Kingdom of God and Eschatology
by N. T. Wright
The starting-point for serious Jesus-reconstruction is to grasp more clearly than we have before the fully Jewish and fully eschatological meaning of Jesus' announcement of the Kingdom of God. As I have argued at length elsewhere, the Jews of Jesus' day for the most part believed that the exile, the punishment for Israel's sins, was not yet over. If it were, the Romans would not be ruling Palestine, and nor for that matter would Herod or Caiaphas. To this extent, Reimarus was quite right. The context of Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom of God was the Jewish hope for liberation.
The apocalyptic announcement of the Kingdom of God, when we place it in its first-century Jewish context, was not, then, about the end of the world. It was about the great actions within history, whereby the one true and living God would act within Israel's history, and so within world history as a whole, to bring Israel's long and chequered story to its appointed climax, to liberate her from oppression, and to deal once and for all with the evil that had oppressed her. When we meet kingdom- announcers in the pages of Josephus, we are not in the presence of end-of-the-world dreamers, but of political revolutionaries, people who today with our confusing categories we would call right-wing extremists. They believed, quite simply, that there was `no king but God'; and they translated this directly into action, first into a tax revolt and then into armed rebellion. These people, whom we often think of as `zealots' (though Josephus doesn't use that term until later), included the hard-line Pharisees, the Shammaites who would stop at nothing to bring about the purification of Israel both from Gentile oppression and from renegades within the ranks.
Political aims and goals, and the means thought fit to attain them, were no doubt every bit as complex in the Middle East in the first century as they are today. But this strand of expectation constantly recurs, in text after text and movement after movement. Three features, which are enormously important for understanding Jesus, emerge as central to the apocalyptically-expressed Kingdom-dreams of first-century Palestinian Jews. These three features are drawn together in several prophetic passages, not least the well-known kingdom-passage in Isaiah 52.7-12.
First, they hoped that the real return from exile would happen at last. Second, as the necessary corollary of this, they hoped that evil would be defeated once and for all - and by `evil' they would mean not only the pagans, not only compromised Jews, but the dark power that they conceived to stand behind all earthly manifestations of evil. Thirdly, they hoped for the return of Israel's God himself, in person. What form this return would take is quite unclear. Some may have supposed that when YHWH appeared it would be, once more, like the pillar of cloud and fire in the wilderness. The great coming event would be, after all, a new exodus. And central to the whole expectation was of course the Temple. YHWH would return to the Temple. He would defeat the nations that were oppressing Jerusalem. He would liberate his people, so that they could build the Temple properly and worship and serve him in peace and freedom.
Notice carefully what follows. The expectation of the Kingdom of God was not a matter of abstract ideas or timeless truths. It was not about a new sort of religion, or a new moral code. It was not a general statement about how one might go to heaven after death. It was a matter of a story that was reaching its critical moment; a history that was moving towards a climax. When Jesus announced to his contemporaries that `the Kingdom of God is at hand', he was telling them that the new chapter had opened in the story they were all familiar with.
Reimarus, then, was right to locate Jesus on the map of first-century Jewish kingdom-expectations. But what Reimarus and his followers to this day never grasped was that Jesus, in announcing the Kingdom, consistently and radically redefined it. The Kingdom was indeed breaking in; but it didn't look like people had thought it would. Rather than the sort of revolution that the Maccabees had engaged in so successfully two centuries before, Jesus looked back to the prophetic paradigms, not least those in Isaiah, and made all three of the kingdom- themes central to his own work, both in action and in teaching. Where he was, the renewed, reconstituted Israel was being formed, as he healed, feasted, forgave, challenged existing slaveries. Where he was, the powers of evil were being defeated in a way which implied that they were suffering more than a mere temporary setback. Where he was, though I think this remained at most implicit until near the very end, YHWH was present, reconstituting his people, establishing his sovereignty in symbolic actions, bringing about the long-awaited fulfilment of prophecy, the climax of Israel's long and tortuous story.
In all of this - which we have no time to study in any depth or detail here - Jesus was not so much like a wandering preacher preaching sermons, or a wandering philosopher offering maxims, as like a politician gathering support for a new and highly risky movement. But we should not imagine that politics here could be split off from theology. Jesus was doing what he was doing in the belief that in this way Israel's god was indeed becoming king. Everything pointed to the basic announcement: the Kingdom of God was present, but it was not like what Jesus' contemporaries had imagined.
This strange announcement is focussed in certain key sayings: `The Kingdom of God is at hand'; `the kingdom of God has come upon you'. Scholars have debated endlessly whether Jesus thought of the kingdom as present or future from the point of view of his ministry. This discussion has recently been hijacked into the discussion of whether he spoke of an apocalyptic kingdom (future) or a non-apocalyptic kingdom (the supposed `present kingdom' of Cynic or wisdom or gnostic teaching, which I have argued is a figment of the scholarly imagination). Once we learn to think in true first-century Jewish kingdom-categories, however, there is no problem, not even a logical oddity, about embracing both present and future elements within the one apocalyptic scheme.
Consider the case of Simeon ben-Kosiba, hailed by Rabbi Akiba as bar-Kochba, the son of the star. Bar-Kochba announced the revolution against Rome in 132 AD. He declared a new Jewish state, and minted coins carrying the new date: the year 1. If anyone had asked one of his followers whether the kingdom of God had indeed arrived at that point, the answer would be, Yes of course! To say `no' would have been utterly disloyal to the great leader, to the new movement. But if anyone were then to ask, is there then nothing to work for, to fight for? Is the kingdom completely and purely present? The answer would again be obvious: of course there is still a battle to fight! Precisely because the kingdom is present, has truly been inaugurated, we are now committed to fighting the battle; and we shall win it. In first-century Jewish categories, then, it is no problem to think of the Kingdom as present and future. It is actually a problem to think of it in any other way within the ministry of Jesus.
What, then, was Jesus' aim and intention? Where was his kingdom-announcement leading? What was he going to do next? That is the question we must glance at in a moment. But before we leave the topic of the kingdom, please note. If we begin at this point in our understanding of Jesus' announcement of the kingdom, all sorts of features of the canonical gospels come up into three dimensions and make striking historical sense. Jesus' welcome to outcasts, his healing of the sick, and his celebratory meals with all and sundry, were not mere examples of a general principle, for instance the love of God for sinners. They were the reality of which such generalisations are pale abstractions. This was what the climax of history would look like. And, please note, if this was the climax of Israel's history, the whole point of the story was that it was also the climax of the world's history. Israel's covenant God was the creator of the world; therefore, when he finally did for Israel what he was going to do for Israel, the world as a whole would be brought within the reach of his saving justice and sovereignty. If we can recapture the historical particularity of Jesus' announcement of the Kingdom, rather than leave it vague or generalized, or suppose it to be a cipher either for the hope of post mortem heaven or for the church itself, I believe we have a clear road into an evangelism and mission which will bring back together what the Enlightenment so successfully split apart: the personal challenge of God to every man, woman and child, and the social and political challenge of the Kingdom of God to all the world.
by N. T. Wright
The starting-point for serious Jesus-reconstruction is to grasp more clearly than we have before the fully Jewish and fully eschatological meaning of Jesus' announcement of the Kingdom of God. As I have argued at length elsewhere, the Jews of Jesus' day for the most part believed that the exile, the punishment for Israel's sins, was not yet over. If it were, the Romans would not be ruling Palestine, and nor for that matter would Herod or Caiaphas. To this extent, Reimarus was quite right. The context of Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom of God was the Jewish hope for liberation.
The apocalyptic announcement of the Kingdom of God, when we place it in its first-century Jewish context, was not, then, about the end of the world. It was about the great actions within history, whereby the one true and living God would act within Israel's history, and so within world history as a whole, to bring Israel's long and chequered story to its appointed climax, to liberate her from oppression, and to deal once and for all with the evil that had oppressed her. When we meet kingdom- announcers in the pages of Josephus, we are not in the presence of end-of-the-world dreamers, but of political revolutionaries, people who today with our confusing categories we would call right-wing extremists. They believed, quite simply, that there was `no king but God'; and they translated this directly into action, first into a tax revolt and then into armed rebellion. These people, whom we often think of as `zealots' (though Josephus doesn't use that term until later), included the hard-line Pharisees, the Shammaites who would stop at nothing to bring about the purification of Israel both from Gentile oppression and from renegades within the ranks.
Political aims and goals, and the means thought fit to attain them, were no doubt every bit as complex in the Middle East in the first century as they are today. But this strand of expectation constantly recurs, in text after text and movement after movement. Three features, which are enormously important for understanding Jesus, emerge as central to the apocalyptically-expressed Kingdom-dreams of first-century Palestinian Jews. These three features are drawn together in several prophetic passages, not least the well-known kingdom-passage in Isaiah 52.7-12.
First, they hoped that the real return from exile would happen at last. Second, as the necessary corollary of this, they hoped that evil would be defeated once and for all - and by `evil' they would mean not only the pagans, not only compromised Jews, but the dark power that they conceived to stand behind all earthly manifestations of evil. Thirdly, they hoped for the return of Israel's God himself, in person. What form this return would take is quite unclear. Some may have supposed that when YHWH appeared it would be, once more, like the pillar of cloud and fire in the wilderness. The great coming event would be, after all, a new exodus. And central to the whole expectation was of course the Temple. YHWH would return to the Temple. He would defeat the nations that were oppressing Jerusalem. He would liberate his people, so that they could build the Temple properly and worship and serve him in peace and freedom.
Notice carefully what follows. The expectation of the Kingdom of God was not a matter of abstract ideas or timeless truths. It was not about a new sort of religion, or a new moral code. It was not a general statement about how one might go to heaven after death. It was a matter of a story that was reaching its critical moment; a history that was moving towards a climax. When Jesus announced to his contemporaries that `the Kingdom of God is at hand', he was telling them that the new chapter had opened in the story they were all familiar with.
Reimarus, then, was right to locate Jesus on the map of first-century Jewish kingdom-expectations. But what Reimarus and his followers to this day never grasped was that Jesus, in announcing the Kingdom, consistently and radically redefined it. The Kingdom was indeed breaking in; but it didn't look like people had thought it would. Rather than the sort of revolution that the Maccabees had engaged in so successfully two centuries before, Jesus looked back to the prophetic paradigms, not least those in Isaiah, and made all three of the kingdom- themes central to his own work, both in action and in teaching. Where he was, the renewed, reconstituted Israel was being formed, as he healed, feasted, forgave, challenged existing slaveries. Where he was, the powers of evil were being defeated in a way which implied that they were suffering more than a mere temporary setback. Where he was, though I think this remained at most implicit until near the very end, YHWH was present, reconstituting his people, establishing his sovereignty in symbolic actions, bringing about the long-awaited fulfilment of prophecy, the climax of Israel's long and tortuous story.
In all of this - which we have no time to study in any depth or detail here - Jesus was not so much like a wandering preacher preaching sermons, or a wandering philosopher offering maxims, as like a politician gathering support for a new and highly risky movement. But we should not imagine that politics here could be split off from theology. Jesus was doing what he was doing in the belief that in this way Israel's god was indeed becoming king. Everything pointed to the basic announcement: the Kingdom of God was present, but it was not like what Jesus' contemporaries had imagined.
This strange announcement is focussed in certain key sayings: `The Kingdom of God is at hand'; `the kingdom of God has come upon you'. Scholars have debated endlessly whether Jesus thought of the kingdom as present or future from the point of view of his ministry. This discussion has recently been hijacked into the discussion of whether he spoke of an apocalyptic kingdom (future) or a non-apocalyptic kingdom (the supposed `present kingdom' of Cynic or wisdom or gnostic teaching, which I have argued is a figment of the scholarly imagination). Once we learn to think in true first-century Jewish kingdom-categories, however, there is no problem, not even a logical oddity, about embracing both present and future elements within the one apocalyptic scheme.
Consider the case of Simeon ben-Kosiba, hailed by Rabbi Akiba as bar-Kochba, the son of the star. Bar-Kochba announced the revolution against Rome in 132 AD. He declared a new Jewish state, and minted coins carrying the new date: the year 1. If anyone had asked one of his followers whether the kingdom of God had indeed arrived at that point, the answer would be, Yes of course! To say `no' would have been utterly disloyal to the great leader, to the new movement. But if anyone were then to ask, is there then nothing to work for, to fight for? Is the kingdom completely and purely present? The answer would again be obvious: of course there is still a battle to fight! Precisely because the kingdom is present, has truly been inaugurated, we are now committed to fighting the battle; and we shall win it. In first-century Jewish categories, then, it is no problem to think of the Kingdom as present and future. It is actually a problem to think of it in any other way within the ministry of Jesus.
What, then, was Jesus' aim and intention? Where was his kingdom-announcement leading? What was he going to do next? That is the question we must glance at in a moment. But before we leave the topic of the kingdom, please note. If we begin at this point in our understanding of Jesus' announcement of the kingdom, all sorts of features of the canonical gospels come up into three dimensions and make striking historical sense. Jesus' welcome to outcasts, his healing of the sick, and his celebratory meals with all and sundry, were not mere examples of a general principle, for instance the love of God for sinners. They were the reality of which such generalisations are pale abstractions. This was what the climax of history would look like. And, please note, if this was the climax of Israel's history, the whole point of the story was that it was also the climax of the world's history. Israel's covenant God was the creator of the world; therefore, when he finally did for Israel what he was going to do for Israel, the world as a whole would be brought within the reach of his saving justice and sovereignty. If we can recapture the historical particularity of Jesus' announcement of the Kingdom, rather than leave it vague or generalized, or suppose it to be a cipher either for the hope of post mortem heaven or for the church itself, I believe we have a clear road into an evangelism and mission which will bring back together what the Enlightenment so successfully split apart: the personal challenge of God to every man, woman and child, and the social and political challenge of the Kingdom of God to all the world.
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