Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 25:1 (Nov 1962)
Article: The Essential Nature of the Kingdom of God
Author: Gerald F. Hawthorne

WTJ 25:1 (Nov 62) p. 35

The Essential Nature of the Kingdom of God

Gerald F. Hawthorne

The Kingdom of God is a tremendously important and complex subject. Some insight into its importance can be gained by a perusal of John Bright’s recent book, The Kingdom of God (1953). Bright, at least, sees in the concept of the Kingdom the theme which gives to the Bible its unity and ties all its parts together (pp. 10f). He even offers a new title for the Old and New Testaments together: “The Book of the Coming Kingdom of God” (p. 197). For a brief introduction to the complexity of this problem, the opening pages of George Ladd’s The Gospel of the Kingdom, are most helpful. The purpose of this paper, however, is to show that Luke 17:20–21 contains the clearest enunciation of the essential nature of the Kingdom anywhere recorded in the words of Christ.

It was called forth by a question from the Pharisees—a religious-political party that was particularly hostile to our Lord during his earthly ministry. They emphasized the externals; he emphasized the spiritual. They emphasized ceremonial cleanness; he personal moral holiness. They withdrew from sinners; he associated with them. They stressed the Law of God; he stressed the love of God as the fulfillment of the Law. It is important to keep in mind who it was that asked this question: “When is the Kingdom of God coming?”

The Pharisees’ question was not at all involved, but it was revealing, nonetheless, and showed exactly what their concept of the nature of the Kingdom was, and what it was they were emphasizing. For to the Pharisees the Kingdom of God was primarily something that could be comprehended in a space-time concept: “When shall the Kingdom come?” To them it was “a world-embracing order, into which men may ‘enter,’ or from which they may be excluded”;1 political,

WTJ 25:1 (Nov 62) p. 36

national, especially involving them as God’s chosen people; physical, primarily, of this world. The answer given that day is perhaps the most-discussed and most-tortured saying of Jesus2 contained in the entire Gospel record.3 And yet it is also one of the most-important statements of our Lord about the Kingdom. For whatever interpretation an exegete may give to these words of the Saviour, he is bound to be impressed by them and say with Rudolf Otto that they were intended to startle and “to shatter the dogmatism of a finished eschatology and burst its too narrow limits”.4 I...