Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom by Norman Perrin
Chapter 2: The Interpretation of Kingdom of God in the Message of
C. KINGDOM OF GOD IN CHRISTIAN LITERATURE
3. Johannes Weiss: The Thoroughgoing Historical Understanding of Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God
our purpose is to notice the different function of myth in the case of the different symbols. In the case of the primordial symbols, the myth interprets the symbols, and the consciousness or experience of man which the symbols evoke or elaborate. But in the case of the symbol Reign or Kingdom of God, the myth is prior to the symbol and the
symbol is dependent upon it. The symbol evokes the myth, and when the myth becomes questionable or unacceptable then the use of the symbol changes, or the effectiveness of the symbol is lost. The symbol is effective only where the myth is held to be valid.
The relationship between the validity of the myth and the effectiveness of the symbol becomes evident in the use of Kingdom of God in
twentieth-century Christian tradition, but before turning to twentieth- century uses we will pause for a moment in the nineteenth century and consider further the work of Johannes Weiss.
3. Johannes Weiss: The Thoroughgoing Historical Understanding of
Testament to the peak of its development. The scholars of this school pioneered in the thoroughgoing historical approach to the New
Testament; at that level contemporary scholars are still following the trails they blazed, although passage of time has, of course, brought a certain refinement of method.97
Johannes Weiss was the pupil and son-in-law of Albrecht Ritschl, a leading nineteenth-century German liberal theologian. Ritschl himself used Kingdom of God as a fundamental concept in the development of his own theological system; indeed Weiss wrote, "The concept of the Kingdom of God has been brought to the centre of current theological interest through Albrecht Ritschl."98 But Ritschl’s concept was in the speculative theological tradition begun by Augustine. Ritschl understood Kingdom of God as the goal of the redemptive activity of God in Christ, and of the human ethical activity which that divine redemptive activity made possible. It is the, teleological aspect of Christianity, the common end of God and of Christians as a community: it is the moral
organization of humanity through action inspired by love.99 Weiss says that as a student with Ritschl he began to be troubled by the feeling that Ritschl’s conception of the Kingdom and the concept in the teaching of Jesus were two very different things.100 In this comment we see the mind set of the historically oriented scholar: if one is going to make major use of a key concept from the teaching of Jesus then one should begin by reaching a historical understanding of that concept in the teaching.
Weiss reached a historical understanding of Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God, and published his findings in 1892, Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, a book only sixty-five pages long. Few books of that size can have made such an impact. In retrospect one can see that the whole modern interpretation of Jesus and his teaching stems from those sixty-five pages;101 and the book is also a major contribution to the recognition of the problem of hermeneutics among New Testament scholars.102 In its own day in the eighteen nineties the book presented an understanding of Jesus’ proclamation so radically different from
anything conceivable to the dominant liberal German theology that a veritable storm broke around the author’s head. In self-defense he reworked his thesis, and the historical evidence and arguments for it, publishing in 1900 a second edition of his book which had grown to 214 pages. He also wrote a critical review of the use of the concept Kingdom of God in theology, Die Idee des Reiche Gottes in der Theologie,
publishing that also in 1900.
Weiss begins by investigating the historical background to the use of Kingdom of God by Jesus.103 He determines that there were two uses of the concept104 in ancient Judaism, depending upon whether the
emphasis was put upon God as ruler or upon man as subject of that rule.
The latter emphasis reaches its high point in the rabbinic concept of an act of obedience whereby a man or a people take upon themselves the yoke of the Kingdom of God. Involved in this conception is the idea of the rule of God as eternal, a continuous and lasting ordering of things that a man may accept or reject. To the man who accepts the yoke in an act of obedience, the Kingdom of God becomes manifest in his
experience.105 In the message of Jesus, however, the emphasis is put upon God as ruler, and the Kingdom of God is conceived of as "the breaking out of an overpowering divine storm which erupts into history to destroy and to renew. . . and which man can neither further nor
influence."106 Weiss was adamant on the point that the Kingdom of God is solely and only the activity of God: "The disciples were to pray for the coming of the Kingdom, but man could do nothing to establish it. . . . Not even Jesus can bring, establish, or found the Kingdom of God; only God can do so."107
In this way, Weiss broke with the scholarship of his day, insisting that a historical understanding of Kingdom of God in the message of Jesus must recognize that it was essentially an apocalyptic concept. Moreover, he claimed that it must be understood as being in opposition to the
Kingdom of Satan. Jesus was "conscious of carrying on a struggle against the Satanic kingdom . . . [as] is to be seen most clearly in the exorcisms. . . . He knew that he was doing decisive damage to the well- organized kingdom of Satan.108 But although Jesus saw this, it was only a proleptic vision. For Jesus the coming of the Kingdom of God was an object of imminent expectation, but that coming still lay in the future.
"Jesus’ activity is governed by the strong and unwavering feeling that the messianic time is imminent. Indeed he even had moments of
prophetic vision when he perceived the opposing Kingdom of Satan as already overcome and broken. . . . In general, however, be actualization of the Kingdom of God has yet to take place.109
The importance of Weiss, from the perspective of our discussion, is that he established the necessity for a historical understanding of Kingdom of God in the message of Jesus, an understanding to be arrived at by setting the message of Jesus firmly in the context of ancient Judaism.
The details of his findings are comparatively unimportant today; the
discussion Weiss inaugurated has long since overtaken his particular historical understanding of Jesus’ use of Kingdom of God. But it has not overtaken his particular historical method, as can be seen from the
structure of the study I am pursuing here. From the perspective of this study, however, there is a further point about Weiss, and a most
important one. I am particularly concerned with the relationship between historical criticism and hermeneutics, between a historical understanding of Jesus’ use of Kingdom of God and the possibility of finding
significance in that understanding for the present. Here Weiss made a remarkable contribution: he flatly denied that Jesus’ use of Kingdom of God had any significance for the later generation for which he, Weiss, was writing. In the preface to the second edition of Die Predigt Jesu he writes: "I am still of the opinion that his [Ritschl’s] theological system, and especially this central concept [of the Kingdom of God], presents that form of teaching concerning the Christian faith which is most effectively designed to bring our generation nearer to the Christian religion, and, properly understood and rightly used, to awaken and further a sound and strong religious life such as we need today."110 Weiss is fully prepared to leave the historical Jesus and his teaching in the past. "It is self-evident that Jesus did not intend . . . to promulgate for Christianity in all ages a continuing ethical law, an ‘ordinance for the Kingdom of God.’" 111 Weiss has not only seen the "hermeneutical gulf"; he has no intention of trying to bridge it!
All in all Weiss is as interesting as he was important. He established the method for arriving at a historical understanding of Jesus’ use of
Kingdom of God, but then he simply decided that Jesus’ use, however historically interesting, was irrelevant to Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. He wanted to keep his colleagues honest. If they were going to talk about the Kingdom of God in the message of Jesus, then let it be Jesus’ concept they were talking about. But if they wished to use a quite different understanding of the concept, one they held to be more suitable for the world for which they wrote, then that was perfectly permissible. Weiss himself was fully prepared to define Kingdom of God for himself and his contemporaries as "the Rule of God [which] is the highest Good and the supreme ethical ideal," while admitting that
"this conception of ours . . . parts company with Jesus’ at the most decisive point," because Jesus himself "did not use the term ‘Kingdom of God’ to refer to the ‘supreme ethical ideal.’"112 In his thinking Weiss remained a man of the late nineteenth century, and in his theology he remained a Ritschlian. At the level of a historical understanding of Jesus there could be a conflict — "the eschatological Kingdom vs. the
Ritschlian"113 — but at the level of contemporary use of the concept it was strictly no contest; Weiss remained a Ritschlian, despite his
historical findings.
Fundamentally Weiss saw Kingdom of God as a concept in the message of Jesus, and as a concept which he could not accept. But I have argued at length that Kingdom of God is not a concept but a symbol, and a symbol evoking a myth. To think in terms of a concept is to start off on the wrong foot so far as interpretation is concerned. Fundamentally, the act of interpretation turns on the acceptability or meaningfulness of the