Understanding the Kingdom of God by Georgia Harkness
Chapter 3: What Is the Kingdom of God?
3. A reexamination of the spectrum
With this survey of variant views in the meaning of the kingdom of God as a base of procedure, let us review the types of eschatology that were outlined in the preceding chapter. We shall take them up in the sequence of the previous section.
Weiss and Schweitzer took the third or apocalyptic meaning of the kingdom of God as
normative. This led them to assert not only that Jesus expected the imminent and catastrophic end of the world and God’s establishment of a new order through his divine messenger, the Son of man, but also that this was the only way in which Jesus conceived the kingdom of God. The absoluteness of Jesus’ moral demands were then to be understood as an interim ethic before the great cataclysm. They were right in their appreciation of the apocalyptic passages as being in some measure spoken by Jesus. What they failed to do was to give sufficient emphasis to the prophetic teachings and moral commands of Jesus as requisite for the human obligations of the kingdom. Schweitzer in his service to humanity at Lambarene recognized and demonstrated response to these obligations.
The liberal and social gospel theologians chose the second meaning. The kingdom then
living, with special emphasis on the human responsibility to correct the evils of an unjust and unloving society. The kingdom of God then becomes the acceptance of the rule of God in the present, with the hope that this may increase through human effort. This was an enormously important emphasis, and I believe it to be not only a much needed but a valid one. Nevertheless, human pride being what it is, some exponents of this prophetic social gospel seemed to lay more stress on the human builders than on the activity of God in the process. Furthermore, a legitimate and needed emphasis on Christian hope got tangled up in a secular evolutionary optimism.
When we come to the ‘’realized eschatology’’ of C. H. Dodd, we find its chief grounding in the first meaning of the kingdom. Dodd’s position, as I understand it, is that Jesus used the phrase
"kingdom of God" chiefly in the sense of the eternal, righteous, sovereignty of God and believed that he had been called to manifest this kingdom both supremely and uniquely in his own life and works. Jesus, then, was not announcing a future event when he used the
apocalyptic imagery, but symbolized by it the coming of the kingdom in himself. This gives an important emphasis to the fact that there would be no kingdom at all apart from the eternal rulership of God, and no Christian understanding of the kingdom, with its challenge and hope, apart from Christ. It is doubtful that "realized eschatology" is a good name for this point of view, for it suggests that the end of history has already come and minimizes the futuristic element in the thought of Jesus.
The position of Rudolf Bultmann does not fit so readily into any of these three meanings of the kingdom, for his position has elements of all of them. Bultmann’s emphasis on existential decision has the eternal and righteous God demanding this decision; it has the critical need of human response, though in a personal rather than social action framework; it has the
apocalyptic passages not to be taken literally but as reinforcing the urgency of decision. Yet Bultmann’s view that the Gospels almost wholly reflect the thought of the early church shunts us away from forming a judgment of what Jesus himself thought about the kingdom.
In this survey of what I believe the kingdom to be, I have spoken frequently of the effect of the heritage and culture of Jesus upon his thought. To state a composite view, it was not possible to linger at each point to elaborate the nature of this influence. Furthermore, the greatest
agreement among scholars is found at the point of their unanimity that the Gospels are colored by the kerygma -- the preaching and witnessing message of the early church. Thus, we need to look backward from Jesus to his heritage to understand how he came to think as he did about the kingdom of God, and forward from his crucifixion and resurrection to observe how the church dealt with his message. These two large issues will be our next undertaking.
Notes:
1. These points of general agreement are presented, though slightly differently, in chapter 5,
"The Kingdom of God," in my earlier book, Our Christian Hope (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1964).
2. Grant, The Gospel of the Kingdom, pp. 63, 67, 153, 156.
3. See S. E. Johnson in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. R-Z (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962), pp. 413-16 for an extensive and detailed presentation of the use of the term "Son of man" in the Old Testament, in the Synoptic Gospels, and in John. What emerges from this study is that Jesus in the Synoptics appears to use the term in three senses: in reference to his own earthly mission, as the transcendent one as in Enoch but without definite self-designation;
and as the latter referring to himself. In John’s Gospel the most distinctive contribution is that the pre-existent Son of man, who has come down from heaven and given life to the world, will ascend again.
4. The World Mission of the Church (London and New York: International Missionary Council, 1939), p. 106.
5. In outlining the three principal meanings attached to the term "kingdom of God,’ I am heavily indebted to John Knox for his Christ the Lord: The Meaning of Jesus in the Early Church
(Chicago: Willett, Clark and Co., 1945), pp. 24-30.
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Understanding the Kingdom of God by Georgia Harkness
Georgia Harkness was educated at Cornell University, Boston University School of Theology, studied at Harvard & Yale theological seminaries and at Union Theological Seminary of New York. She has taught at Elmira College, Mount Holyoke, and for twelve years was professor of applied theology at Garrett Biblical Institute. In 1950 she became professor of applied theology at the Pacific School of Religion, in Berkeley, California. Published by Abingdon Press, New York & Nashville, 1974. This material was edited for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.