Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §12.6
membered preaching of God's kingdom has to do in greater or less degree with
what had previously been hopes and expectations for the future. 388
Some of these hopes he claimed were already being fulfilled. Things were
happening that earlier generations had longed to see. Something new, of lifechanging
value, was already before his hearers. Sight was being restored to the
blind, the lame were walking, even the dead raised. Good news was being
preached to the poor: the kingdom was theirs! The Baptist's message of imminent
judgment had to be qualified in the light of what was already happening
through Jesus' ministry. Satan's rule was already broken. There was an eschatological
harvest already to be reaped. 389
At other times Jesus spoke in still future terms. Of the kingdom of God
pressingly close: it had drawn near (in his own ministry); it posed a crisis which
had to be responded to at once. Of the kingdom of God as a sort of Utopian ideal
for the future on the earth: the last first, the humble exalted, the despised already
able to press into it; some at least of the promised reward could be given in a further
phase of history. Of the kingdom of God as a post-mortem state: to be 'entered
into' after suffering and self-sacrifice. Of the kingdom of God as a final
condition: following the unprecedented suffering anticipated in apocalyptic
thought (and by the Baptist), following a final judgment involving other generations
and nations, an angel-like existence.
Here then the Jesus quester is faced with a major problem. Both present
and future strands of Jesus' preaching on the kingdom of God seem to be firmly
rooted in the Jesus tradition and well established in all streams of the tradition. In
the light of this evidence we have little choice other than to conclude that Jesus'
teaching was remembered as being characterized by both emphases. Attempts to
eliminate one or the other or to give one a weight which overwhelms the other
have not generally been counted successful. 390 Individual items within the vari-
388. 'Jesus is not a "marginal Jew" in his eschatological preaching' (Theissen and Merz,
Historical Jesus 276).
389. Riches argues, with reference to such data, that Jesus 'transformed' the traditional
associations of the term 'kingdom' (Jesus ch. 5, particularly 103-104), but neglects the wider
associations listed in § 12.2c above, which suggest that 'transformation' is not the most appropriate
term to use.
390. For example, Weiss's future emphasis is one-sidedly pressed by Hiers, Historical
Jesus; Sanders is clear that in any choice between 'present' and 'future' the emphasis has to be
put on the kingdom as 'immediately future' (Jesus and Judaism 152); Allison, Jesus of Nazareth,
and Ehrman, Jesus, press the case more strongly. Caragounis finds no 'single kingdom of
God saying which unequivocally demands to be taken in the present sense' ('Kingdom of God'
424). On the other side, Dodd argued that 'Jesus intended to proclaim the Kingdom of God not
as something to come in the near future, but as a matter of present experience' (Parables 46); in
turn Käsemann argued that the irreconcilable contradiction between the two emphases could be
explained only by postulating that the 'already present' emphasis was authentic, and the 'still to
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