuous in the activity of Jesus. The marvelous, superhistorical character of the Kingdom is the constant presupposition. | ||||
But must we stop at this merely negative definition? What should we understand positively by the Kingdom of God? What sort of events are meant when its coming is announced? There can be no doubt that Jesus like his contemporaries expected a tremendous eschatological drama. Then will the "Son of Man" come, that heavenly Messianic figure, which appeared in the apocalyptic hope of later Judaism, partly obliterating the older Messianic figure of the Davidic king and partly combining with it. Then will the dead rise, the judgment will take place, and to some the heavenly glory will be revealed while others will be cast into the flames of hell, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Evidently Jesus shared with his contemporaries the belief in all these dramatic events. As in that saying at the last supper, so at other times too, he speaks with entire naturalness of eating and drinking in the Kingdom of God. | ||||
But it should be noted that he neither depicts the punishments of hell nor paints elaborate pictures of the heavenly glory. The oracular and esoteric note is completely lacking in the few prophecies of the future which can be ascribed to him with any probability. In fact he absolutely repudiates all representations of the Kingdom which human imagination can create, when he says: | ||||
"When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven." (Mark 12:25) | ||||
In other words, men are forbidden to make any picture of the future life. Jesus thus rejects the whole content of apocalyptic speculation, as he rejects also the calculation of the time and the watching for signs. It is said for example in a Jewish apocalypse: | ||||
"If the Almighty spare your life, then after three times | ||||
In the teaching of Jesus nothing of this kind is found, rather the warning against all such calculation: | ||||
"The Kingdom of God does not so come that the time | ||||
"And if someone says to you, Look here, or Look | ||||
The real significance of "the Kingdom of God" for the message of Jesus does not in any sense depend on the dramatic events attending its coming, nor on any circumstances which the imagination can conceive. It interests him not at all as a describable state of existence, but rather as the transcendent event, which signifies for man the ultimate Either-Or, which constrains him to decision. The meaning of this decision becomes clearer when we consider further how Jesus message of the Kingdom is related to the Jewish eschatological hopes. Obviously the Jews thought of the deliverance of the Kingdom of God as deliverance for the Jews. The Kingdom of God is at the same time the Jewish kingdom. (Daniel 2 :44, 7 :27) Even where the expectations have gone beyond the old national political boundaries, where God's world judgment of all men has replaced the downfall of nations overthrown for the benefit of Israel, where the material and nationalistic colors have been blended into the pictures of the heavenly glory, where the deliverance of the whole world is expected at the last day even there the favored position of the Jewish people is taken for granted. The Messianic king of the last day is depicted after the model of the national Davidic dynasty; Jerusalem and its temple, though exalted to heavenly grandeur, are still in the final day of triumph symbols of Jewish glory. The hope of the return of the scattered lost tribes to the holy land is a constant element in the eschatological expectation. And obviously the overthrow of the Roman rule is equally necessary to the picture. | ||||
From Jesus we hear almost nothing of all these things. A clear impression of this difference can be derived from a comparison of the eschatological petitions of a Jewish prayer, the "Eighteen Benedictions," with the corresponding petitions of the prayer used in the circle of Jesus disciples, the Lord's prayer. In the former the petitions run as follows: | ||||
"Look upon our need and guide our warfare | ||||
In the Lord's prayer we find only | ||||
"Father, hallowed be Thy name, | ||||
This is in agreement with the answer of Jesus to the question whether the Jews should pay tribute to Caesar: "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God." (Mark 12 :I3-I7) That is, the seeking after God is not to be confused with political desires. Similarly Jesus rejects the request to settle a quarrel over an inheritance: "Man, who made me a judge or arbiter over you?" (Luke 1- :13, 14) | ||||
But unmistakable as the difference between the eschatological expectation of Jesus and the popular Jewish hopes is, it must neither be exaggerated nor, as is usually the case, misunderstood. The fact that in the thought of Jesus the national connotation of the Kingdom of God remains in the background does not mean that he taught its universality. He took for granted as did his contemporaries that the Kingdom of God was to come for the benefit of the Jewish people. Among his reported sayings are some in which the Kingdom of God is at the same time the kingdom of the faithful, who are comforted: "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." (Luke 12: 32, cf. Daniel 7 :27) And a saying in a different form is preserved in which the chief authority in the Messianic age is promised to the Twelve as the representatives of the twelve tribes of the holy nation. (Matt. 19:28, Luke 22:29, 30) These are indeed not genuine words of Jesus; they reflect the hope of the earliest community, in which the Twelve were probably first chosen. But the history of this earliest community itself shows plainly that the preaching of Jesus had not extended beyond the boundaries of the Jewish people; he never thought of a mission to the Gentiles. The mission to the Gentiles came into being only after serious conflicts in the primitive church; and then the assumption was that such a mission was a way of adding to the chosen people, the Jewish Messianic community. The Gentile who wished to belong in the last day to the elect must be circumcised and keep the Jewish Law. | ||||
Out of such assumptions arose certain sayings which are put into the mouth of Jesus: | ||||
"Go not into any way of the Gentiles, | ||||
And this natural limitation of the preaching to the Jews is na vely expressed in the words: | ||||
"But when they persecute you in this city, flee into | ||||
From the time of the controversy over the conversion of the Gentiles come the stories of the centurion in Capernaum and of the Syro-Phaenician woman. (Matt. 8:5-13 omitting verses 11, 12; Mark 7:24-30) These stories show that there are exceptions among the heathen who are worthy of being saved. | ||||
It is not impossible that the following saying goes back to Jesus himself. | ||||
"There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets in the Kingdom of God, and yourselves cast out. From east and west, from north and south shall men come, and shall sit down to eat in the Kingdom of God." (Luke 13 :28, 29, cf. Matt. 8 :11, 12) | ||||
Even if those who are to come from all directions to put to shame Jesus fellow-countrymen are really Gentiles and not Jews of the dispersion, the words none the less naively assert that the chosen people and its heroes hold the central place in the Kingdom of God; afterward the Gentiles would join them, according to ancient prophecy. (Cf. Isaiah 2 :1-3; 59 :19) This is not an assertion that the Gentiles will come instead of the Jews, nor even that the Gentiles will come like the Jews; rather it is said that many Gentiles will come to shame the Jews. Further, the coming of the Gentiles does not mean that they join the actual historical community as a result of the preaching; it is rather a miraculous eschatological event. But the chief significance of this saying is negative: if many Gentiles are to bring the unrepentant Jews to shame, then clearly, belonging to the Jewish race does not constitute a right to a share in the Kingdom. Just this emphasis is characteristic of Jesus conception, probably also of that of John the Baptist the Jew as such has no claim before God. Consistently with this Jesus proclaims a call to decision and repentance. Consistently, too, Jesus can elsewhere picture a Samaritan as putting the true Jew to shame. (Luke 10:29-37) | ||||