Christian Ethics by Georgia Harkness Part 1 Foundations of Christian Ethics
Chapter 3: The Ethics of Jesus
2. Eschatology and ethics
We come now to some issues regarding Jesus’ message of the Kingdom about which there is less agreement. We cannot in this brief survey go into every nuance of thought regarding them. But neither can we disregard them, for they are too central to the message of Jesus and hence to our faith.
Eschatology is the doctrine of the "last things." The eschaton means the end, and eschatology has to do with what happens at the end of human history and beyond it. There is an eschatology of the individual with reference to concepts of heaven, hell, final judgment, and in general of
"eternal life." There are also eschatological beliefs about the future of society and the final destiny of the human race. It is in this second framework that disputes about the Kingdom mainly center, though the two cannot be sharply separated.
A basic question is with regard to the time of the coming of the
Kingdom. Is it a present attainment or a hope for the future? And if it is both, is the full consummation of the Kingdom to be in the immediate future or at some indefinite time known only to God? Is the Kingdom to come on earth, or beyond all history? There are passages in the Gospels which seem to support all of these views.
The easiest of these questions is the first, for it is not impossible to suppose that Jesus believed the Kingdom to be in some measure already present while its final consummation was yet to come.
Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them, "The kingdom of God is not coming with signs, to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Lo, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. (Luke 17:20-21.)
This may mean what through the influence of Professor C. H. Dodd has come to be called realized eschatology, the belief that Jesus had brought the Kingdom to fulfillment in his own person and he was thereby
affirming his messiahship.4 It seems to me more probable that Jesus
meant primarily though perhaps not solely to declare the possibility of entrance into the Kingdom here and now by repentance, the acceptance of God’s forgiveness, and the assumption of the obligations of
discipleship. The parables of the leaven (Matt. 13:33; Luke 13:20-21), the mustard seed (Mark 4:30 if.; Matt. 13:31-32; Luke 13:18-19), and the seed growing secretly until it becomes "first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear" (Mark 4:26-29) not only are parables of growth; they are indexes that what the Kingdom will be is already
present in what is. Yet the references of Jesus to the Kingdom again and again have a futuristic note, and if there were no other reason, the fact that he taught his followers to pray, "Thy kingdom come," would be sufficient evidence that he did not regard it as having fully come.
The issues of chief difficulty arise at the point of questions as to
whether Jesus expected the Kingdom to come on earth or only in some realm beyond earthly history, and in the latter event, whether he
expected earthly history to end very soon by a catastrophic divine intervention when he himself would return in glory to reign over a transfigured world. Thus, the whole question of the Second Coming is tied in with the issue. These problems all come to focus in the question as to whether Jesus’ view of the Kingdom was primarily eschatological or ethical and spiritual. Anyone who followed in the slightest the
discussions before and at the Evanston Assembly of the World Council of Churches on the main theme "Christ — the Hope of the World" will recognize the disparities of judgment among Christians today at this point.
There are some, though it is a minority position among New Testament scholars, who think that the apocalyptic passages attributed to Jesus were interpolations of early Christian thought. This would be a
comfortable way out of the impasse if we could think so, for in view of the fact that the end of the world has not yet come, it is not easy to fit into the rest of his words such sayings as, "Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom" (Matt. 16:28; cf. Mark 9:1; Luke 9:27), or after a vivid description of the signs of the end, "Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all these things take place" (Matt.
24:34; Mark 13:30; Luke 21:32). Nevertheless, the passages are too deeply embedded to be thus discarded. Some may have been confused by the early Church with prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem, for Jesus saw that his countrymen knew not the "things that make for
peace" (Luke 19:42) and that their doom was approaching. Some of
them may have been, as Professor Dodd suggests,5 mixtures of
references to Jesus’ resurrection and his second coming. But with due recognition of these possibilities, it still remains probable that Jesus shared the apocalyptic expectations common in Judaism in the first century and looked upon himself as God’s chosen agent for bringing these things to pass. The incarnate Lord lived at a particular time and place in history, and in his apocalypticism Jesus was apparently a man of his time.
What does this do to his ethics? Does it destroy the validity of his teachings as universal principles? The answer is No.
It does not make his teachings an "interim ethic." In later Judaism it was believed that the precepts of the Torah were valid for the next world as well as this. Jesus apparently held this view with regard to what he proclaimed to be the will of God, for he never suggests that he is saying something of only temporary relevance. In fact, the contrary is clearly implied in the declaration, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away" (Matt. 24:35; cf. Luke 16:17).
It does not make of his teachings counsels of perfection for the next life only. As was earlier remarked, Jesus was apparently not concerned over the exact degree of attainability of his precepts. He stated what he
believed to be right — what a person would do if he loved, trusted, and obeyed God completely. It is unlikely either that he was so naive as to suppose that men could be perfect as God is perfect or that the attempt to do so was inconsequential.
It does not submerge his ethics in eschatology. Eschatology was
undoubtedly present in the thought of Jesus, as it should be in ours, an eschatology of both eternal life for the individual and the hope of a final consummation of the reign of God beyond earthly time and space. Both the corruption of earthly history by persistent sin and the grandeur of a vista that transcends it lend support to the view that the kingdom of God will fully come, not on earth, but beyond this world. In this final victory He shall reign forever and ever,
King of kings! and Lord of lords!
and the only appropriate response of the Christian is "Hallelujah!" But this does not mean that what Jesus has taught us of the good life here and now is set aside. Christ is our hope — now, in the earthly future,
and for eternity.
The eschatology of Jesus was never the ethically barren thing that either the apocalyptists of his time or the premillennialists of ours have too often made it. Not only repentance, but sensitiveness to a brother’s need, determined status in the Kingdom (Matt. 4:17; 25:31-46). There is a tension between this world and the world to come, but to Jesus its resolution lay in God’s control over both realms and man’s responsive, obedient acceptance of God’s rule in faith and love and deeds of service.
The God to whom Jesus prayed was the Lord of heaven and earth; his will must be done "on earth as it is in heaven." Jesus’ outlook was too profoundly God-centered and ethical to permit him to fall prey to pessimism regarding this world’s fate, or asceticism regarding God’s gifts within it, or spectacularism regarding the grand finale, or moral indifference regarding the pedestrian steps God’s servants must take along the way. In short, his total outlook without eliminating
eschatology transformed it.