Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

U2.3 The Kingdom of God
texts, subjecting them to intensive analysis, drawing out immediate conclusions
regarding their likely impact, and then pulling in other texts in support — is not
the most obvious way to proceed. Questions about the larger picture, about the
meaningfulness of describing individual passages as 'eschatological' (or 'apocalyptic')
or about the symbolical or metaphorical force of any particular usage are
unlikely to find a satisfactory answer by a process of atomistic exegesis.
Instead, in line with the methodological decision that we must look first for
the broad picture (§10.2), it makes better sense to attempt to gain a broad overview
of the full range of Jesus' kingdom teaching and its most closely related
themes. In that way we can begin to appreciate the motifs and emphases which
most characterized Jesus' kingdom preaching. And in the light of the full sweep
of the Jesus tradition regarding the kingdom we will be in a better position to
tackle the three key questions and to ask in a more informed and meaningful way
what impact Jesus made at this point, what his preaching of the kingdom evoked
in his hearers' minds. From what has been remembered and the way in which it
has been remembered we will be in a better position to clarify (to the extent that
that is possible) what response Jesus intended to evoke by his use of the phrase
'the kingdom of God'.
How best to order the material in such an overview? Various schemata have
been offered at one time or another — theological and salvation-historical,
ecclesiological and ethical, social and political. But the debate on the kingdom
which exploded at the beginning of the twentieth century and reemerged in its last
two decades with equal ferocity, has been triggered by one central feature — the
future/present tension within the Jesus tradition. That is to say, the tradition represents
Jesus as speaking of the kingdom as yet to come but also already present. I
put the matter baldly in the first instance, though it is capable of almost infinite refinement,
as we shall see. But there has never been any dispute among questers of
the historical Jesus as to these bald facts (the kingdom both future and present in
the Jesus tradition), not at least since the focus turned to the sayings of Jesus and
John's Gospel was sidelined. Many find the continuing debate rather sterile, but
talk of God's kingdom is too central to the Jesus tradition, so that we can hardly
ignore either it or the debate about it. And since this twofold feature, this yet to
come but already present, runs through the great bulk of the tradition and not just
in kingdom passages, the future/present emphases continue to provide a useful
means of structuring a review of the tradition. The immediate concern, of course,
is to clarify how deeply rooted both 'tenses' (future/present) are in the Jesus tradition.
But bearing in mind our three key questions, however, it will be important repeatedly
to ask, In what sense 'future' ? In what sense 'present' ? In what sense 'eschatological'?
In what sense 'symbol' or 'metaphor' or otherwise? And finally to
ask whether some grand narrative emerges at the end of our analysis, whether the
first memories of Jesus' preaching build into a coherent whole?
ZLO^