Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

So we have here a sample of philology. We actually need even more of it; it is simply unavoidable, because we still have that lovely saying a theologian once uttered, reflecting Matthew 19:24: “A camel cannot enter into theology’s heavenly kingdom without first passing through the eye of the needle that is philology.”

One more preliminary remark: in Israel the earliest time when people spoke of a “kingship of God” or “royal reign of God” was the monarchical period, that is, the time of David and Solomon.¹ This already shows us that the concept of God’s royal reign had a relationship to actual society from the very beginning of its use: it would be a society in which God’s kingship would be visible. In the Bible this concept never referred to something purely internal or purely in a future life. That was often ignored in later times. But people should have known that a king without a people is no king at all but a figure in a museum.

There was, of course, a good reason why the concept of the reign of God was often understood in the church as something purely future: the evangelist Matthew speaks, with very few exceptions, of the “kingdom of heaven” instead of the “kingdom of God.” That led people astray into thinking of the kingdom of God as identical with heaven, a purely transcendent reality. But the Matthean kingdom of God is precisely not what the Bible calls “heaven.” In the Judaism of the time “the heavens” could be a polite circumlocution for “God.” People didn’t want to speak the word “God” all the time. So the “kingdom of heaven” is nothing other than the “kingdom of God,” and the kingdom of God is primarily and above all on earth.

One final observation: the abstraction “royal reign” (Hebrew malkuth) is relatively late. Originally people said, using a verb instead of an abstract noun, “God reigns as king.” But after the crisis of the exile this cultic statement about God’s eternal kingship slipped into a historical vortex, a historical dynamic. Now it could be said with much stronger emphasis that “The Lord becomes king.”

This means that God is now definitively establishing in history, and specifically in the present crisis in Israel, the kingship that was always his. God’s eternal royal reign is manifested in that God intervenes, redeems his people, and creates them anew. God becomes the judge and rescuer of his people—in that sense God demonstrates his rule and in that sense it can be said that God is becoming king.

So much for preliminary remarks! Now to the matter at hand.

The Preaching of the Baptizer

The word “eschatology” is familiar to everyone who is interested in theology. Eschatology is often understood to mean “doctrine about the last things.” In classic Christian dogmatics eschatology deals with the death of the individual, judgment and purification after death, eternal blessedness—and ultimately the end of the world, its judgment, and the resurrection of the dead.

For a long time eschatology was the final tractate in dogmatics, concluding the whole subject. Consequently it had something distant, remote, and otherworldly about it. One felt as if it had very little to do with the present course of history. But when we talk about New Testament eschatology—and Jesus’ proclamation of the reign of God is pure eschatology—it is very different. Here the “last things,” that is, what will change and transform everything, happen not in the distant future but in the immediate days to come. These things are near; they are breathing down our necks.

This should make clear what we mean when we begin to talk about the eschatology of John the Baptizer, because with the Baptizer what eschatology means in the Bible leaps up before our eyes. If we understand the Baptizer’s preaching of the end time we will better comprehend what Jesus meant by the reign of God, because, as we have said, Jesus’ proclamation of the reign of God is pure eschatology.

So to begin with, the Baptizer’s real audience is not the individual but the people of God, Israel. Obviously the Baptizer also spoke to individuals, and obviously it is individuals who have to decide to turn their lives around. Obviously every individual must confess her or his sins and be baptized in the Jordan.

But this process in which every individual is involved is first and foremost about Israel. The Baptizer does not address humanity in general or sinners in general but the descendants of Abraham, the people of God. Israel has squandered its calling, and therefore God will now judge his people.² The Baptizer says to the crowds who have come to him at the Jordan to be baptized: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Luke 3:7-8).