Kingdom of God and Eschatology
Eschatology is the term we apply to the study of ‘the Last Things’. In Jewish thought this entailed: God intervening in order to establish 'Malkuth' the Hebrew term for 'Kingdom of God' - a general recognition of His sovereign power by the whole creation; Resurrection of the dead; Judgement of Evil by God; the Rewarding of Righteousness by God.
The signs that this was happening would be: the arrival of the Messiah, the Anointed One. This Messiah would have the legal authority of Moses, the prophetic authority of Elijah, and the kingly authority which comes from being a descendant of King David. Jews in the time of Jesus (and many Orthodox Jews today) might expect the following:
At the time of Jesus, Palestine was occupied by the Romans. The occupation of the sacred land by a foreign power was one part of the stages of judgement described in Deuteronomy Ch 28 (Deut 28: 43-44) which culminates in the loss of the sacred land altogether if Israel does not repent. Many Jews, therefore, believed that the nation as a whole had to return to God, and the study and application of the Torah to their lives would create the circumstances where God could, once again, restore Israel to independence and honour.
About 150 years previously, Judah Maccabeus had led a successful revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes, freeing Israel from a serious attempt to quash the Jewish religion and establish Hellenistic culture in Israel. There would probably have been people in the time of Jesus whose grandparents told them about the part their parents and grandparents played in this tremendous event. It held an honoured place in recent memory. The Feast of the Dedication of the Temple after the Maccabean Wars (Hanukah) is mentioned in the Fourth Gospel at least once. Its themes of light, freedom and dedication to God are clearly discernible throughout the Gospel. Religious Jews at the time of Jesus saw the Torah as being the way in which a person could ‘know’ God as Creator and King, discover how to live righteous lives, and escape judgement on the Last Day. However, as we shall see, Jesus takes those themes and directs them towards himself, and away from Torah and Temple.
This raises the question, of course of when Judgement will take place. We have seen that Jews viewed time in a linear fashion – it began at the Creation of the World, and would proceed, with God in charge, until the time when He decided to intervene in judgement at some time in the future on the Day of the Lord. This traditional Jewish way of looking at the last things is called Future Eschatology.
We have already seen in our study of the Synoptics that scholars such as A Schweitzer began to discern a thread in Jesus’ teaching that indicated that Jesus himself believed that the arrival of the Kingdom of God on earth was imminent. C H Dodd goes further, suggesting that Jesus taught that all the conditions for the arrival of the Kingdom have been fulfilled, and that His death and resurrection released the power of the Kingdom into the Church to work through the world like yeast, as the parable in Mark 4 says. This view of the Last Things is called Realised Eschatology.
Although this way of viewing eschatology in Jesus' teaching has much to recommend it, nevertheless, it is clear from other NT writings that the early church believed that further intervention was necessary in order to fulfil the conditions for the Day of the Lord. As N T Wright puts it "Sin still stalked the world from Jerusalem to Gibraltar." (Jesus and the Victory of God) Little has changed, and gradually a compromise between traditional Future and Realised Eschatology was developed, first by H Conzellman and then by J Jeremias. This view, called Inaugurated Eschatology held that the Kingdom of God has begun on earth. The existence of the Church, the believing community centred around the table fellowship of the Eucharist, and the work of the Holy Spirit, empowering believers, restraining evil and inspiring conversion, demonstrate this. Nevertheless, there will come a time when God will act decisively and unequivocally to establish His kingdom on earth in the presence of all people.