bowing in submission, that may be found in Jewish apocalyptic and its modern counterpart; it has no place in Jesus' teaching.

THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM

We come to the crucial point in Jesus' teaching about the coming kingdom when we ask as to its nature. The teaching of Jesus is significant, first of all, in what it omits. The physical, the material, the national, all so dominant and so elaborately pictured in the apocalypses, are strikingly absent. Equally clear is Jesus' emphasis, and "vitality is a matter of emphasis." Jesus gives no description of the kingdom, but in very many passages he does speak of the children of the kingdom and of how things happen in the kingdom or in relation to it. But whether he speaks of the children of the kingdom, of the conditions of entrance thereto, or of the gifts of the kingdom, the emphasis is always upon the moral and spiritual. The beatitudes form only one of the signal evidences for all this. We get Jesus' thought here most clearly, however, when we call to mind the fact that the kingdom of God means the rule of God, and when we realize that what the rule of God means to a man depends directly upon what his thought of God is. Central in Jesus' thought of God, as we have seen, is the character of God. We are not surprised, then, when the sayings of Jesus constantly intimate that the rule of God means the sway of God's spirit in men's hearts. Undoubtedly, Jesus, like the prophets, believed that in the new world of God's consummated rule nature would be changed, sickness and suffering would be gone; but his emphasis is clearly upon the rule of a new spirit.

It is not enough to regard the negative side merely, the overthrow of the forces of evil; Paul too looked forward to such a victory, but quite in the spirit of Jesus he declared that the kingdom of God was "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." "Thy kingdom [rule] come" means for Jesus "thy will be done," and the commentary upon this is to be found in Matt. 5. 38–48. Here is no mere ad interim ethics. Prophet and apocalyptist alike had set forth the lofty idea that in the coming age God should dwell among men. Jesus does not point out here merely what men shall do in the days before the kingdom comes. He shows them what this God is and what men must be who are to live with him as his children. And that belongs to the next age as to this. Significant is the fact that it is this figure of father and son that Jesus constantly employs to depict the relation of God and man, not the figure of king and subject. And when Jesus uses the word "king," he gives to it his own meaning. The kingship that the Gentiles practice he repudiates, setting up his own idea of authority and greatness (Luke 22. 25ff.; Matt. 18. ff.; Matt. 20. 20ff.). And this ideal for the children, let it be remembered, he finds in the spirit of the Father. Consistent with all this is the view that in his reference to the "new covenant," which stands for the new age, Jesus is thinking in line with that noblest expression of Old Testament vision of the new world found in Jer. 31. 31

34.

PRESENT AND FUTURE

These considerations help us to answer the disputed question whether the kingdom for Jesus lay wholly in the future or not. Strictly speaking, prophetic and apoc

alyptic writings alike assume a certain rule of God over the world in the present. The presence of evil, however, is a contradiction of this rule in principle and not simply in measure. Over against this evil they declare the coming reign of God. So Jesus taught; this was the good news, that the deliverance from evil was at the door. But here the comparison ceases. With apocalypticism the contrast between this age and the next is absolutehere the supremacy of evil, there the utter triumph of the good. With the apocalyptist all deliverance is in the future; it is not so with Jesus. He sees the good already mightier than the evil: the sick are being healed. the power of evil spirits broken, men's sins are being forgiven. In a moment of vision he sees Satan fallen as lightning from heaven. Men are entering into the kingdom; he can speak even now of the children of the kingdom, of men who are in the kingdom. For one thing, the Messiah is already present and the friends of the bridegroom are to rejoice and not to mourn (Luke II. 17-20; 7. 22; 10. 18; Matt. 21. 31; 23. 13; 9. 15; II. II). He not merely asks men to repent in preparation for the coming kingdom, he summons them to live even now according to its laws. Indeed, he can offer them even now the life of the kingdom, leading them into the peace and joy of that fellowship with God which he himself enjoys (Matt. 11. 25-30). Just because it is ethical, the message of Jesus necessarily breaks through the rigid apocalyptic opposition of this age and the next. God is for him essentially the good Father, the relation between God and man is fundamentally that of likeness of inner spirit between Father and son, not that between Ruler and subject (Matt. 5. 43-48). Such a fellowship God

can establish even now, and Jesus rejoices over these beginnings of the rule of God in which the hopes of ancient days are being fulfilled (Luke 10. 17-24).

But with all this it must be added that the great emphasis of Jesus was upon the future. It may well be asked after what has been said: "If man himself has experienced God, if he has felt God living and working about him, if he has met the will and the love of God in Jesus, if he has found forgiveness for his guilt and help for his sorrow, are not for him the kingdom of God and its gifts already present?" (Weinel, Biblische Theologie des neuen Testaments, p. 198). Yes, and no. All this is the expression of God's presence and rule, but it is only the beginning; it is the dawn that suggests the day, but the day itself has not yet come. So, it seems clear, Jesus thought. How, then, did Jesus conceive that the consummation would take place? Here is the place where no dogmatic answer can be given. We are restrained in part by the problem of our sources, as pointed out above. Outside the long apocalyptic discourses we find with Jesus a notable reticence as to detail. Just because his faith is so strong in God and in his coming rule, he does not need to draw programs of the future after the apocalyptic manner. He can leave all this with God. At certain points, however, we can be fairly sure, and here the apocalyptic framework becomes most apparent. Apparently, Jesus expected in the near future some great manifestation of the power of God which would bring in the kingdom. Connected with this was his expectation that he himself would return to consummate his work and that this return would evidence his Messiahship to the men who had rejected him.

Whether with this consummation was to come the final Judgment and all the rest, that cannot be asserted positively upon the basis of our sources.

QUESTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

This study of Jesus' teaching concerning the coming kingdom brings us to certain questions and conclusions.

First of all we consider the fact that Jesus' expectation was not fulfilled in the form in which he held it. The kingdom was not consummated within the brief period that he seems to have anticipated, nor did he return in the manner in which the disciples, and apparently he himself, expected (Matt. 10. 23; 16. 28; 24. 34). Later passages in the New Testament indicate what a problem this was for the faith of the early church.

This situation has been met within the church in two ways. The premillennial method we have noted. It fastens upon the apocalyptic form, ignoring the essential and original message of Jesus. It forces the whole into a scheme that is compounded of Jewish apocalypticism and the letter of the Old Testament, missing the higher prophetic message there as in the New Testament. And then by various methods of ingenuity and violence it seeks to evade the obvious conclusion that you cannot insist upon an imminent visible return on the ground of an infallible letter when plain history has disproven this infallibility. The more common method has been to ignore the unwelcome apocalyptic ideas, regarding simply the ethical-spiritual message of Jesus, or to spiritualize the sayings that would not otherwise fit in. Historical knowledge and a historical conscience will not longer