thing else than the kingdom of the Messiah, even in those passages where they appear to denote the (invisible) church, the moral kingdom of the Christian religion, and such like, or to express some modern abstraction of the concrete conception which is one given in the history."[1] While the historical and exegetical spirit when once touched with the glow of religious feeling can say: "We await no kingdom of God which is to descend from heaven upon the earth and destroy this world; but we hope to be assembled with the church of Jesus Christ in the heavenly βασιλεία. In this sense can we yearn and say as did the ancient Christians: "Thy kingdom come."[2]
The worth of each of these grounds for holding to an apocalyptic and eschatological conception of the kingdom is considerable, but especially can one appreciate the historical position. Probably the recognition of the importance of the apocalyptic literature in the formation of the early Christian vocabulary, if not Christology, may yet be still further emphasized. And it cannot be denied that Jesus often used expressions[3] that, were they the only ones he had left, would be sufficient to justify the somewhat sweeping statement of Harnack[4] that "the gospel entered into the world as an apocalyptic eschatological message, apocalyptical and eschatological not only in its form, but in its contents." But notwithstanding all this, the total impression made by the statements of Jesus in regard to the kingdom is not that of a post-mortem or post-catastrophic condition. At the outset of his preaching he announced its
- ↑ Meyer: Commentary on Matthew, 3:2. For excellent statement of the similar views on Schmoller and J. Weiss, as well as the opposing views of Ritschl, see the mediating article of Schnedermann in Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 1894, No. 7, an abstract of which appears in the Thinker, January, 1895.
- ↑ J. Weiss. Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, p. 76.
- ↑ For instance, Luke 13:28 sq. Mark 9:1. Matt. 25:31 sq.
- ↑ History of Dogma, I, 58.—In the next sentence to that quoted, however, "apocalyptical" is given so broad a definition as to modify the force of this statement, and a few pages later (I, 62) the author gives what appears like a hesitating assent to the belief in a present kingdom.
