Part 14
supposition throughout is that God Himself, through Moses, gave these rules of life. They share with every part of the Old Testament in the quality of divine provenience.
Still, it did not follow that, because God had through revelation given a law, it therefore had to remain in force in perpetuum. The only question was who had the proper authority in this matter of regulating anew the mode of life in the theocracy, and plainly here the Messianic authority of Jesus Himself was taken by Him into consideration. Therein lies the reason why, even in the Sermon on the Mount, He modifies some of the ethical and social rules of life by His emphatic 'I say unto you'. The question is a question of the 'I', who speaks thus.
And still further we should notice that in this general programme of change and development Jesus never loses sight of the continuity that ought to exist in Revelation. The old is not ruthlessly sacrificed to the new, purely on account of the latter's newness. The idea is always that the old had the seeds of the new in itself. For this reason also a revolutionary discarding of the Old Testament is out of the question. The clearest proof for the maintenance of this identity between the two dispensations is in John 2:19–21. Here Jesus declares that the temple to be destroyed by the Jews will be raised up again in His raised body. As the former was a symbol of the Old, so the latter is the vital centre of the New, but the identity persists.
The statement from the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus came not to destroy but to fulfil must likewise be interpreted on the principle of continuity. This is so, no matter whether 'to fulfil' be given the sense of 'rendering more complete' or whether it be understood to mean 'to carry into practice'. It has been claimed that the former is required here, because of 'fulfilling' being the opposite to 'destroying', which it could be only in case it signified rendering more perfect. The rejoinder is that destroying can be a true opposite to putting into practice, in other words that disobeying can be a true equivalent to destroying, namely, in cases where the disobeyer sets himself up as
an example in virtue of his position of leadership. That this usage is quite conceivable appears from Gal. 2:18, where the same word kataluein is applied to Peter, not because he had failed to perfect the law, but because he had set a bad example in not consistently observing it. The term 'to fulfil' would, when used of the prophets, naturally have the meaning of carrying into reality, and no one would think of making it signify 'to improve'; in fact the whole idea of improving the Prophets lies wholly outside the mind of Jesus.
Now in regard to the meaning of 'to fulfil' in Matt. 5:17–18, the Law cannot be separated here from the Prophets, for it will be noticed that we are not dealing in this verse with an instance of the common phrase, 'the Law and the Prophets', covering the entire Old Testament. If that were the meaning one could at least render 'to improve' the Old Testament. But this is impossible on account of the disjunctive 'or' between 'the Law' and 'the Prophets'. Strictly translated the sentence reads: 'Think not that I came to destroy either the Law or the Prophets; I came to fulfil both the Law and the Prophets.' Thus read, the words leave no room for the idea of improving upon the Law.
The self-consciousness of Jesus is placed in a strong light by His attitude towards so large a part of the Old Testament institutions. As has been shown, He ascribed the entire content of the Scriptures to revelation from God. And yet, in the face of this, He does not hesitate to reconstruct the practice of religion on a comprehensive scale. He could do so out of the consciousness of co-equal authority with God in the sphere both of revelation and of reorganizing the religion of Israel. In connection with this we must keep in mind that what He came to usher in was the eschatological state, in regard to which as Messiah He had full jurisdiction. Interesting further is the fact of His not arguing about the matter, but settling it with supreme authority. Paul had to labour and argue from the Old Testament itself to surmount the law-structure of the Old Testament. Jesus speaks as One who is sovereign in the sphere of truth, because He is King in the realm of realities to which the truth belongs.
[E] JESUS' DOCTRINE OF GOD
The question is frequently put, whether Jesus brought a new doctrine concerning God. Did He preach a God different from the God of the Old Testament? If so, then He also brought a new religion, for the one without the other is unthinkable. Much confusion of thought on this point is due to lack of proper distinction. Jesus was a true Revealer, and, since all revelation from a Scriptural point of view ultimately has God for its object, it was inevitable that Jesus should have made some contributions to the doctrine concerning God. So taken, the affirmation of the newness of his 'theology' is quite debatable.
Unfortunately the idea, where met with, in but too many cases bears a quite different complexion. The newness of teaching ascribed to Him in this field is not a newness of enlargement or additional clarifying of content, but a newness of rejection and correction of what had prevailed before. The Old Testament, we are told, contained quite faulty ideas about the nature of God. Especially the notions there found in regard to the ethical nature of God lie still in conflict with belief in Jehovah's absolute power, and autocratic caprice, nay, even with the husks of physical representations concerning His nature. It is clear that such a renewal of the doctrine of God cannot be credited to Jesus by any one believing in the reality and consistency of revelation.
But it is also clear that this opinion has not been formed by interrogating Jesus Himself in regard to the Old Testament doctrine of God, but that it is the result of a comparative study of the Old Testament doctrine and teaching of Jesus. It follows a procedure that may eventually lead to the correction of Jesus' own views in the matter. While to the science of comparative religion such a method cannot be forbidden, it is not the method of Biblical Theology. What we are concerned about is how the teaching of the Scriptures on the divine nature appeared to Jesus. We must endeavour to look at this subject, as at other subjects, from within His mind. Nor can we
consider every utterance of Jesus involving criticism of current ideas about God as tantamount to a criticism of the Old Testament doctrine of the nature of Jehovah. The Old Testament and Judaism are not to be identified. The latter our Lord not seldom found fault with; that He did so with the former remains to be proved.
There is sufficient proof for the very opposite. This follows from the absence of any instance of criticism on this point. It follows further from His belief in the divine origination of the Old Testament, for if the Scriptures are from God, and yet contain an inadequate view of God, it is God Himself who has in them misrepresented Himself. This is evidence from silence and indirection, but positive statements are not lacking. When asked by the scribe as to the supreme commandment in the Law, and summing up its purport from Deut. 6:4, 5, Jesus quotes not only this summary of the perfect religion, but prefaces it, as is done in Deuteronomy by the description of God: 'Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah' (or, according to another rendering of the Hebrew: 'Jehovah is our God, Jehovah is One'). The connection of thought implies that the idea of Jehovah here enunciated is adequate for basing on it the ideal religion expressed in the commandments [Matt. 22:37–38; Mk. 12:29–30; Lk. 10:27].
In arguing with the Sadducees Jesus recognized the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as His God [Lk. 20:37]. The argument is not chronological, as if hinging on the fact that still in Moses' time God called Himself the God of these patriarchs, which would further imply that at that point in history the patriarchs were still living, as to their souls at least. So understood the argument would not settle the point at issue between Jesus and the Sadducees, proving only that up to the time of Moses the patriarchs still possessed immortality of soul. The argument rests on the pregnant meaning of the phrase, 'the God of'. This avowal of Jehovah with reference to a person establishes a bond of such intimate communion that it becomes impossible to Him, as it were beneath his honour, to surrender such a person to death, even so far as the body is
concerned, from which fact again follows the resurrection of all those of whom God calls Himself their God. So Jesus Himself explains this meaning in verse 38: 'For He is not a God of the dead, but of the living, for all live unto Him.' God is so constituted in His nature that of those religiously attached to Him eternal life and ultimate resurrection of the body can be confidently expected.
It has been asserted that Jesus, in thus identifying His idea of God with that of the Old Testament naïvely seized upon that in the Old Testament which was congenial to Himself, brushing all the rest aside as of no particular importance. That He should have unconsciously done so can, of course, neither be proved nor disproved, since it touches a process in His sub-conscious mind. On the other hand, that He should have held such a discriminating opinion with clear consciousness of what it involved is incredible because of His emphatic acceptance of the entire Old Testament as the Word of God. Jesus could not have retained His obvious reverence for the Scriptures, had He felt the necessity of rejecting a large part of their teaching, and that on such a central topic as the nature of God.
JESUS' TEACHING ON THE DIVINE FATHERHOOD
In the centre of our Lord's doctrine of God is usually placed His teaching on the divine Fatherhood. This is quite correct, seeing the important place and space it as a matter of fact occupies. It is necessary, however, at the outset to warn against certain misconceptions and mistaken corollaries that have fastened themselves upon this fact, largely relative to the absolute originality with which Jesus is supposed to have conceived the idea. As to the question of originality, we must not lose sight of the Old Testament, nor entirely of the circle of thought in Judaism. In both the idea was known, although, of course, in the one differently coloured from that in the other. The Old Testament predicates Fatherhood of Jehovah in the following passages: Ex. 4:22; Deut. 1:31; 8:5; 32:6; Isa. 1:2; 63:16; Jer. 3:19; Hos. 11:1; Mal. 1:6. But over against this claim of
continuity it is urged that the connection is purely formal, because Jesus combined with the name a totally different idea from that in the Old Testament. The points of difference stressed are three in number.
(a) Firstly, in the Old Testament, we are told, the Fatherhood describes the action of Jehovah only. He treats Israel as a father a son; it does not describe God's nature as paternal love in its inwardness.
(b) Secondly, the idea is in the Old Testament limited in its range, being applied to Israel only, and that in a collective capacity, not individually to the single Israelites,
(c) Thirdly, in the Old Testament the Fatherhood, or love of God, is placed by the side of other attributes, such as are not only different from but some of them directly contrary to His love, whereas in the teaching of Jesus the Fatherhood of love appears as the sole make-up of the divine character, all the other attributes being derivable and actually derived from it: God here is nothing but love.
These three contentions may be briefly answered as follows:
(a) The first rests on the correct observation, that in the Old Testament the description of God proceeds from the outward to the inward, whereas in the New Testament the opposite movement is to some extent observable. This is due to the general movement of the revelation-process. But the Old Testament does not confine itself to externals in its delineation of the divine character. Such a passage as Ex. 34:6, 7 is as near to character-description as anything in the New Testament. And on the other hand, there is much in the teaching of Jesus describing character, including love, which is concretely expressed, illustrated by action. So abstract a statement as 'God is love' comes as late as the Epistles of John. Jesus speaks of the idea largely in parables.
(b) The absolute extension of the range of God's Fatherhood to all individuals, and that in virtue of creation, rests on a mistaken interpretation of Jesus' thought. The Fatherhood of God and the sonship correlated with it are redemptive ideas. The best proof for this lies in their occasional eschatological application, for eschatology is simply the crowning of redemption [cp. Matt. 5:9; 13:43; Lk. 20:36]. That it belongs to the members of the Kingdom of God may also be inferred from the regular addition of the possessive pronouns 'your' and 'their', to the word 'Father' [cp. especially Matt. 6:32]. Where these are absent, and the simple article is used, 'the Father' is the correlate to Jesus, 'the Son' specifically, and not to the children of God in general [Matt. 11:27; 28:19; Mark. 12:32].
True, in the Fourth Gospel 'the Father' not seldom occurs with reference to the disciples, but throughout this Gospel the idea is prominent that Jesus introduces the disciples into his own relation (religiously considered) with God, so that, properly paraphrased, this Johannine 'the Father' means: 'He who is My Father, and through Me now also yours.' And in the Fourth Gospel an explicit denial of the sonship of the Jewish enemies of Jesus occurs [8:42]. The restriction of the idea of sonship carries with it that of the idea of Fatherhood.
It has been contended that God is never said to become Father, whilst of men it is said that they become the children of God, but this is not strictly true, because to God paternal acts, such as the impartation of life and adoption into sonship, are predicated which imply His becoming Father to believers in a very real sense. The question whether the love of God with reference to all men is affirmed in Jesus' teaching is an altogether different question. If it be answered in the affirmative, it will be necessary to distinguish clearly between the general love and the paternal love, the latter being reserved for the members of the Kingdom. In the Old Testament both the Fatherhood and the love are confined to the chosen people. Sometimes Ex. 4:22 is appealed to as implying the sonship of other nations, because Israel is called God's 'first-born son', which is
supposed to signify that the others, though not 'first-born', are yet real sons of the second rank. But this is extracting altogether too much from a figure. The sonship of the others would have no particular bearing on the demand made upon Pharaoh. The simple meaning is that Israel is as precious to Jehovah as a first-born is to his father.
The places in the teaching of Jesus where a divine Fatherhood without reference to Kingdom-membership is found, do not on closer examination bear out this idea. In Matt. 5:45 Jesus enforces the command to love one's enemies with the reminder that God makes His sun to rise on the evil and good, and His rain to fall on the just and unjust alike. The argument, however, is not based on the idea that God is a Father to the good and the evil, and the just and the unjust alike, but on the principle that He is Father to the disciples, who therefore must copy their Father's character in showing goodness or kindness, irrespective of moral or religious excellence, to their fellowmen; the Fatherhood is introduced for the sole purpose of binding the disciples to reproduction of the divine character. Hence also the saying does not read: 'their Father', but 'your Father' sends sunshine and rain. Matt. 6:26 in the same manner speaks of the goodness of God towards the birds of heaven, and He is in that connection called 'your heavenly Father'; in this case also not to describe God's relation to the birds as one of Fatherhood, but simply as one of perfect goodness and kindness, from which fact then the disciples may gather all the stronger assurance of His provision for them, because they are more than just birds in their relation to God, namely, His children; here again note the pronoun 'your'.
The parable of the prodigal illustrates, not the procedure of God to utter aliens, but to publicans and sinners who had wandered out of the sphere of redemptive sonship, which did not detract from God's cherishing His Fatherhood towards them. On the other hand, in the case of the Syro-Phoenician woman, who showed through her great faith that she possessed the spiritual qualifications, our Lord
nevertheless insists upon the prior privileges of Israel by speaking of the crumbs that fall from the master's table. The indiscriminate extension of the idea from the redemptive sphere to the sphere of natural religion in its sinful state, while seemingly offering the advantage of an appeal of emotional strength to a wider range, at the same time loses much of the content stored up in the idea. One may say to all men that they are children of God, but in doing so one tells them less than what the idea conveys on the other view.
If in the foregoing respect the idea does not depart in principle from the Old Testament lines, remaining restricted as before to the people of God, nevertheless the range is greatly enlarged, because the range of the people of God is also greatly extended. From before being national it now becomes ethico-religious. And with this inevitably goes another change towards individualization. In the Old Testament it is not the individual, but the nation that is named 'the son of God'; by Jesus every disciple is so named. Still, even for this the basis was not altogether lacking in the Old Testament. The Messiah sustains a relation to Jehovah that is altogether individually conceived at the first, though its further purport relates to the people [cp. Psa. 2:7]. In Psa. 89:26 He is even represented as crying unto Jehovah, 'My Father', a unique instance in the Old Testament, since all the other invocations of God with the Father-name are instances of prayer by the congregations [Isa. 64:8]. In Hos. 1–3 there occurs a plural, 'the children of God' [1:10; cp. 11:1, 'I called my son out of Egypt']. In 'the children of Israel' no stress should be laid on the plural, because 'children of Israel' was the common name for the nation.
It should be remembered that the Fatherhood of God has not merely had its range enlarged, but that it was the very idea of fatherhood being more profoundly and individualistically understood, which has itself been the means for bringing this about. Herein lies precisely the difference between the practical utilization of the kingship idea and the fatherhood idea. The latter serves for the address in prayer, which is mostly individual, whereas in the kingship-address the recognition of sovereignty prevails. With absolute sharpness,
however, this distinction between the two cannot be drawn, for the simple reason that to the antique Biblical consciousness the notion of fatherhood has a strong element of authority in it, and, on the other hand, the idea of kingship is more closely wedded to that of benevolence than we would feel, who are apt to cry out against a 'paternal government'. In the parable the king provides a banquet; for the authority of the father Mal. 1:6 may be compared. Still further we should remember that the individualistic background of the Messiahship would also inevitably work to the same effect in individualizing the Fatherhood for believers, since the New Testament, particularly the Fourth Gospel, is familiar with the thought of the assimilation in status of the Messiah's followers with Himself.
JESUS' STRESS ON THE DIVINE MAJESTY AND GREATNESS
Next to the benevolent side of God, expressed in His Fatherhood and love, the transcendental aspect of the divine nature is strongly recognized in the teaching of our Lord. By this we understand the divine majesty and greatness, usually summed up in the name of the incommunicable attributes. This side may not receive the same stress as the other, for the reason that the Deistic tendencies of Judaism could be relied upon to provide for this even more than was necessary. Nevertheless as an indispensable element in religion it appears in full vigour. Jesus upholds even in the closest approach to God the necessity of remembering that He is God. If calling God Father, the one praying must do so with the prefix 'heavenly' before it. Also the very first petition following this in the Lord's prayer, 'Hallowed be thy name', embodies the same idea.
It is necessary to keep these two elements of the love of God and of His heavenly majesty jointly in mind, in order to avoid onesidedness; they must likewise be conceived as interacting. God's majesty and greatness impart a specific character to the divine love. Love from and towards man are different from the same feeling as exercised between God and man. Much modern sentiment that is called
religion has in effect ceased to be such, because it is brought down to the level of interhuman friendly and benevolent relations in which at the best the one party may be more influential than the other. Religion is something different from goodwill towards God.
Another interaction between the two aspects of the divine nature consists in this, that the consciousness of the greatness and omnipotence of God alone can make the benevolent aspect a source of help and salvation for man. The over-emphasis thrown on the divine love, to the exclusion of almost every other thing, has sometimes resulted in the practical exclusion of all soteric dependence on God. A God assuring us of the extension towards us of all the fulness of His love, and yet leaving us uninformed or unconvinced, or even sceptical in principle concerning the so-called transcendental or metaphysical side of His nature, would not be to us more than a human father or mother in some extremity, that is to say, He would not be from the standpoint of our need a God at all.
THE RETRIBUTIVE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD
Besides the Fatherhood and the transcendent majesty of God there is still a third aspect of the divine nature to be considered. This is what we may call the retributive righteousness. It is by no means a negligible element in the divine character. Those who, dealing with the conception Jesus framed or had of God, leave it out of account, work with very inadequate material. This would not have to be the case, if, as some allege, it could be regarded as a deduction from the love of God in the consciouness of Jesus. But not only is there no evidence to that effect; the nature of the two conceptions is such as to render deduction from the one to the other, in either direction, inconceivable. To be sure, as regards the benevolent side of the retribution, this could be derived from the love of God for the disciples, and on that ground even included in the effects of the divine Fatherhood. The doctrine of reward within the Kingdom rests on that principle, as we shall soon see.
It is quite different with the penal side of the principle of retribution. Had Jesus only spoken of temporary punishment, and implied a limit to the state assigned in the judgment to the wicked, in that case also penal retribution, being interpreted on the basis of discipline, might be considered an outflow of God's Father-love. But the opposite is true; what Jesus teaches on this subject lies altogether in the other direction; it is not for the vindicatory punishment, but for the chastisement-punishment that one has to look for explicit evidence among His words. Eternal punishment cannot be a manifestation of love; far less, of course, can it be the expression of love towards those who suffer it. There is no escape from the acknowledgment of this fact, except by assuming that the doctrine in question did not belong to Jesus' original, heart-rooted conviction, being at bottom only a lingering remnant of the Judaistic past, in which for many ages this bitter root of retribution had been nourished. This again is contrary to the facts viewed without prejudice. Of a perfunctory use of the idea in question there is nowhere any trace. On the contrary, the most solemn words, carrying upon their face the evidence of profound personal conviction, are used in dealing with this subject [Matt. 18:6; Mk. 9:42; Lk. 17:2]; especially the words about the traitor Judas are here to be noted [Matt. 26:24; Mk. 14:21].
We shall simply have to posit two principles here in Jesus' doctrine of God, neither of which permits of reduction to the other. A dualism, however, in the strict philosophical sense, this cannot be called. For that, it would be necessary to prove that love logically excludes righteousness and vice versa. The signature of the divine inner life as Jesus portrays it, is not one of abstract uniformity, but one of great richness and multiformity, allowing of more than one motive force.
It must be acknowledged that, taking all in all, there is a preponderance in bulk and emphasis on the side of the divine love. Nevertheless this phenomenon also should be historically explained and not be abused for reducing everything in Jesus' message to the one preaching up of love. The historical reason is not difficult to
discover. In Judaism the principle of the divine love had become eclipsed, and the opposite principle of retribution exalted at its expense. God had become lowered to a commercial level of one who exploits man on the basis of quid pro quo. Over against this it was necessary to maintain the balancing doctrine that God takes a personal, affectionate interest in man, so as to make religion a matter of love; of God's giving of Himself to man, no less than of the keeping of man strictly to account. Jesus thus brought forward that side of the divine character which was suffering eclipse in the consciousness of the age to which He was addressing Himself. It would be a poor application of this method were we to condense the entire gospel to love and nothing else. Since at the present time the atmosphere is surcharged with the vague idea of an indiscriminate love, and all punitive retribution held at a discount, it is not following the example of Jesus to speak of nothing but the divine love to the obscuring of all the rest. We must put the stress where the decadence of the religion of our times has failed to put it, yet always so as to keep from discarding the other side. Thus alone can the mind of Jesus be faithfully reproduced.
[F] JESUS' TEACHING ON THE KINGDOM OF GOD
[1] The Formal Questions
THE KINGDOM IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
According to the Synoptics the first message of Jesus at the opening of His public ministry concerned 'the Kingdom of God'. It was a message used before Him by John the Baptist, into whose perspective it especially fitted. The 'repent ye', preceding it, points to the judgment by which the coming Kingdom is to be introduced. Consequently the message is to all intents an eschatological message, and the Kingdom of which it speaks an eschatological state of affairs. As to the formal phrase, this is used already by the Baptist as something familiar to his hearers. It is not, however, a phrase of Old Testament coinage. While the idea occurs in the Old Testament, the
finished phrase is not there as yet. Probably it is of Jewish provenience; exactly how old it is we cannot tell.
Though prominent in the Synoptics, the phrase is almost absent from John's Gospel. Aside from 18:36, where the reference is to the Kingdom of Jesus, rather than to the Kingdom of God, John 3:3, 5 is the only place where it occurs. This phenomenon is due to the Christological structure of the Gospel which resolves the content of what Jesus brings into the constituents of His Person, such as 'life', 'light', 'truth', 'grace'. The most prominent of these is 'life'. In the one passage of its occurrence the equivalence of life and Kingdom lies on the surface, because the figure of entrance into the Kingdom is made equivalent to the idea of entrance into 'life', which is 'birth'. The same equivalence also meets us in Mk. 10:17. This becomes explainable there, because the life is more unequivocally represented as the eschatological state of life, whereas in John it is rather two-sided. Another equivalent appears in Lk. 4:19, 43, 'the acceptable year of Jehovah', that is, the year of Jubilee, where, unlike to Matthew and Mark, 'the Kingdom of God' is not named as the first theme of preaching.
In the Old Testament the thing later called the Kingdom of God relates, as to substance, to two distinct conceptions. It designates the rule of God established through creation and extending through providence over the universe. This is not a specifically redemptive Kingdom idea [cp. Psa. 103:19]. Besides this, however, there is a specifically-redemptive Kingdom, usually called 'the theocracy'. The first explicit reference to the redemptive Kingdom appears at the time of the exodus, Ex. 19:6, where Jehovah promises the people that, if obeying His law, they shall be made to Him 'a Kingdom of priests'. This relates to the proximate future, when the law shall have been promulgated. It speaks of a present Kingdom from the Old Testament point of view. Still, the Old Testament likewise speaks of the Kingdom as a futurity. It may seem strange that what one has, one should still look forward to, and that not as a matter of relative improvement, but as a matter of absolutely new creation. The
explanation of this apparent contradiction must be sought along three lines.
(a) First, we must remind ourselves of the prevailingly abstract meaning which in the Old Testament the several words for 'kingdom' possess. Through substituting 'kingship' and then remembering that kingship means the performance of great acts of salvation for a people in which a relation of leadership is established, we can more easily understand how there may be a future aspect to the Kingdom of Jehovah: He will in an unprecedented sense make Himself the Saviour of and Ruler of Israel. Thus Saul and David attained to the kingship. Still, this might have led no farther than speaking of a reenforcement of the Kingdom, had not in course of time the content of the eschatological hope become wedded to the future great selfassertion of Jehovah. A new Kingdom-appearance that had such associations amounted practically to a new Kingdom.
(b) Secondly, there were times in the history of Israel when the theocratic Kingdom, while never actually abrogated, was nevertheless to such an extent in eclipse, that a bringing in of the Kingdom of God de novo could properly be spoken of. The period of the captivity furnishes an example for this. Here again the hope of return never remained a hope of a return to conditions of the past pure and simple, but drew to itself the hope of the realization of the whole world to come, eschatologically conceived; hence not a return of the Kingdom, but the arrival of the same was felt to be the fitting manner of description.
(c) Thirdly, Messianic prophecy led to a similar way of speaking. The expected Messianic King is to be the perfect, ideal representative of Jehovah, who is the ultimate King at all times. But when Jehovah, in His kingship, will be perfectly and ideally represented by His Viceregent, the Messianic King, and the latter will at the same time bring to realization the entire eschatological hope, then the representation of the Kingdom of God coming first in the future loses the strangeness that otherwise might have gone with it.
Jesus attaches Himself to this eschatological Old Testament manner of speech. The Kingdom of which He announces the nearness is that Kingdom which lay in the future in the Old Testament perspective. At His time the Jewish theocracy was still in existence, but He is so eschatologically oriented as never to refer to that as 'the Kingdom of God'. Even Matt. 8:12 and 21:43 need not be understood that way. Of this—from the Old Testament standpoint—future Kingdom He speaks at first as a unit without distinction as to parts or stages. But in the unfolding of His ministry, the Old Testament future thing resolves itself into two distinct phases or stages. He is in process of making the Old Testament futurity present, but in another sense it still remains future, even from His present point of view. Consequently the phenomenon of the Old Testament repeats itself: there are two Kingdoms, the one present, the other future, but both these have been obtained through the redivision of the one as yet undivided Old Testament eschatological Kingdom.
Such is the relation of the Kingdom-teaching of Jesus to the Old Testament. There is not quite the same resemblance between it and the contemporaneous Jewish ideas on the subject. In Judaism the Kingdom-idea had not been able to keep itself free from the faults that had invaded the Jewish religion generally. Judaism was a religion of law. So the Kingdom came to mean a more perfect enforcement of the legalistic principle than could be attained in the present state. Still, a difference in principle this could not make; the Kingdom, even in its future consummation, was bound to appear less new than it did to Jesus, who filled its content with concrete acts of unprecedented grace. Besides, the Kingdom remained to the Jews in its essence particularistic. Proselytism did not do away with the fact that pagans, in order to partake of its benefits, would previously have to become Jews through circumcision. The Kingdom-hope of the Jews was also politically-nationalistically coloured, whereas in the teaching of Jesus its tendency was in the direction of universalism. Finally, there was a considerable mixture of sensualism in the Jewish eschatology. Here the discrimination is more difficult to make. It mainly consists in this, that what to the Jews was a species of literal
sensualism, was to Jesus an exemplification of His parabolic frame of mind, which makes the heavenly enjoyments, while retaining their full realism, yet processes of a higher, spiritualized world, in which even the body will have its place and part.
THE KINGDOM IN THE GOSPELS
The word basileia, used in the Gospels for 'Kingdom', either with 'God' or with 'Heaven' as its accompanying genitive, is capable of two renderings. In its abstract usage it denotes the sway, the exercise of royal rule. Side by side with this goes the concrete sense of whatsoever things go towards the making up of an organization called a kingdom. More particularly the things entering concretely into the making up of a kingdom are of three kinds. One can speak of a certain extent of territory as a kingdom; or, a body of subjects can be called by that name; or again, a complex of rights, benefits and treasures can be so designated. Now the question arises: When speaking of the Kingdom of God, did Jesus mean the phrase to be taken abstractly or concretely? Did He mean the sway of God, or did He mean the concrete embodiment of that sway, or its precipitate in resulting realities?
It is natural in seeking to answer this question, first of all to consult the Old Testament usage. The Old Testament, where the Kingdomidea is referred to Jehovah, knows only the abstract sense, with the sole exception of Ex. 19:6, above commented upon. While the word mamlakhah is predominatingly concrete, and in that sense not seldom used of pagan kingdoms, yet there is no case on record of its application in the same way to the Kingdom of God (except in the Exodus passage). The two other words, malkhuth and melukhah, are mostly abstract, and in that sense freely applied to the Kingdom of Jehovah.
To judge from Jesus' closeness of touch with the Old Testament we may a priori be disposed to assume that to Him likewise the abstract idea of 'kingship' would furnish the starting-point. Still, the instances
where this usage is beyond all question are far from numerous. On the principle of opposites we can gather this meaning from the passage Matt. 12:25, 26, where the kingdom of Satan appears to mean his authority, his rule, although the words 'city or house' might seem to point in the other direction. 'The coming of the Son of man in his basileia' predicted in Matt. 16:28 also seems to require the abstract understanding. Perhaps the small representation of the abstract meaning may be due to the fact of its latent presence in quite a number of cases, where we cannot tell whether it or the concrete sense is intended.
There is a group of sayings in which the phrase 'Kingdom of God' is joined to predicates of 'coming', 'appearing', 'being near', and similar terms of approach, and, although in such connections the concrete meaning is by no means excluded, yet on the whole the abstract sense seems the more suitable one. Side by side with this group, however, there is an even larger one in which the figures used require the concrete conception in order to visualize them. Thus we find the phrases 'to call into', 'to enter into', 'to receive', 'to inherit', 'to be cast out from' the Kingdom of God, and others like these. The background of such language is local, and therefore concrete. Nor is it difficult to explain this transition from the preponderatingly Old Testament abstract employment of the term to the prevailingly concrete one in the mouth of Jesus. The shifting of the centre of gravity from law to grace has naturally brought this about. As soon as we fill our religious imagination with the palpable realities of redemption, these join themselves together to form the structure of a concrete organization or milieu of life; the Kingdom of God becomes incarnate. This was what happened to Jesus through His preaching of the gospel of grace, and we shall afterwards find it confirmed in His condensation of the Kingdom-idea into that of the Church.
Alongside of the phrase 'Kingdom of God' we find in the Gospel according to Matthew the companion phrase 'Kingdom of Heaven'. Outside of Matthew, except John 3:3, 5 in a rather uncertain variant reading, the Matthaean phrase nowhere appears. It is not however
the exclusive name of the Kingdom in Matthew, for 'Kingdom of God' is likewise found [6:33; 12:28; 19:24; 21:31]. Resembling the expression 'Kingdom of Heaven', the term 'Father in Heaven' is also peculiar to Matthew, with the single exception of Mark 10:25. Luke employs once the analogous designation, 'the Father from Heaven' [11:2]. Among the passages where Matthew uses 'the Kingdom of God' there is only one [12:28] where the context supplies an explanation for the usage. In the other cases it is impossible to discern the reason for the divergence. Still further peculiar to Matthew is the use of 'the Kingdom' without any genitival determination. This sounds almost like our modern colloquial manner of speaking of 'the Kingdom'. Finally, observe that in the remainder of the New Testament the expression 'Kingdom of God' is used exclusively; for example, in Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 2 Timothy.
'THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN'
The question arises what this—to us somewhat mysterious—term 'Kingdom of Heaven' signifies. The genitive has been explained as a genitive of origin or quality, to mark the Kingdom off from earthly kingdoms. But this was so obvious in itself as to need no special affirmation in the absence of some definite historical occasion suggesting a special reminder. B. Weiss has assumed that this was actually the case, because, through the destruction of Jerusalem the expectation, hitherto cherished, that the centre of the coming Kingdom would be in Palestine, had become untenable, and the inference drawn that henceforth the centre would have to be located in heaven. This theory is not plausible; it cuts every connection between Jesus and this name. It would not have been self-evident that, Jerusalem being destroyed, it could no longer play any role in eschatological developments. The Jews for a long time after the fall of the city—and for that matter even today—counted on the rebuilding of the holy city, and in all likelihood Matthew, provided he did indeed cherish this attachment for an earthly centre of the Kingdom in Zion, would have reconciled the historical facts with his
eschatological hope after the same manner. The theory also leaves unexplained the lack of uniformity in Matthew's use of 'Kingdom of Heaven' in preference to 'Kingdom of God'.
By far the best explanation of the phrase is that suggested by Schurer et al. On this view it attaches itself to the Jewish custom of using the word 'Heaven', together with other substitute terms, in place of the name of God, because the latter had in its various forms become an object of increasing avoidance. 'Heaven' thus simply meant 'God' by a roundabout manner of speaking. Traces of such usage may be found in other connections in the New Testament; the prodigal says to his earthly father, 'I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight'; here 'heaven', in parallelism with the natural father, can only mean God. The question Jesus propounded to His critics: 'The baptism of John, was it from heaven or from men?' is to be explained on the same principle.
The adoption of this view, however, does not necessarily involve the conclusion that Jesus used 'Heaven' for 'God' from the same superstitious motive as had brought the custom into vogue among the Jews. Their scrupulosity was deistic in principle; the same feeling that induced them to keep God from degrading contact with the creation was here applied even to the name of God. Nevertheless there was in this Jewish avoidance an element of praiseworthy religious devotion; the proper estimate of God's exaltation above the world found expression in it. While this feeling in its commendable motive was shared by Jesus, it did not operate in His case to the point of eliminating the other names of God. In fact His plain aversion to the Jewish deism, and His desire to emphasize the close communion between God and man led in the opposite direction.
Even to the Jews, perhaps, 'Heaven' was not quite a mere substitute for 'God', but has its peculiar associations. One of these was the association of the supernatural; to say 'God has done a thing', and to say 'Heaven has done a thing' could have between them a perceptible shade of difference. God does all things, but what Heaven does is
done supernaturally. 'The Father in Heaven' also can carry the same association [Matt. 16:17].
If 'Heaven' be taken in this way as a substitute for the name of God, it will be seen that in the phrase 'Kingdom of Heaven' it does not directly qualify the Kingdom. It means the Kingdom of Him who can be called 'Heaven'. Still, so far as 'Heaven' has any specific connotations, such as majesty, supernaturalness, perfection, these will unavoidably go to colour the conception also of the Kingdom belonging to this God.
MODERN THEORIES OF 'THE KINGDOM'
It has been stated above that, in the hands of Jesus, that which was from the Old Testament, and even John the Baptist's, point of view an undivided unit, unfolded itself into two phases or stages, distinguished as the present and the eschatological Kingdom. The view long prevailing, and still prevailing, is that Jesus through the labours of His ministry began to realize the Kingdom on earth, that this was a gradual process, that the labour on the Kingdom, to which His followers devoted themselves after Him, and which is still continued by us, is actual Kingdom-producing labour, and that this will go on through the ages of history up to the point set by God for the termination of this world-order, at which point through a catastrophe of world-transforming character the eschatological Kingdom-state will be introduced.
Those who favour the pre-millenarian construction of prophecy and history insert between these two stages a third intermediate one. With this, however, we are not at present concerned. Confining ourselves to the present gradual, and the future catastrophic realization of the Kingdom, we note that in recent times the former of these two has been denied to Jesus as an integral element of His thought. For convenience' sake we may call the advocates of this view the ultra-eschatologists. The difference between their construction and the older belief does not concern the eschatological issue of the
Kingdom-process. In regard to this the two views are in agreement. But in regard to what this was to be preceded by in the opinion of Jesus there is difference.
The ultra-eschatologists deny the existence in Jesus' mind of the whole idea of a preliminary, gradual Kingdom. They reconstrue his expectations after this fashion: His own work was to Him not essentially different from that of John the Baptist, being of a purely preliminary character. It was not His task to set up the Kingdom; this implies denial of His Messianic consciousness. It was exclusively the work of God; at the appointed moment, all at once, and in its entire compass the Kingdom would appear and with it the end of this present world and the beginning of the other, eternal order of affairs. Jesus expected that this would happen during the course of His earthly life, or, should His death intervene, at least during the lifetime of that generation.
This modern view has some extremely serious implications. It does away with the infallibility of Jesus, because things have not come to pass in accordance with the programme outlines; it shifts the emphasis in His teaching from the present-spiritual to the externaleschatological, making the former no more than a means to the latter, which alone deserved to His mind the name of 'the Kingdom'. It would have tended, had it really existed in His mind, towards minimizing the importance of present-world morality. Finally, it is apt to engender doubt as to His mental equilibrium, seeing that a man so absorbed by these radical other-worldly, fantastic speculations, could not have possessed a well-balanced psychical temper; He becomes a subject for psychiatric investigation.
In all the points where the theory registers denials we must part ways with it. On the other hand, in regard to the points in which it and we agree, we cannot deny it a certain credit, because it has revived interest in the matter of specific eschatology as an absolutely necessary thing. One sometimes meets with a type of Christian perspective which imagines that, by the steady advance of Christian
processes of reformation and regeneration, supernaturally carried on, this world can be in course of time brought to a point of ideal perfection, so as to need no further crisis. A certain aversion to the supernatural as such frequently contributes toward the denial of that condensed supernaturalism called eschatology.
Over against this it is ever necessary to remind ourselves that abrupt eschatology is inherent in the Christian scheme. It was prepared under the auspices of this, born under them, and must in the end stand or fall with the acceptance or denial of them. This is generic eschatology. A simple consideration of the factors in the case suffices to show how indispensable it is. Even if by persistent application of the gradual processes in the most intensive missionary propaganda, it were possible to convert every individual in the world, this would not provide for the conversion of the generations passed away in the course of history, and which none of our means of grace can reach. And, even discounting this, the conversion of all individuals would not make of them perfectly sinless individuals, except one were to take refuge in the doctrine of perfectionism. The sum total of men, therefore, living at any time would, in order to form part of a perfect world, stand in need of a marvellous soteric and ethical transformation, such as would rightly deserve the name of eschatology. But even this would not exhaust the factors necessary for the establishment of a perfect order of affairs, because the present physical state of the world with its numerous abnormalities, including human physical weaknesses and defects, would render the continuance of such a state of perfection impossible. Thus there would be created as a further element in generic eschatology the need of a transformation of the physical universe, including the resurrection of the body.
Because this status of the question is so inadequately realized, the delusion has sprung up that what is needed to provide for all these elementary redemptive changes is pre-millenarianism. But premillenarianism is only a species of eschatological construction, and not the genus. To say we must have this species of the thing or we
have nothing, is a disturbance of all the normal proportions in this matter. It is making illegitimate use of one special scheme, so as to obscure feeling for the generic scheme, which has by far the more ancient credentials, and into which every pre-millenarian scheme will have to be fitted in order to deserve the name of being Christian. Still, as a matter of fact, the pre-millenarian scheme has rendered service through reminding people of the need of a series of supernatural interpositions to carry the world to its ultimate destination. The trouble is that, if certain types of post-millenialism leave too little room for eschatology, pre-millenarian schemes bring in too much.
While we cannot expect the gradual development of the spiritual Kingdom to pass over automatically into the final state, there is nevertheless a fixed connection between the stage the former shall have reached at a certain point (known only to God), and the sudden supervention of the latter. The best confirmation of this principle is taught in the parable of the imperceptibly growing seed. The wheat grows up gradually, while the man sleeps and rises night and day, and he knows not how. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest is come [Mk. 4:26–29]. The condition of ripeness in the grain determines the arrival of the harvest, but the grain cannot harvest itself; for that the interposition of the sickle is required [cp. Also Matt. 13:39–41; 47– 50]. It will be observed that this feature is not allegorically forced upon the parable, but is inherent in its very structure.
THE TWO-SIDED CONCEPTION OF THE KINGDOM
We must next examine the evidence from the words of Jesus for the view that His conception of the Kingdom was, or perhaps came to be, two-sided, containing first the idea of a present, inwardly-spiritual development, and secondly, that of a catastrophic ending-up. It is denied by no one, not even the ultra-eschatologists, that both these ideas are present, side by side, in the Gospels. No argument is needed to prove that. It is alleged, however, that the instances where
the idea of the not-yet-eschatological existence appears, present later modifications of the original, purely eschatological idea as voiced by Jesus. The belief had been at first, both to Him and His first followers, that the Kingdom, in its full eschatological manifestation, was at hand. When the arrival of this tarried, and yet the words of Jesus could not be disavowed, a compromise was made to this effect, that the Kingdom had indeed come, and was present, only it had come and was present in the form of the Church. Thus the idea of a Church-Kingdom entered into the Gospels. It does not reflect in any sense the thought of Jesus, but only the later transformation of it, which the course of historic development had made it necessary to resort to. It will be observed, however, when we come to survey the material, that some of the sayings have the mark of authenticity so clearly written on their face as to allow of no such secondary origin.
Since there is agreement in regard to the authenticity of the eschatological conception, it is unnecessary to discuss passages. The most superficial inspection of the following will suffice: Matt. 8:11; 13:43; Mk. 14:25; Lk. 13:28, 29; 22:16. Especially with reference to his own future state of glory Jesus uses the term 'Kingdom' in this consummation-sense [Matt. 19:12; 20:21; Lk. 23:42]. Indeed the terms employed are obviously synonymous with other unequivocally eschatological terms, such as 'the coming aeon' [Matt. 12:32; 19:28; Mk. 10:30; Lk. 18:30]. And what ought to be noticed particularly is that in several of these sayings, not some such phrase as 'the consummation of the Kingdom', but the simple affirmation of the coming of the Kingdom is employed. This tends to show that in the usage of Jesus the Kingdom meant at first the final Kingdom, and the coming of that the real coming.
In examining the evidence for the other aspect two points should be kept in mind: (a) Is the Kingdom spoken of a present one to the time of the speaker? (b) Is it referred to as consisting in internal-spiritual realities? We rapidly run over the passages. Matt. 12:28 corresponding to Lk. 11:20; here Jesus affirms that the driving out of the demons by the Spirit signifies the coming of the Kingdom. The
underlying principle is that in the world of spirits there is no neutral territory; where the demons depart, the divine Spirit enters. The statement cannot be robbed of its force by making 'come' mean 'come nigh'; nor should it, on the other hand, be forced to mean 'has come by surprise', for, while such is the connotation of the verb phthanein in the older Greek, it need not be in the later period. The passage, therefore, teaches a present Kingdom realized through the expulsion of demons, but casts no further light on the character of the Kingdom-state thus called into being.
The next passage examined is Lk. 17:21: 'The Kingdom of God is entos you.' The preposition entos here used has two meanings: it can signify 'in the midst of', but also 'within'. The passage is usually rendered with the latter meaning of the preposition. This would yield both the present existence and the spiritual make-up of the Kingdom. The objection has been raised that our Lord could not have said to the Pharisees that the Kingdom was within them, and further that the question put to Jesus as to the 'when' of the Kingdom would on such a view not have received any answer. Neither of these two arguments is conclusive. 'Within you' need not exactly mean within the persons addressed; the pronoun in such a way of speaking can be enclitic; the sense then would be equivalent to 'within people'. As to the second objection, we find that Jesus not seldom shifts a question from one sphere to another. Here He might properly have done so in order to intimate that not the 'when' but the 'where' is the allimportant issue. In favour of 'within you' the following may be urged: Luke, for 'in the midst of' has always another expression, namely, the prepositional phrase en meso. Our passage would be the only one in Luke where entos were employed for that purpose. On the other hand, where the idea of 'interiority' is to be stressed entos appears, not only with Luke but likewise in the Septuagint. The passages quoted to support the meaning 'in the midst of' are all taken from the older Greek, not from the Hellenistic period. We are, therefore, warranted in giving the preposition entos here a peculiar colouring of inwardness.
Thirdly we look at the parallel passages Matt. 11:13; Lk. 16:16. Here Jesus declares that since the days of John the Kingdom suffers violence and is taken forcibly by violent men. Whatever the precise meaning of this parabolic saying may be, it certainly describes the actuality of the Kingdom since the days of John. In the Lucan parallel the same idea is expressed by representing the Kingdom as 'preached', that is as the object of an evangel. An evangel usually has reference to a present thing, and here must have so all the more, because of its opposite, 'the Law and the Prophets are until John'. The prophesying and typifying has given way to the proclamation of the fulfilment. Further, of a similar import is Matt. 11:11; Lk. 7:28. Our Lord, by denying that John himself is within the Kingdom, implies that such a being within was at that time a possibility; it was only John's peculiar position that kept him out.
In the fourth place we may appeal to the Kingdom parables [Matt. 13; Mk. 4; Lk. 8]. Here both the present reality and the spiritual nature of the Kingdom are plainly described. The ultra-eschatologists deny the force of this evidence, because here particularly they discover the hand of the traditional revisers, who brought the Church under the wing of the Kingdom. Their claim is that not so much in the parables themselves, but rather in the interpretations added, these de-eschatologizing features are in evidence. Or, where it is difficult to remove all traces of the idea of a present existence, they endeavour to change the subject of the comparisons, proposing to read: 'the preaching of the gospel is like, etc.' But the implications of presence are not confined to the interpretation of certain parables; they are scattered through the entire group, and as to changing the introductory formulas, this is forbidden by the highly idiomatic character of the latter in certain cases [cp. Mk. 4:11; Lk. 13:18].
Another method of neutralizing the evidence is more of an exegetical nature; it is proposed to reduce the presence of the Kingdom affirmed by Jesus to the presence of the premonitory signs or first slight beginnings; and in some of the parables, that have been immemorially quoted in proof of the present-Kingdom doctrine, the
entire purport of the parable is changed, its point being sought in the contrast between the small first indications of something extraordinary approaching, and the tremendous mass at the end. But with this interpretation a certain degree of gradualness is in principle conceded, and the parables, especially those taken from the vegetable sphere, appear ill-adapted to describe the explosive character of the terminal events. Finally in Lk. 18:17 a clear distinction would seem to be drawn between the 'receiving of the Kingdom as a little child' and the 'entering into the Kingdom'. These two figures appear as exactly suited for describing the two distinct aspects in the Kingdom-movement, the gradual and spiritual on one hand, and the conclusive one on the other hand.
In the sixth place, Matt. 6:33 puts side by side the seeking after the Kingdom and the obtaining of such earthly things as food and raiment, which will be added unto the Kingdom (not unto the seeking after the Kingdom). According to Lk. 4:18–21 the contents of the 'acceptable year of Jehovah' are being realized through the activity of Jesus: 'this day is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears.' Further, Matt. 9:15; Mk. 2:19 represents the joy of the Kingdomseason as to such an extent present that it renders fasting inappropriate for the disciples. Finally, according to Matt. 13:16; Lk. 10:23, Jesus, turning to the disciples, pronounces them blessed for seeing and hearing those things which many prophets and kings had desired to witness but not attained unto.
For the sake of clearer distinction a brief formula of the difference between these two aspects of the Kingdom may be framed. The difference is as follows:
(a) The present Kingdom comes gradually, the final Kingdom catastrophically;
(b) the present Kingdom comes largely in the internal, invisible sphere, the final Kingdom in the form of a world-wide visible manifestation;
(c) the present Kingdom up to the eschatological point remains subject to imperfections; the final Kingdom will be without all imperfections, and this applies as well to what had remained imperfect in the spiritual processes of which the present Kingdom consisted, as to the new elements which the final Kingdom adds.
The stress on the present-spiritual Kingdom idea has exposed the concept to considerable misinterpretation, along the line of naturalizing the process of its coming. Especially the parables taken from the vegetable realm have tempted to this. But the point in these is not the naturalness of the development; it is only the gradualness, and gradualness and supernaturalness are not mutually exclusive. The first phase of the Kingdom-forming movement is just as supernatural as are the events at the end of the world, only they are not as conspicuously so. It is an offshoot of this misunderstanding, when the Kingdom-complex is too much restricted to ethical thoughts and processes. The Ritschlian School has made of the Kingdom almost exclusively an association of men interacting on the principle of love. This is not wrong in itself, but as a definition of the Kingdom it is utterly misleading, because it virtually dereligionizes the idea, and moreover shifts the realization of the Kingdom almost entirely from the work of God to the activity of man. Man brings in the Kingdom according to this view. According to Jesus' conception the opposite is true, to such an extent in fact that our Lord hardly ever represents Himself as the Realizer of the Kingdom. Both these faults, as they hang together, can only be corrected together through explaining that the specifically religious belongs just as much to the Kingdom-circle as the ethical. Forgiveness of sin, communion with God, divine sonship, eternal life, these and other things are as truly ingredients of the Kingdom as the activities of men along the line of what is now, with a semi-Christian connotation, called 'service'.
[2] The Essence of the Kingdom
After having discussed the formal questions we now find ourselves face to face with the problem: What reasons induced our Lord to call
the new order of things that He came to announce and to introduce by the name 'the Kingdom of God'? Other names were in themselves conceivable, so far as the religious substance was concerned. We cannot explain the use from the Old Testament, for there the formal name does not occur. Nor does current usage in our Lord's time on the principle of accommodation help us out, for to the Jew 'the Kingdom of God' was not then the most favoured phrase for designating the content of the eschatological hope. Other names, such as 'the coming world', 'the coming age' were preferred, possibly because to the deistically inclined consciousness of Judaism they less focused the concept on God and left more room for thinking of what it would mean for Israel.
And right here we discover the true meaning of our Lord's preference for the name. It sprang from His theocentric frame of mind, which is but another way of saying that it is a religious conception through and through. The intent with which it was used by our Lord was precisely the opposite to that half-conscious feeling that it somehow affords an opportunity to remain within the circle of religion and yet have less of the obsession of God in religion. To Jesus it meant: 'of God the Kingdom'; to not a few at the present day it apparently means: 'the Kingdom (of God)'. And to Jesus it was far less an ideal, and far more of an actuality, than it is felt to be by the modern mind. 'The Kingdom of God' is not His destiny nor His abstract right to rule —His sovereignty—it is the actual realization of His sway. In this sense, and in this sense only, can it 'come'; God possesses His sovereignty from the beginning, and that cannot 'come'. The proposal to bring the name nearer to the general understanding by substituting 'the sovereignty of God' leads on the wrong track, because sovereignty is only de jure, and not always de facto, and also because sovereignty, being an abstract conception, could not mark the distinction between the abstract and the concrete Kingdom.
'Of God the Kingdom', then, means the actual exercise of the divine supremacy in the interest of the divine glory. Passages like Matt. 6:10, 33; Mk. 12:34 bear out this central idea [cp. also 1 Cor. 15:28].
This divine supremacy constituting the ideal state of religion branches out in several directions. At first, so long as the thing is considered in the abstract, it can be compared to a bundle of rays of light and action proceeding from and held together by the hand of God. But this is only provisional; the goal is that all these exercises of divine supremacy shall find their unitary organization in one royal establishment. The three principal spheres in which the divine supremacy works toward this end are the sphere of power, the sphere of righteousness and the sphere of blessedness. These will be briefly discussed in succession.
DIVINE SUPREMACY IN THE SPHERE OF POWER
The power element is already prominent in the Old Testament idea of the Kingdom of Jehovah. In the Gospels we meet it at the close of the Lord's Prayer, where 'power' is the first specification of what the Kingdom consists in: 'Thine is the Kingdom, [even] the power.…' Though this closing doxology is not found in Luke, and is absent from some good manuscripts also in Matthew, nevertheless it remains a valuable witness to what was associated with the Kingdom-idea in the minds of those using this very ancient prayer. According to Matt. 12:28, the casting out of demons is an exhibition of divine Kingdom-power (cp. Luke 'the finger of God'), no less indeed than an assertion of Messianic sovereignty. The miracles in general likewise find their explanation from this point of view. Besides being credentials of Jesus, and beneficent actions of His grace, they are chiefly 'signs of the times', that is, signs of the arrival or nearness of the Kingdom, just as the symptoms of the sky are to the wise signs of the weather of the morrow. They are both symbolic of spiritual transactions and prophetic of things pertaining to the eschatological Kingdom. Mark 2:9 points to the present time, but on the whole the miracles rather point forward to the crisis at the end.
The Kingdom-making power is associated with the Spirit; of the qualification of Jesus by the Spirit for His words and works, mention has been made already. The direct connection of the Spirit with
effects in the ethico-religious sphere is not frequently touched upon in the Gospel teaching [cp. Lk. 11:13]. It was reserved for Paul to work out this part of Christian doctrine after the actual outpouring of the Spirit. To Jesus the Spirit is the Author of revelation and of miracles, and remains this even in the Fourth Gospel where He is promised as the substitute of the departed Jesus. The position of Jesus in the development of pneumatology as between the Old Testament and Paul can be broadly defined as follows: In the Old Testament the Spirit is the Spirit of the theocratic charismata, who qualifies prophets, priests and kings for their office, but is not communicable from one to the other. Of this charismatic Spirit Jesus has received the fulness, and, having the fulness, dispenses of it to His followers, first partially and by means of promise, then in greater fulness by way of fulfilment at Pentecost.
Now since the Spirit He dispenses is not only His own as an external possession, but, having become through the resurrection thoroughly incorporated into His exalted nature, He gives, when He gives it, of His own, and the union effected between Him and the Spirit and through the Spirit and believers, acquires the character of an organic mystical union, so that to be in the Spirit is to be in Christ. And the further result is that, the entire Christian life being to Paul a life of communion with Christ, it also becomes necessarily a life lived in and inspired by the Spirit in all its strata and activities.
Another approach to this experience of a wholly Spirit-filled life lies through the conception of the eschatological state as the state in which the Spirit is the pervasive element and characteristic force. And since the earthly life is a real anticipation of the eschatological state, first-fruits and earnest and seal of the same, then the equableness of Spirit-endowment and Spirit-influence pertaining to the one naturally comes to pertain to the other also.
FAITH AS RELATED TO THE KINGDOM'S POWER
To the Kingdom as power answers faith as the correlate of this power. The correlation is not complete, since faith bears a distinct relation to the divine grace, no less than to the divine power. Ii the Gospels, that of John excepted, faith mostly emerges in the miracle contexts, and should therefore be studied in close dependence on what the miracles are. It is, as it were, the subjectivity corresponding to the objective fact of the miracle. The question to ask therefore, is what peculiarity inheres in the miracles, which makes them draw to themselves the functioning of faith. Two points come under consideration here.
First, the miracles are beneficent, saving acts, which has the result of making them an exhibition of the divine grace and evoking in the recipients the mental state of trust. This, however, important though it be, should not receive the main stress. The miracles are beneficent, but this is an aspect they have in common with other aspects of the work of God. What is unique to the miracle is the assertion of absolutely divine supernatural power. The efficient cause of the miracle is something that man can contribute nothing to, because it is wholly dependent on the putting forth of the direct supernatural energy of God. Hence it is emphasized that the miracles are done by 'a word'; that is the word of omnipotent power, the mere word [Matt. 8:8, 16]. The relation of faith to the omnipotence of God is strikingly illustrated in the episode, Mk. 9:17–24. Jesus here remonstrates with the suggestion of the father, 'if thou canst do anything', with the reply, 'what! if thou canst!', thereby declaring that, since it is a question of divine omnipotence, all mention of adequacy of power ought to be eliminated from the outset. Before God there exists no 'if thou canst'.
In this dependence on the omnipotence and grace of God lies the religious rationale of faith. Faith is the practical (not purely reasoning) recognition on the part of a man that the saving work of the Kingdom is exclusively a divine work. Faith is not to be considered under the aspect of a magical compulsion, far less of an ex-parte human contribution to the accomplishment of the result, for