Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§ 12.5 The Kingdom of God
as one of the surest points of access to Jesus' own teaching, 360 not least because it
is one of the clearest assertions of the kingdom's presence within and through Jesus'
mission. 361 The structure of the saying should be noted: the two key phrases,
at the beginning and end of the sentence (the places of emphasis), are 'Spirit/finger
of God' and 'kingdom of God': 'but if it is by the Spirit/finger of God that I
cast out demons, then has come upon you the kingdom of God' . 362 This indicates
that the saying was thus formulated to emphasize the contrast with the preceding
verse. The point is missed by those who argue that Jesus' logic would have meant
attributing the same significance to the exorcisms of his Jewish compatriots. 363
What marked out Jesus' exorcisms was not just their success but the power by
which he achieved that success. 364 That power is identified differently in the different
retellings of the saying: either as 'the Spirit of God' (Matt. 12.28), that is,
by implication, a plenitude of the (eschatological) Spirit which the other Jewish
exorcists did not enjoy; 365 or as 'the finger of God' (Luke 11.20), that is, the (eschatological)
equivalent to the power by which Moses overcame the Egyptian
360. E.g., Bultmann, History 162; Perrin, Rediscovering 63-67; Schlosser, Regne 137-
39; Merkel, 'Gottesherrschaft' 142-44; Schürmann, Gottes Reich 106-108.
361. 'We also misunderstand the word if we understand it as saying that the Kingdom of
God is present only proleptically' (Becker, Jesus of Nazareth 109); similarly Merklein, Jesu
Botschaft 63-66; Gnilka, Jesus of Nazareth 129. Contrast R. H. Hiers, The Historical Jesus and
the Kingdom of God (Gainesville: University of Florida, 1973): 'the defeat of the demons
means. . . that the time for the establishment of God's Kingdom has come near' (63); similarly
Buchanan, Jesus 31-33.
362. Davies and Allison miss the point by asserting a christological emphasis: '"If/cast
out demons" . . . What matters is that Jesus cast out demons' (similarly Chilton, Pure Kingdom
68); and in asking 'How else but by God's power could Jewish exorcists cast out demons?' they
ignore the strong note of realized eschatology {Matthew 2.339, 341). See also below, chapter 15
n. 384.
363. Bultmann, History 14; Kümmel, Promise 105-106; Perrin, Rediscovering 63;
Sanders, Jesus and Judaism 134-35; Meier, Marginal Jew 2.410.
364. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit 48. E. Grässer responds to the argument that there exists
no qualitative difference between Jesus and other Jewish exorcists and that as an exorcist he is
'no unique phenomenon' quite sharply: '. .. as if the very fact that he brought the kingdom into
play with his exorcisms did not make make him precisely that!' ('On Understanding the Kingdom
of God' [1974], in Chilton, ed., The Kingdom of God 52-71 [here 56]).
365. It is almost universally agreed that Luke's 'finger' is more 'original' than Matthew's
'Spirit'; but a stronger case can be made for the latter than is usually appreciated (Dunn,
Jesus and the Spirit 45-46; J.-M. Van Cangh, 'Par l'Esprit de Dieu — par le Doigt de Dieu', in
Delobel, ed., Logia 337-42; further references in my 'Matthew 12:28/Luke 11:20' 196 n. 24;
discussion in Meier, Marginal Jew 2.464 n. 51; see further P. W. van der Horst, '"Finger of
God": Miscellaneous Notes on Luke 11:20 and Its Umwelt', in W. L. Petersen et al., eds., Sayings
of Jesus: Canonical and Non-Canonical, T. Baarda FS [NovTSup 89; Leiden: Brill, 1997]
89-103). That the Spirit would be more fully poured out in the age to come was one strand in
current Jewish expectation (see above, n. 65).
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