Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§12.6 The Kingdom of God
ogy? Here again the issue is nicely posed by Wright's treatment. He commits
himself to Schweitzer's agenda of setting Jesus within the context of Jewish eschatology,
but it is an eschatology whose apocalyptic features are simply cosmic
sound effects. 452 This means that Wright is able to interpret the future elements
of Jesus' expectation solely in terms of Jesus' own journey to Jerusalem and Jerusalem's
destruction in 70 CE. That Jesus could have looked for anything more
than that — judgment of the nations, resurrection to angelic existence, the
heaven and hell of traditional Christian envisaging — Wright does not say.
The more common way forward has been the synthesis between the thesis
of Schweitzer's 'thoroughgoing eschatology' and the antithesis of Dodd's 'realized
eschatology' provided by Jeremias's inaugurated eschatology or 'eschatology
that is in process of realization' , 453 Imagery such as a train drawing into a
station, day beginning to dawn, the final stage of World War II begun with D-day
and climaxing in V-day (appreciated by an earlier generation), has all been employed
to illustrate the tension in Jesus' usage. My own pennyworth to the debate
has been to note the parallel between early Christian eschatology and Jesus' own
eschatology provided by reference to the Spirit in each. 454 In Paul's perspective
certainly, the Spirit experienced by the early believers was to be understood as
the 'first instalment' of the kingdom whose full inheritance was yet outstanding.
455 Jesus' own experience of anointing and ministry empowered by the same
Spirit/power of God may in itself have convinced him that God's longed-for (final)
manifestation of his royal rule was already in evidence 456 and that its full
manifestation could therefore not be long delayed.
The point is that such treatments have found it impossible to deny that Jesus
had expressed expectation for the imminent happening of events which did
«of happen. Jesus' kingdom preaching cannot be disentangled from imminent expectation,
with or without 'apocalyptic' features. Which also means that Jesus
had entertained hopes which were not fulfilled. There were 'final' elements in his
expectation which were not realized. Putting it bluntly, Jesus was proved wrong
by the course of events. The discomfort of the conclusion for scholars who were
also believers was softened by the thought both that it made more 'real' the humanness
of Jesus and that such a conclusion demonstrated their own dispassionate
method and scrupulous honesty: this was not the 'historical Jesus' they would
have wished to find!
452. Jesus 80-82, 96-97, 207-209. Wright is indebted to Caird, Language ch. 14.
453. Jeremias, Parables 230 ('sich realisierende Eschatologie').
454. J. D. G. Dunn, 'Spirit and Kingdom', ExpT 82 (1970-71) 36-40, reprinted in The
Christ and the Spirit vol. 2: Pneumatology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 133-41.
455. 2 Cor. 1.22; 5.5; similarly Rom. 8.23; cf. also Rom. 8.14-17; 1 Cor. 6.9-11; 15.44-
50; Gal. 4.6-7, 29-30; Eph. 1.14. See further my Theology of Paul 421, 424, 469-70.
456. Cf. Borg, Jesus 198-99.
479