Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 66:262 (Apr 1909)
Article: The Kingdom Of God In The Light Of Jewish Literature
Author: George D. Castor

BSac 66:262 (April 1909) p. 344

The Kingdom Of God In The Light Of Jewish Literature1

Prof. George D. Castor

Modern theology has focused attention on the teaching of Jesus. It has sought thereby to break through the later dogmas of the church and to draw its inspiration directly from him who is the source of it all. The phrase most frequently associated with Jesus’ teaching in the Synoptic Gospels is the Kingdom of God. Such a writer as Professor Bruce2 regards this as an “exhaustive category” under which all these teachings can be subsumed; and Ritschh the great German theologian, has made the Kingdom central in his theology. Through such influences the Kingdom of God has come to stand in modern thought for the moral and social ideal of Jesus Christ. It is a heavenly ideal but it embodies itself in the church. It is a “divine commonwealth” gradually being realized on earth. The Kingdom of God has become the great shibboleth of Christians in their attack on modern sociological problems.

But a prominent New Testament scholar recently startled the theological world by affirming that this modern conception of the Kingdom of God was a very different thing from the Kingdom which Jesus proclaimed. Johannes Weiss3 has maintained that the Kingdom of God in the New Testament must be interpreted in terms of Jewish eschatology, that it is transcendental and miraculous and has nothing to do with the

BSac 66:262 (April 1909) p. 345

moral renovation of humanity. It is the future state of heavenly blessedness. The eschatological here replaces the moral and social conception. Shailer Mathews, of Chicago, after accepting the social view of the Kingdom, in his “Social Teaching of Jesus,” rejected it for the eschatological, in his later work, the “Messianic Hope in the New Testament.”4

Our common view of the Kingdom was bound to be attacked sooner or later, because it failed to recognize the historical background in the teaching of Jesus. Professor Bruce calmly ignores all discussion of what Jesus’ hearers would understand when he spoke of the Kingdom. Jesus, however, treated the notion of the Kingdom as one current among the people. He nowhere expressly denned it and yet he certainly expected it to be understood. Any satisfactory exposition of the Kingdom of God, in the teaching of Jesus, must begin with a study of what that term meant to Jewish contemporaries. On the other hand, it does not follow that Jesus’ conception must be identified with that which was common in his time. Christianity owes its origin to him,...