Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§ 12.6 The Kingdom of God
dorn subverts any attempt to draw a single uniform picture of the kingdom from
them. 487 So scholars should not make too much of the crudities and inconsistencies
in the hope expressed in the metaphor of the kingdom of God, as though it
could be expressed otherwise and more adequately. But for centuries Jews hoped
for the age to come and Christians have hoped for heaven without either having
any clear idea of what they are hoping for beyond these terms and the most prominent
images which fill out the core metaphor.
Again we ask, was it any different for Jesus and for those who first treasured
and performed his words? Perhaps we should simply infer that 'the kingdom
of God' for Jesus was an alternative way of speaking of the age to come, of
heaven, and of the way heaven impacts on earth. It had reference, but no precision
of 'meaning' — hence all the variegated, sometimes inconsistent images. 488
But its powerful symbolism evidently motivated Jesus as no other image or metaphor
did.
All this discussion to clarify what Jesus may have meant or how he may
have been heard when he spoke of 'the kingdom of God', and all to so modest an
outcome! — or so it might seem to some. But if I am right in the final reflection
above, it is more important to have clarified the evocativeness of the language before
pressing it for more content of affirmation or practice. If the piano is to give
out (a) coherent tune(s), it has first itself to be tuned. In this case I have said all
that I can to fine-tune our hearing hermeneutically and can now begin to play
tunes that should be more easily recognizable to devotees of the Quest.
487. Cf. the principal thesis of Liebenberg, Language (e.g., 46-47, 69, 158-59), though
he also stresses the stability of 'generic-level structures' and that narrative contexts curtailed
the parables' inherent polyvalency (58-59, 70-71, 156-57). 'Even when one reads them in isolation
— in order to make sense of their stories — one has to assume a certain
"Bedeutungshorizont" [horizon of meaning]' (58-59).
488. Leivestad, noting the great variety of eschatological expectations in early Judaism,
adds the comment: 'Apparently Jesus did not feel the need to reduce them to any kind of order'
{Jesus 167-68).
487