Kingdom

The Challenge of the Kingdom

We may therefore safely conclude that Jesus habitually went from village to village, speaking of the kingdom of the God of Israel, celebrating this kingdom in various ways, not least in sharing meals with all and sundry. These actions and words must therefore be seen not as incidental behaviour, irrelevant to his worldview or mindset, but as part at least of the praxis through which we can bring his worldview into focus N. T. Wright Jesus and the Victory of God (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1996) 150.

In The Challenge of Jesus, N. T. Wright correctly points out that we need to understand the “Kingdom of God” in terms of first-century Judaism, not modern conceptions. For Wright, this means properly understanding the election of Israel as well as the eschatology of Israel (35). God chose Israel to bless the whole world (Gen 12:1-3). But after centuries of exile and domination by foreign powers, some in Israel began to wonder how that blessing would happen.

The Challenge of the Kingdom

Wright suggests three ways at least some of Jewish thinkers understood the problem (37). First, for Jews like the Qumran community, withdrawal from society was the best option. Assuming the standard view of the Qumran community, it appears that this group went out into the wilderness to “prepare the way of the Lord” by living an ultra-pure life in anticipation of the soon arrival of Messiah. Second, the opposite was the case for Jews like Herod. Herod was more or less a Roman, wholeheartedly buying into the Roman worldview. Perhaps I would also include Josephus here since he seemed to think that the Roman victory over Jerusalem was “God’s will.” The third view was that of the Zealots, who did not meekly withdraw into the wilderness, nor did they compromise. Rather, like Phineas in the Hebrew Bible or Judas Maccabees, they burned zealously for the traditions of the Jews and took up arms against the Romans.

According to Wright, what was common between the Zealots and the Qumran community was the belief that the exile would end soon. God was about to break into history and establish his kingdom in Jerusalem once and for all. The nations would be converted (or judged), and the whole world would worship at Jerusalem. While this eschatological view appears slightly different among the various Jewish documents of the Second Temple Period, that God would establish his kingdom and end the exile is as much of a “standard” view as anything in this period.

Jesus appears in Galilee announcing the kingdom of God is at hand.” (Mark 1:14-15). The “Kingdom” is so commonplace to those of us in the church that it has lost any rhetorical “punch” it once had. “Kingdom” has become an overworked metaphor or a theological fighting point. But we are not the people to whom that announcement was originally addressed. In the synoptic gospels, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness, using language drawn from the great kingdom passages of the Old Testament. Then Jesus preached that the Kingdom was at hand – and that it was actually present! To those Jews living in the first century, under the oppression of Roman rule, especially in Galilee — the Kingdom of God was a radical, even revolutionary idea. It was the hope of many Jews that God would establish the kingdom immediately and the Messiah would come to end the long exile of his people.

Is Wright’s view of the “kingdom” different than the use of the phrase in popular preaching? What do people mean when they use phrases like “building the kingdom” or “working for the kingdom”? How is this related to what Jesus was teaching? (Or, is it related at all to the teaching of Jesus?)

The Challenge of the Kingdom (Part 2)

One of the things that has always annoyed me about N. T. Wright’s description of the Kingdom in the Gospels is that he seems to be guarding the idea of the Kingdom on two separate fronts. On the one hand, he frequently denies that Jewish expectations were looking for the “end of space and time,” or the end of the world.  Here has in mind the typical American view of the end times as channeled through the Left Behind series.  Wright usually uses words like “lurid” to describe these apocalyptic fantasies. (While I do believe in a future rapture, I think that pop-media goes too far, turning what was a “blessed hope” into a post-apocalyptic movie of Schwarzenegger-ian proportions.)

On the other hand, Wright wants to invest the Kingdom with a fair amount of radicalness in the first century.  This means he must avoid the rather bland descriptions of the Kingdom as doing good and loving your neighbor popular in liberal Christianity.  In Simply Jesus, for example, he compares Jesus to several messianic movements in the Second Temple period.  Jesus is in many ways more radical than these, but obviously less militaristic.

I think both sides have a cause to be annoyed at Wright’s regular characterization of their positions.  For example, while Left Behind is one representation of Dispensationalist thinking, it is in fact fantasy, a fictional “what if” story and not at all a reasonable presentation of a theology.  To me, judging Dispensationalism by Left Behind is life judging Catholicism by the movie Dogma.  This is a strawman argument at best and an ad hominem argument at worst.  Wright regular points out that the Jews expected a real kingdom in this world, not the end of the world whether (post-apocalyptic or eternal state).  This is exactly what Dispensationalist have always said about Jewish messianic hopes. It disappoints me that wild speculation in bad fiction is used to judge a theological system.  (There are many good reasons to attack dispensational theology, the popularity of the Left Behind series ought not be one of them).

On the second front, Wright is correct that protestant liberal interpretations of the Kingdom are bland and not at all what Jesus would have meant.  Nor would Jesus have been understood if he tried to present a Kingdom which was based on the “Golden Rule” alone.  There are far more political and social issues in the teaching of Jesus which have to be dismissed if he was just telling us to be nice to each other.  What is more, why kill someone who was encouraging us to love one another?  What harm could Jesus have done if that was all he really taught?  No, there is something more in the teaching of Jesus, something which was a challenge to the worldview of the people who heard him teach and watched him “act out” the Kingdom of God.

Wright is certainly correct when he states that Jesus was offering a critique of his contemporaries from within, “his summons was not to abandon Judaism and try something else, but to be the true, returned-from-exile people of the one true God” (Challenge of Jesus, 52).  Jesus is presenting himself as the voice of Isaiah 40-55 – calling his people out of exile to meet their messiah and to enjoy a renewed relationship with their God.