intro(11) Jesus entered upon his ministry with the preaching of the gospel of God and saying: 'The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye and believe the gospel'. thus Mark 1.14,15 introduces the description of Jesus' coming and his activity in Galilee. Matthew and Luke have the same message in different words: Matt. 4.1723; 9.35; Luke 9.11. in Luke 4.43 we are told in Jesus' own words that the purpose of His mission was the preaching of the kingdom of God. the word of God he preached (Luke 8.11) is therefore also called, 'the word of the kingdom' (Matt. 13.19) and the gospel by which the entire New Testament kerygma is summarized (Luke 4.43; 8.1; 16.16) has the kingdom of God and its coming of its content. it may be rightly said that the whole of the preaching of Jesus Christ and His apostles is concerned with the kingdom of God, and that in Jesus Christ's proclamation of the kingdom we are face to face with the specific form of expression of the whole of his revelation of God. these preliminary remarks may show that for insight into the meaning and the character of the New Testament revelation of God. it is hardly possible to mention any other theme equal in importance to that of the kingdom of heaven.
(12) for more than 50 yhears the study of the general purport of the kingdom of heaven has been dominated by the problems posited by the so-called eschatological school. Johannes Weiss may be mentioned as the 'father' of this movement. in 1892 he published Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, which has retained its significance to the present day. in this work Weiss attacked the use made of the concept 'kingdom of God' y the influential theologian Albrect Ritschl. Rit thought he could appeal to the preaching of Jesus in support of his own conception. he conceived of the kingdom of God as the ethical-religious community founded by Jesus and composed of all who wish to practice the evangelical law of love. it is this community which must be promoted by the church. the character of this kingdom of god is entirely immanent, because it belongs to this world and is strongly determined by the idea of development and human activity. the basic law of this kingdom is found in Jesus' commandments and lends a predominantly ethical character to the entire process of its coming and its revelation.
according to Weiss, however, Rit's conception of the
(13) kingdom of God can in no way make an appeal to the gospel. its origins are rather to be sought in Kant's view of the kingdom of virtue and in the theology of the Enlightenment. as a representative of the history of religions school. Weiss argued that Jesus' preaching of the kingdom of God can only be understood in the light of and against the background of the world of thought of his time, especially of the late Jewish apocalyptic writings. on this view, every conception of the kingdom of God as an immanent community in course of development or as an ethical ideal is consequently to be rejected; for it becomes clear that the kingdom of God is a purely future and eschatological event, presupposing the end of this world and therefore, cannot possibly reveal itself already in this world. for the kingdom of God, which Jesus proclaimed to be near at hand, is nothing but the commencement of the new world, expected in the apocalyptical literature, and which will reveal itself after the catastrophic upheaval of the present era.
it is true that there are passages in the gospel representing this kingdom as having come and consequently, as being present. according to Weiss, our first concern should be to investigate their authenticity and the extent they are derived from a later spiritualizing conception of the kingdom. to such a conception Weiss also wants to ascribe the preaching of the kingdom found in the gospel according to John, in which the eschatological viewpoint is far less dominant. still, thee remain passages in the synoptic gospels in which Jesus speaks of the kingdom as being present (the so-called Gegenwart-stellen, 'present' references, such as Matt. 12.28, and others). but according to Weiss, Jesus is here in a kind of spiritual ecstasy, in which he sees the first beginnings of the great break-through, and speaks of he coming of the kingdom in a proleptic (def- anticipation of possible objections in order to answer them in advance) sense. however, Jesus had not always lived in the spell of this high tension. rather , at first, Jesus is here in a kind of spiritual ecstasy, in which he sees the first beginnings of the great break-through, and speaks of the coming of the kingdom in a proleptic sense. however, Jesus had not always lived in the spell of this high tension. rather, at first, Jesus expected the coming of the kingdom before his death. only later, under the impact of disappointing experiences, did he postpone the time of its coming. there is, however, no question
(14) of a gradual revelation and development of this coming. the kingdom will come suddenly, owing to God's irresistible intervention and it will bring the present dispensation to a close.
the echo to this eschatological keynote is heard by Weiss especially in Jesus' commandments. they do not denote the standard of the kingdom of God in its development in this world, but are intended as conditions for the entry into the future kingdom. they not only function as conditions, but are also thoroughly eschatological in character. the radicalism of Jesus' ethics is the radicalism of those who know that the end is near, and who have therefore on principle taken leave of all earthly possessions and interests. now that the end of the world may come at any moment, there is no point in quarrelling about right or wrong. such was the sense of crisis that gave birth to Jesus' commandments. they cannot be understood as rules of conduct given for all time and acceptable at any period, but as a kind of 'exceptional legislation'. just as in time of war the normal order of things is temporarily suspended and everything is made subservient to the great cause, so in the same way Jesus' radical commandments are to be understood only from the eschatological expectation of the coming kingdom of God.
the man who has advocated this new interpretation of the gospel with the greatest energy and who may therefore be called the most typical propagandist of the eschatological conception, is Albert Schweitzer. Weiss's writings were especially devoted to Jesus' preaching, but Schweit in addition tries to prove that Weiss's insight is also the long-sought-for key for the understanding of Jesus' life. Schweit speaks of 'consistent eschatology'. if Jesus lived in the expectation that the end was near at hand, the history of his life must have been dominated by such an expectation. thus Schweit arrives at an entirely new and partly fantastic description of the life of Jesus. in his book Das Messianitas - und Leidensgeheimnis, and especially in his large volume Von Reimarus zu Wrede (published later under the title Die Geschichte der
(15) Leben-Jesu-Rorschung), Schweit give a brilliant survey of the efforts made by theology since the Enlightenment to arrive at a consistent view of the life of Jesus.
Schweit clearly shows how much the whole history of exegesis has been determined, not by historical objectivity, but rather by subjective theological prejudice. he especially criticizes the liberal picture of Jesus, so long accepted by a large number of theologians of the modern school. Schweit's teacher, H. J. Holtzmann, the great representative of the liberal school, was one of the authors of this liberal portrait. Schweit sympathizes most with such figures in the history of New Testament research as Reimarus, Strauss, and Bruno Bauer who, in his opinion, have described Jesus' life in a way that is free from all dogmatic premises. he shows that it was especially these radicals who realized that Jesus lived in the eschatalogical tension which, according to Schweit, Weiss's book on Jesus' preaching of the kingdom had indicated. therefore, in the tradition of these predecessors, Schweit tried to describe Jesus' life as a life which was wholly dominated by the eschatological dogma.
Sch's consistently eschatological reconstruction of the life of Jesus has not found much support. nevertheless, this view has remained very characteristic of the general theological position of the eschatological tendency. on the one hand, it was intended as a protest against the humanizing and ethicizing of the gospel and against the consequent distortion of the picture of Jesus found in the gospels. on the other hand, this movement fought for hat it considered a purely Historical rectification. by exclusively viewing the coming of the kingdom mentioned in the gospel as the beginning of the great final catastrophe, these writers could only assert that Jesus' preaching of the nearness of the kingdom was the effect of a delusion. they were thus compelled to base the ethical imitation of Jesus - which especially fascinated Sch who qualified it as 'the heroic surrender of life' - on something different from this eschatological expectation.
(16) this is why both Weiss and Schweitzer have recourse to the modern idealistic outlook for their own theology and view of the world. thus their work did not result in a new theology founded on the gospel. it only frustrated the efforts previously made go establish a bod between the gospel and the current theological conception.
this failure is one of the reasons why the first great representatives of the eschatological interpretation at first had so little influence. they were unable to give theological expression to the eschatological character of Jesus' preaching which they had re-discovered . the result of their activities was only that, for the time being, the eschatological character of the kingdom of God, preached by Jesus, was more and more being recognized. but this character was considered to be merely the mythical or contemporary expression of the spiritual change which takes place in man and in the world when people begin to listen to Jesus' commandments and to regulate their lives by them.
characeeristic fopr this (eschatological) for (spiritual-maral) content schema was, for example, that which another well-known representative of the history of religions school, W. Bousset, adduced to refute Johannes Weiss's book. Bousset addimtted that Jesus' preaching was entirely based on the eschatological conception. but in his opinion a sharp distinction should be made between the 'phenomenbological' and the 'intelligible' character of Jesus personality and message.
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