02.Mark: Background
Excursus: The
Kingdom or Reign of God
Nothing is more characteristic or central to Jesus’
ministry than what is usually translated the “kingdom” of God. However,
scholars in the last 50 years or so believe the word “kingdom” is too spatial
or place-oriented to do justice to the biblical reality the Greek word basilea
connotes. In addition many feel the term is too male-oriented – kings have
kingdoms – or associations with other “kingdoms” that have been authoritarian,
autocratic, and destructive – like the Third Reich (or kingdom) in Germany – leave
a bad taste in modern readers’ mouths. Moreover, linguistically, the word
basilea and its underlying Aramaic equivalent) carries a dynamic sense meaning
“rule” or “reign.” Though one reigns over a people and a place,[1]
it is the act of ruling that the New Testament emphasizes.
But when does this rule or reign of God happen or take
place? God as Creator and Ruler of all means he has always ruled or reigned
over what he has made. But when God sent his people into exile, and their
existence seemed to have come to a quite inglorious end, God’s rule or reign
was placed in serious question. After the exile, with the people’s return to
the land and the great promises God made them about a glorious future, language
about his eternal reign shifted into an historical key. Now the emphasis was
placed on the event when “The Lord becomes king” (never doubting that God was
in fact ruler of all).
“This means that God is now definitively establishing
in history, and specifically in the present crisis in Israel, the kingship that
was always his. God’s eternal royal reign is manifested in that God intervenes,
redeems his people, and creates them anew. God becomes the judge and rescuer of
his people—in that sense God demonstrates his rule and in that sense it can be
said that God is becoming king.”[2]
But when
was this to happen?
-Some have said Jesus’ teaching
about the reign of God remained wholly future, an expectation for both him and
his followers. And there are passages where Jesus speaks of God’s reign in the
future tense. Passages where he speaks of it in the present tense, these
scholars think, are where he spoke in error.
-The equal and opposite position
counterpointed this one. Other scholars took Jesus’ statements about the
present reality of God’s reign as what he really intended and reinterpreted his
future statements as really being about the present.
-A mediating position takes both
present and future statements as genuine utterances of Jesus and interprets
them in a “both-and” fashion. God’s reign is present in Jesus in an inaugural
or anticipatory way but its fullness will only become evident or be fulfilled
in the future. This is today the view of most scholars.
So what is it – future,
present, now-and-then? Lohfink adds a seldom remarked on twist to the
discussion. He claims that God’s reign is fully realized in Jesus. How else can
he make claims like “But
if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come
upon you” (Lk.11:20)? It makes no sense he argues to say that part of God’s
reign is present in Jesus but there is yet more of it to come. Lohfink turns to
Mk.1:15 and claims that the opening phrase “the time is fulfilled” marks the
time of the decisive and full manifestation of God’s rule in Jesus. There’s no
more of his “reign” to come or to be expected. The second phrase “the reign of
God has come near” is to taken not as about the kingdom but as about the
people’s response to the arrival of that kingdom. It is present, fully and
completely – “the time is fulfilled” – but its nearness in Jesus demands the
people’s response. That’s why Jesus immediately follows this with a call to
“repent, and believe the good news.” God’s reign is the given; the people’s
response is the question. Hear Lohfink:
“The biblical clothing of the
expression indicates that this is about the promises of the prophets: now they
are being fulfilled. Paul means the same thing when he writes: ‘See, now is the
acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation’ (2 Cor 6:2). The second
clause, ‘the reign of God has come near,’ following the groundbreaking opening
statement, cannot mean that the time of fulfillment has not yet really arrived.
It is true that ‘has come near’ contains a ‘not yet,’ but it is not about God’s
action; it is about Israel’s response. The people of God, at this moment, has
not yet turned back. It is still in the moment of decision for or against the
Gospel. Therefore, the reign of God is near but not yet present. It is being
offered to the people of God. It is laid at their feet. They are within reach
of it; they can reach out and touch it. But as long as it is not accepted it is
only near, and people must still pray: ‘Your kingdom come!’ (Matt 6:10).”[3]
This view, then is in one
way a variant of the “already-not yet” view I mentioned above. But Lohfink
develops it in such a distinctive and, in my view, persuasive way, it is
effectively a different view.
But what is this reign or
rule of God? Unfortunately, much confusion prevails at just this quite crucial
of points. In modern Christianity, indeed, in much Christianity since it left
it early Jewish-Christian matrix, this confusion has prevailed. We tend to
honor the importance of this reality by investing it with our most treasured
ideas about what God is really doing in our world. Whatever we think that is –
evangelism, social justice, peace-making, mission, spiritual warfare – whatever
we think that is, we bestow the honorific “reign or rule of God” on it. Then we
argue with each other over which of us is right and often end up at odds with
one another. But what if none of that is right?
What if, instead, the reign
of God is “God’s management of the ‘political’
existence of his people.”[4] That requires a bit of
unpacking, I realize. Andrew Perriman (footnote 4) explains this “political”
work of God in his world.
“Kingdom
in scripture is not a creation theme, it is a political theme. It
has to do with rulers and nations. Eden is a garden, not a kingdom. The earth
is not a kingdom, it is the arena where kingdoms clash—and where they threaten
the security and integrity of the nation of Israel. When YHWH
is said to be king over all the earth, the thought is of present or future
political realities: he has subdued nations under the feet of his people (Ps. 47:2-3); he will
be king over all the earth on the day when he fights against the nations which
wage war against Israel and restores Jerusalem (Zech. 14:3-9).”
God’s people become a political entity at the Exodus
where God rescues them and becomes their king and on Mt. Sinai (Ex.15:18) and
at Mt. Sinai where God gives them their national constitution (the 10 Commandments;
Ex.20:1-17). The political fortunes of this people henceforth became of
paramount interest to him. Of course, their political fortunes vary with their
obedience to him and they can and do sink deep in servitude to other nations
for continual incorrigible disobedience. But God has unconditionally pledged
himself to bring blessing to the world through them and has promised their
king, an heir of David, will rule the nations. Israel’s political subservience
to and oppression by pagan nations, God will not allow to be a permanent state
of affairs. He has promised one day to act of right this situation.
This political kingdom strand of Israel’s relation to God
is one of three that makes up their existence and through them constitutes
God’s fulfilment of his creational purposes. His ultimate end game is to be
present with his human creatures sharing life and fellowship with them with the
rest of creation. The way he has chosen to reach this goal is through his
covenant people who live to be a blessing, God’s blessing, to the rest of the
world. God’s rule over his world is another means toward his goal. Reigning
sovereignly over the history of nations and peoples, God assures us things in
that realm are never completely out of control or outrunning his purposes,
evidences we can see notwithstanding, but will finally serve and reflect his
good purposes. So these three, presence served by covenant (God’s family) and
kingship (God’s rule), are the story line of the Bible and work hand in hand to
shape the world God desires and intends.
The worldwide people God desired to share life with on
his creation he narrowed down to one people after humanity’s sinful rebellion
against him. No longer willing to submit freely to him, God needed a people
through whom he could declare and demonstrate to the world the life he still
offers them and through whom they could respond to him. Thus, he will use this
people, in spite of themselves if necessary, to effect his good purposes for
them and his world.
The crisis of the exile brought Israel’s national
existence to a head. Though he still intended to do his will through them, it
would be in a way no one ever imagined or dreamed of. And it would require a
fresh reconstitution of the people of Israel around the Davidic king he was
sending them who would rule in a way no one expected. National Israel had
defaulted on its Abrahamic mandate/privilege through its persistent idolatrous
disobedience. Now Abrahamic Israel would be remade. And that was the burden of Jesus’
earthly ministry.
His ministry of bringing God’s kingdom would indeed
remake Abrahamic Israel and in doing so would bring both disobedient Israel and
the rebellious pagan world into judgment. That judgment on Israel would come
soon, within the lifetime of some of those who followed Jesus, as he said
(Mk.13:30). And it would come in the form of Roman troops besieging and
overwhelming Jerusalem, destroying it and tearing down the temple in 70 a.d.
This is the horizon within which Jesus worked and thought. This was the “end of
the world” for Israel.
The judgment on the wider pagan world would come later
with the “conversion” of that world to the gospel with Emperor Constantine’s
turning to Christian faith in the 4th century and casts a farther
horizon for Paul and the early church’s ministry than the Roman judgment Jesus
worked within. In both cases the judgment is due to God’s bring his kingdom in
with Jesus and reasserting through it his rightful rule over all nations and
peoples. God takes up his usurped reign in Jesus and is in charge and has
installed the resurrected and ascended Jesus as world-ruler. Henceforth, the
church goes out into the world in the full confidence of the exalted Christ’s
rule and have no need to be afraid or doubtful for its mission or the world’s
future.
There is a further horizon of expectation the New
Testament hints at though it gives few details. That is the picture we get in
Rev.21-22, Rom.8, 1 Cor.15 and elsewhere of the final end when the world is
cleansed and renovated, humanity judged, and everything is as God desires and
intended it to be.
To sum up, then, the kingdom of God Jesus brings is God’s
reassertion of his right as Creator and Lord to rule the affairs of peoples and
nations. This is his role of “political management” mentioned earlier. And
that’s what his reign is about, sovereignly ruling his world, “becoming” king
and resolving the issue raised by Israel’s exile.
God’s royal reign over peoples and nations facilitates the
growth and work of God’s covenant family who bear the presence of God on behalf
of the world. Thus kingship, covenant, and presence work together to achieve
God’s ultimate purpose in creation.
1. The kingdom of God was a
political concept (see #7)
2. The kingdom of God was expected to come soon
3. The kingdom of God
would come in two stages (in Jesus, 30 a.d., in judgment against disobedient
Israel, 70 a.d., and against the rebellious nations in the 4th
century)
4. The
coming of the kingdom of God was vouchsafed by the death, resurrection and
exaltation of Jesus
5.
“Now and not yet” is not particularly helpful (it is simply a matter of
waiting)
6. The kingdom of God was
something that God would do eventually (not a human achievement)
7. The kingdom of God was not new
creation
[1] As Gerhard Lohfink memorably puts it, “a king without
a people is no king at all but a figure in a museum.” Jesus of Nazareth: What
He Wanted, Who He Was, (Liturgical Press), Kindle Edition: 672.
[2] Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth: 672-679.
[3] Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth: 793.
[4] Andrew Perriman, “(Re-)defining the
kingdom of God in nine words,” https://www.postost.net/2019/05/redefining-kingdom-god-nine-words.
[5] https://www.postost.net/2018/03/7-things-you-need-know-about-kingdom-god
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