The Parables of the Kingdom

[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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There are other passages in our oldest Gospel sources which help to make it clear that Jesus intended to proclaim the Kingdom of God not as something to come in the near future, but as a matter of present experience. "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see; for I tell you that many prophets and kings wished to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it" (Lk. x. 23-24, and with insignificant variations, Mt. xiii. 16-17). That which prophets and kings (such as David the psalmist, and Solomon, to whom the Messianic "Psalms of Solomon" were attributed), desire, is naturally understood as the final assertion of God's sovereignty in the world, the coming of "the Kingdom of God." This it is that the disciples "see and hear." "Again, "The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation, and condemn it; because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold something greater* than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will stand up in the judgment with this generation, and condemn it; because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold something greater than Jonah is here" (Lk. xi. 31-32 = Mt. xii. 41-42). What is this "something greater" than Jonah the prophet and Solomon the wise king? Surely it is that which prophets and kings desired to see, the coming of the Kingdom of God.

*πλεῖον, the neuter adjective; not "a greater than Solomon", which would require the masculine.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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The same idea seems to be intended in the series of sayings about John the Baptist given, from a common source, in Mt. xi. 2-10 and Lk. vii. 18-30. In answer to John's question, "Are you the Coming One, or are we to expect another?" Jesus points to the phenomena of His own ministry in terms which clearly allude to prophecies of the "good time coming." The implication is that the time of fulfillment has come: that which the prophets desired to see is now matter of present experience. John is himself not merely one of the prophets, but greater than any prophet, because he is the Messenger of whom the prophets spoke, who should immediately precede the great divine event, the coming of the Kingdom of God. The implication is clear: John has played his destined part, and the Kingdom of God has come. And as the disciples of Jesus are more privileged than prophets and kings who desired the coming of the Kingdom of God, because they "see and hear" the tokens of its presence, so they are "greater" than John the Baptist because they are "within the Kingdom of God"* which he had heralded. Matthew adds here a saying which is given in a different form from Lk. xvi. 16.

*Or, in other words, "theirs is the Kingdom of God" (Mt v. 3; Lk. vi. 20; cf. Mk. x. 14). The variety of expression does not carry with it different conceptions of the Kingdom, as a realm which one can enter in the one case and a treasure one can possess in the other (cf. Mk. x. 15; Mt. xiii. 44-46). Both are ways of saying that the coming of the Kingdom of God is realized in experience.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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The two forms are as follows:

Matthew

"From the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of heaven is forced and men of force make prey on it. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John."

Luke

"The law and the prophets were until John: from that time on the Kingdom of God is proclaimed and everyone forces his way into it."

The original form of the saying, and its precise meaning, are exceedingly difficult to determine; but it seems clear that a contrast is drawn between the past and the present. John the Baptist marks the dividing line: before him, the law and the prophets; after him, the Kingdom of God. In Luke at least it is clear that any interim period is precluded. In Matthew it is possible that the additional words "until now" (ἕως ἄρτι) are intended to allow for such an interim period between the baptism of John and the coming of the Kingdom of God―the period, namely, of our Lord's earthly ministry. Yet even for Matthew the Kingdom of God must have been in some sense a present reality "from the days of John the Baptist until" the moment of speaking, that is to say, throughout the ministry of Jesus, since it is said to be the object of human "force" (whatever that may mean). In any case, the general implication of the whole passage, Mt. xi. 4-19 with its Lukan parallels seems to me to be unmistakable: the old order closed with the ministry of John; the new begins with the ministry of Jesus.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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These passages, the most explicit of their kind, are sufficient to show that in the earliest tradition Jesus was understood to have proclaimed that the Kingdom of God, the hope of many generations, has at last come. It is not merely imminent; it is here. In whatever way this is to be reconciled with other passages in which the coming of the Kingdom of God is still an object of hope and prayer, as it is in Jewish thought, we much do justice to the plain meaning of the passages we have just considered. That school of interpretation which professed to find the key to the teaching of Jesus in "thoroughgoing eschatology"} ("consequente Eschatologie") was really proposing a compromise. In the presence of one set of sayings which appeared to contemplate the coming of the Kingdom of God as future, and another set which appeared to contemplate it as already present, they offered an interpretation which represented it as come very, very soon. But this is no solution. Whatever we make of them, the sayings which declare the Kingdom of God to have come are explicit and unequivocal. They are moreover the most characteristic and distinctive of the Gospel saying on the subject. They have no parallel in Jewish teaching or prayers of the period. If therefore we are seeking the differentia of the teaching of Jesus upon the Kingdom of God, it is here that it must be found.*

*Among recent writers the one who does fullest justice to the idea is Rudolf Otto. His phrase for it is "der Schonanbruch des Reichen Gottes." I cannot see how anyone, after reading Reich Gottes und Menschensohn, pp. 51-73, could be content with interpretations which water down the meaning of these great sayings into a mere expectation that the Kingdom of God would come very soon.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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This declaration that the Kingdom of God has already come necessarily dislocates the whole eschatological scheme in which its expected coming closes the long vista of the future. The eschaton has moved from the future to the present, from the sphere of expectation into that of realized experience. It is therefore unsafe to assume that the content of the idea, "The Kingdom of God," as Jesus meant it, may be filled in from the speculations of apocalyptic writers. They were referring to something in the future, which could be conceived only in terms of fantasy. He was speaking of that which, in one aspect at least, was an object of experience.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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The common idea, as we have seen, underlying all uses of the term "The Kingdom of God" is that of the manifest and effective assertion of the divine sovereignty against all the evil of the world. In what sense, then, did Jesus declare that the kingdom of God was present? Our answer must at least begin with His own answer to John: "The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the Gospel preached to them." In the ministry of Jesus Himself the divine power is released in effective conflict with evil. "If I by the finger of God cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you." When the Fourth Evangelist presents the works of healing as "signs" of the coming of "eternal life" to men, he is rightly interpreting these sayings in our earliest sources. For eternal life is the ultimate issue of the coming of the Kingdom of God, and this coming is manifested in the series of historical events which unfolds itself in the ministry of Jesus.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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Here then is the fixed point from which our interpretation of the teaching regarding the Kingdom of God must start. It represents the ministry of Jesus as "realized eschatology," that is to say, as the impact upon this world of the "powers of the world to come" in a series of events, unprecedented and unrepeatable, now in actual process.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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Nevertheless, the teaching of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, has reference to the future as well as to the present. We must enquire what is the relation of this predictive element in his teaching to the proclamation of the kingdom of God as present.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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vaticinia ex eventu. We may therefore take it to be probable that He did on occasion utter prediction.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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Some of these, as we have them in the Gospels, seem to refer plainly (in the manner of the classical prophets) to forthcoming historical events; others resemble visionary forecasts of the apocalypses, referring to events of a wholly supernatural order. In our Gospels these types of prediction are mixed together, and to disentangle them is no easy task. Nevertheless the attempt must be made. We shall do well to depend mainly on the two earliest sources, Mark, and the common source or strain of tradition, underlying Matthew and Luke ("Q"), and to check th one by the other. And our task is the more difficult, because the most considerable predictive discourse in Mark, the "Little Apocalypse" of Mk. xiii, lies under the suspicion of being a secondary composition, though it no doubt incorporates genuine sayings of Jesus. We cannot use it as it stands for evidence of His own forecast of the future. Its various component parts must be examined separately, and compared with our other primary sources.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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We inquire, therefore, what, on the testimony of the best sources to which we have access, did Jesus predict?

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In the first place, it is difficult to point to any precise prediction of the coming of the Kingdom of God. There is no saying of the unequivocal form, "The Kingdom of God will come," to balance the statement, "The Kingdom of God has come." The nearest thing to such a saying in our earliest sources is Mk. ix. 1: "There are some standing here who will not taste death until they have seen that the Kingdom of God has come with power. The meaning appears to be that some of those who heard Jesus speak would before their death awake to the fact that the Kingdom of God had come. The only open question is whether Jesus meant that the Kingdom had already, in his ministry, come "with power," and that His hearers would afterwards recognize the fact, or whether He intended to distinguish its partial coming at the moment of speaking from some subsequent coming "with power." Our answer to this question will depend on our interpretation of other passages.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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Next we have the saying in Mt. viii. 11 (with its parallel in Lk. xiii. 28-29): "Many will come from east and west and sit at meat with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God." As we have seen, this is congruous with the apocalyptic idea of the "life of the Age to Come," presented under the similitude of a feast with the blessed dead. But it is not said that the Kingdom in which the patriarchs feast is yet to come. What has not yet happened, but will happen, is that many who are not yet "in the Kingdom of God," in its earthly manifestation, will enjoy its ultimate fulfillment in a world beyond this. The saying does not answer the question whether or not Jesus expected any further "coming" of the Kingdom of God beyond that which was already taking place in His own ministry. It may be that the patriarchs are thought of as living "in the Kingdom of God,"* in the world beyond this, where God's Kingdom does not "come," but is eternally present. That God is King in heaven from all eternity is a postulate of Jewish theology. The new thing is that His Kingdom shall be revealed on earth. This according to the teaching of Jesus has already happened. It would however be susceptible to the meaning the at some date in the future the present earthly manifestation of the Kingdom of God will yield to a purely transcendent order in which it will be absolute.

*Jesus said that the patriarchs were alive (and not in some state of suspended existence, awaiting a resurrection), since God is their God, and he is not a God of the dead but of the living (Mk. xii. 26-27).

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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The same background of ideas lies behind the saying at the Last Supper, Mk. xiv. 24; "I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God. The figure of the heavenly feast determines the symbolism. Jesus is about to die. He will never again partake of wine at any earthly meal, but he will drink wine of a new sort, "in the Kingdom of God." The form of expression suggests something of a pause or interval before this comes about. Are we to think of the Kingdom of God here as something yet to come? If so, it is not to come in this world, for the "new wine" belongs to the "new heaven and new earth" of apocalyptic thought, that is, to the transcendent order beyond space and time.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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We turn now to predictions which make no direct mention of the Kingdom of God.

In the first place, Jesus is recorded to have predicted sufferings in store for Himself and His followers. It is often plausibly held that the forebodings of His own death which are repeatedly attributed to Jesus in the Gospels are of the nature of vaticinia ex eventu. The Church could not believe that their Lord had been ignorant of what lay before Him. It may freely be concluded that the precision of some of these predictions may be due to the Church's subsequent knowledge of the facts, but this admission does not necessarily carry with it the view that all forecasts of coming suffering are unhistorical.

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