Part First. The Doctrine of the Kingdom of God

5. The kingdom of God is the divinely vouched-for highest good¹ of the community² founded through His revelation in Christ; but it is the highest good only in the sense that it forms at the same time the ethical ideal, for whose attainment³ the members of the community bind themselves together through their definite reciprocal action.⁴ This meaning of the conception becomes clear through the task which is at the same time expressed in it.

6. The righteous conduct in which the members of the Christian community share in the bringing in of the kingdom of God has its universal law and its personal motive in love to God and to one’s neighbour.⁵ This love receives its impulse from the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ (§§ 13, 22). The broadening of the conception of one’s neighbour to include men as men, i.e., as moral beings, distinguishes the kingdom of God from the narrower moral circles limited by the natural endowment [Ausstattung] of men and by the natural interdependence of their common activities.⁶ The law of love, however, appears also in contrast to the arrangement of human society as based merely on private right,⁷ and goes beyond the principle of regard for others set forth in the Mosaic decalogue.⁸

7. The Christian conception of the kingly authority of God, to which the kingdom of God as the union of subjects bound together by righteous conduct corresponds, arose out of the similarly expressed thoughts in the Israelitish religion, which are indicative of its original purpose.⁹ These conceptions are in their historical development elevated by the prophets to the expectation that through the supernatural judgments of God His dominion will be realized in the righteousness of the morally purified Jewish people, and will be recognized also by heathen peoples.¹⁰ This idea is distinguished from the heathen designation of their gods as kings, partly by the background of the free creation of the world by God, and partly by the humane content of the corresponding law (§ 6, 4); and for this very reason begets the expectation of the religious and moral purification of the nations. The Christian form of this thought goes beyond its Old Testament form, in that the ethical end of the dominion of God is set free from admixture with the political and ceremonial conditions under which the Old Testament idea and the Jewish hope laboured.¹¹

8. The kingdom of God, which thus (§§ 5-7) presents the spiritual and ethical task of those gathered in the Christian community, is supernatural, in so far as it is higher than the ethical forms of society,—marriage, the family, the calling, private and public justice, or the State. These are conditioned by the natural endowment of man,—difference in sex, birth, class, nationality,—and therefore also offer occasions to self-seeking. The kingdom of God, even as it now exists in the world as the present product of love-inspired action, is supramundane, in so far as we understand under mundane all natural, naturally conditioned and divided existence. And the kingdom of God is also the highest good of those who are united in it, in so far as it offers the solution of the question propounded or implied in all religions, namely, how man, recognizing himself as a part of the world, and at the same time as being capable of a spiritual personality, can attain to that dominion over the world, as opposed to limitation by it, which this capability gives him the right to claim. The supernatural and supramundane kingdom of God continues to exist as the highest good of its members even when the present mundane conditions of spiritual life are changed (§ 76).

9. Although benevolent actions and human organizations inspired by love, are perceptible as such to the senses, nevertheless the motive of love which inspires them is in no case perfectly open to the observation of others, and therefore the presence of the kingdom of God within the Christian community is always invisible and a subject of religious faith.¹² Especially can the real membership of the kingdom of God not be regarded as identical with that of the Christian community, in so far as this in concrete worship becomes visible as the Church.¹³

10. The equality of all men as such, regardless of differences of nation and of rank (§ 6, 2), and the duty of universal brotherly love, are recognized even in the classic thought of paganism. Greek poets recognize the equality of freeman and slave.¹⁴ Stoic philosophers witness to the brotherhood of all men, and derive from this conception of human nature the virtues which are to lead to the establishment of the most comprehensive human fellowship,¹⁵ and all this apart from any thought of God. None the less is it a fact that the transformation of human society in accordance with these views was a development, not out of Stoicism, but out of Christianity. This is accounted for by two reasons. First, a conclusion the exact opposite of that of the Stoics may as easily be drawn from the conception of the nature of man, because everything depends on the empirical view which gives content to this conception. Second, a knowledge of universal ethical precepts, as such, is never sufficient to call out and to organize corresponding activity. This only follows when a special, and indeed a religious motive, or ground of obligation, is united with the knowledge of the universal principle. Accordingly the principles, common in a certain degree to both Stoicism and Christianity, became fruitful only upon the soil of the latter, because here they were brought into union with the ground of obligation found in the special religious community. The highest standard for this relation of obligation, however, is the thought of a supramundane supernatural God.¹⁶ And the exercise of benevolence, instead of being connected with an unstable conception of human nature, is so much the more surely connected with this thought, in proportion as the union of men as men at which it aims bears in itself the stamp of the supernatural and the supramundane (§ 8).

11. The complete name of God, which corresponds to the Christian revelation, is “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”¹⁷ In this is included the fact, recognized to some extent in the religions of all civilized nations [Culturreligionen], that God is a spiritual person. It includes also the characteristics first brought out in the religion of the Old Testament, that God is the only Being of His kind,¹⁸ that He is not burdened with nature, and thus did not come into existence with the world like the heathen divinities; but that He is the Creator of the universe, the Will that determines Himself and all things for Himself,¹⁹ and who in particular designs a community of men for religious communion with Himself and ethical communion with one another.²⁰

12. In the complete Christian name of God, “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” is also indirectly included that He is the Father of all, of whatever nationality, who are united in the community of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore in the abbreviated name, “God our Father,”²¹ the thought is expressed that the only God directs His especial purpose to this community, whose highest good and common task is the kingdom of God (§ 5). Now, however, the complete name of God indicates that He has only assumed this especial relation to this community because He is already first the Father of Jesus Christ, whom they recognize as their Lord. But in this capacity Christ stands by so much nearer to God than any other, because He shares in God’s attribute of being the end of creation,²² and because in His relation of sonship to the Father He recognizes Himself as set apart from the world.²³ The key to the relation between God the Father and the Son of God is found in the declaration that God is love.²⁴

13. In the complete name of God the fact that God is our Father is connected with Jesus Christ in so far as He is recognized as the Lord of a particular fellowship (§ 12). Through Christ’s mediation this community of human beings is also designated as the object of the divine love.²⁵ This relation would not be conceivable if God’s purpose were merely the maintenance of the natural existence of the human race. For in this case men would not be of like nature with God (§ 12, 4). The conception of God as love necessitates that idea of humanity which destines it for the kingdom of God, and for the activity directed toward this kingdom, i.e., the mutual union of men through action springing from love²⁶ (§ 6). This destiny, however, is realized by men in their union into the community of their Lord Jesus Christ.

14. The reciprocal relation between the conception of God as love, and of the kingdom of God as the final purpose of the world, is confirmed by the statement that the establishment of the kingdom of God was divinely decreed before the foundation of the world.²⁷ The eternity of God, which this implies, is, however, not sufficiently expressed in saying that His existence reaches out beyond that of the world without beginning or end, and that God has therefore a different measure of time from that of men.²⁸ Rather do we recognize God’s eternity in the fact that amid all the changes of things, which also indicate variation in His working, He Himself remains the same, as well as maintains the same purpose and plan in which He creates and directs the world.²⁹

15. The religious recognition of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, which are implied in the creation and preservation of the world by the will of God,³⁰ does not undertake to explain the continuance of natural things in whole or in part,³¹ but always to establish the certainty of the care and gracious presence of God for the good, by the fact that the world-creating and world-preserving will of God has for its purpose the good of man. Therefore the thought of the omnipotence of God completes itself consistently in that of His wisdom, omniscience and disposition to meet the needs of men.³²

16. Out of the thought of the omnipotence of God arises first the perception of the insignificance of man. Yet inasmuch as the same thought is also the foundation of our impression of God’s constant readiness to help (goodness, mercy, grace, pity³³), it receives in the special revelation of the Old and New Covenants the peculiar stamp of righteousness. By righteousness the Old Testament signifies the consistency of God’s providence [Leitung zum Heil], manifested now in the case of the pious and upright individual adherents of the Old Covenant,³⁴ and now undertaken for the community, over whom the government of God is to be perfected for their salvation.³⁵ In so far as the righteousness of God manifests itself for this end according to its directing purpose of salvation, in spite of all the difficulties which proceed from the Israelites themselves, it is faithfulness.³⁶ Thus in the New Testament also the righteousness of God is recognized as the standard of the special operations by which the community of Christ is brought into existence and led on to perfection,³⁷ and therefore cannot be distinguished from the grace of God.

17. The religious view of the world is based on the fact that all the operations of nature are at God’s disposal when He wishes to help men (§ 15). Accordingly remarkable natural occurrences, which are in experience connected with especial help from God,³⁸ are regarded as miracles, and thus as special tokens³⁹ of His gracious readiness to help believers. Therefore the conception of miracles stands necessarily in reciprocal relation to a special belief in the providence of God, and apart from this relation is quite impossible.⁴⁰

18. God administers the government of the world, that is, the adjusting of the relation between man and the world, by means of retribution. This legal conception belongs to Christianity, as to all religions, because several of its characteristics correspond to the relations which are recognized in every religious view of the world. For law as well as religion has to do with regulating the relation of the individual to the world in accordance with his social or moral worth, and has to do further with the fact that this position is assigned or recognized by an external will (of society or the state, or God). Thus the conception of divine reward and divine punishment is also employed in Christianity.⁴¹ The analogy exists also in the fact that as the exercise of the right of punishment in the state is only a means of upholding the public well-being, so also the divine punishments which are visited upon godless and persistently rebellious men are always subordinate to the purpose of perfecting the salvation of the righteous and maintaining their cause in the world. But these dispensations of God are never in His purpose a matter of equivalents. On the contrary, there is not involved in this legal administration on God’s part either, first, any admission of human right as against God,⁴² or, second, any equality between reward and worthiness, and punishment and unworthiness,⁴³ or, third, any immediate congruence between misfortune and guilt, prosperity and goodness in individual cases, as might have been expected from the divine power, whereas this is referred to the future, particularly to the final judgment and the future life.⁴⁴ Therefore the current conclusion of the prechristian manner of judgment, that great misfortune was evidence of great guilt, is invalidated,⁴⁵ and the probability is introduced that exactly in connection with religious and moral worthiness there may exist a high degree of worldly misfortune.⁴⁶ Finally, however, a point of view is opened up which substitutes for the mechanical relation between reward (punishment) and worthiness (unworthiness), recognized in human law, an organic relation of cause and result.⁴⁷ That such a principle as this is operative in all cases cannot, it is true, be clearly seen until the end. In the course of history clear examples of this principle are surrounded and obscured by manifold instances of an exactly opposite nature. Christian faith, however, does not suffer itself to be confused as to the consistent direction of the world by God through the apparently purposeless complications of the present and the suffering of the righteous in consequence of the guilt of the unrighteous,⁴⁸ because the regular experience of an exact and immediate connection between happiness and worthiness would endanger the freedom and dignity of the moral disposition.

19. The duty of the moral union of all men as men could become effective only as begotten out of the religious motive of the special Christian community (§ 10). Since, moreover, that duty is higher than all naturally conditioned moral motives, its value in the Christian community finds its necessary standard in the thought of a supernatural God developed in §§ 11-18. Now, however, the special fact of the community, which sets itself to the realization of this universal task as of the kingdom of God is not a natural product, but is comprehensible in its nature only as positively established by Christ. Therefore, to an understanding of the existence of this community and for our right participation in the same, it is necessary to recognize and to understand the permanent relation which exists between the community of the kingdom of God and its Founder Jesus Christ.⁴⁹

20. The historical connection between Christianity and the religion of the Old Testament (§ 7) makes it natural that Jesus should represent Himself as a Prophet sent from God, who in the counsel of God is set apart over the world and mankind.⁵⁰ He sets Himself, nevertheless, above all the preceding prophets of the Old Testament, in making Himself known as the Son of God and as the promised King of David’s race, Christ the Anointed,⁵¹ who has not to prepare the way for the kingdom of God, but who works the work of God,⁵² i.e., who Himself exercises immediate divine rulership over the new community of the sons of God, and establishes it for the future (§ 5, 2). However, the prophetic calling of Jesus is not set aside by His claim to Messianic dignity, but only modified thereby, since He exercises His right as Ruler only by His morally effective teaching and by His gracious mode of conduct, but not by the compulsion of legal judgment.⁵³

21. In the moral world all personal authority is conditioned upon the nature of one’s calling, and upon the connection between one’s fitness for his special calling and his faithful exercise of it. Accordingly, the permanent significance of Jesus Christ for His community is based, first, on the fact that He was the only one qualified for His special calling, the introduction of the kingdom of God;⁵⁴ that He devoted Himself to the exercise of this highest conceivable calling in the preaching of the truth and in loving action without break or deviation,⁵⁵ and that in particular as a proof of His steadfastness⁵⁶ He freely accepted in willing patience⁵⁷ the wrongs which the leaders of the Israelitish nation and the fickleness of the people brought upon Him, and which were so many temptations to draw back from His calling.

22. Second, the work of Jesus Christ in His calling, or the final purpose of His life, namely, the kingdom of God, is the very purpose of God in the world and is thus recognized by Christ Himself.⁵⁸ The solidaric unity between Christ and God, which Jesus accordingly claims for Himself,⁵⁹ has reference to the whole extent of His activity in His calling, and consists therefore in the reciprocal relation between the love of God and the obedience of Jesus in His calling.⁶⁰ Now Jesus, being the first to realize in His own personal life the final purpose of the kingdom of God, is therefore alone of His kind, for should any other fulfil the same task as perfectly as He, yet he would be unlike Him because dependent on Him. Therefore, as the original type of the humanity to be united into the kingdom of God, He is the original object of the love of God (§ 12), so that the love of God for the members of His kingdom also is only mediated through Him (§ 13). When, therefore, this Person, active in His peculiar calling, whose constant motive is recognizable as unselfish love to man, is valued at His whole worth, then we see in Jesus the complete revelation of God as love, grace and faithfulness.⁶¹

23. In every religion not only is some sort of communion with God (or the gods) sought after and attained, but there is also sought at the same time such a position of the individual toward the world as corresponds with the idea of God which rules in each particular religion. Hence, third, Jesus Christ’s prerogative, that the rulership of the world is delivered over to Him,⁶² answers to the solidaric unity of Jesus with the supramundane God, in the realization of the supramundane (§8) kingdom of God, which as the final purpose of God is also the final purpose of the world. The significance of this attribute is not secured if we suppose that Jesus did not exercise it, but allowed it to remain inactive, in His historical life. Moreover, He did not merely exercise it indirectly, in that by His deeds and His words and His patience in suffering He prepared the way for the kingdom of God in His community, in whose historical progress His dominion over the world first became established. Rather, He exercised this rulership directly, not only in the independence of His conduct with reference to the standard of religion peculiar to His people,⁶³ but also in His very readiness to suffer everything even unto death for the sake of His calling.⁶⁴ For through this suffering He changed the world’s opposition to His life-purpose into a means of His own glorification, i.e., of the certainty of overcoming the world by the very fact of this momentary subjection to its power, and of assuring the supramundane continuance of His life.⁶⁵ Accordingly, His resurrection through the power of God is the consistent completion, corresponding to the worth of His personality, of the revelation through Him, which is final both in respect to the actual will of God and to the destiny of man.

24. In Christ’s activity in His calling, directed to the divine purpose of the kingdom of God, the same acts of love and patience are both manifestations of the grace and faithfulness actual in God Himself, and also proofs of His dominion over the world.⁶⁶ These relations, which are necessary to the full appreciation of Jesus, and are apparent in the account of His life, are referred to in the confession of the Godhood of Christ which the Christian community has made from the beginning. That is to say, this attribute cannot be maintained unless the same activities in which Jesus Christ proves Himself man are thought of as being at the same time and under the same circumstances also peculiar predicates of God, and as the peculiar means of His revelation through Christ. But if the grace and faithfulness and dominion over the world, which are evident both in Christ’s active life and in His patience in suffering, are also the actual attributes of God and those essential for the Christian religion, then the right appreciation of the completeness of the revelation of God through Christ is assured by the predicate of His Godhood, in accordance with which Christians are to trust in Him and to worship Him even as they do God the Father.⁶⁷

25. The estimate of Christ set forth in §§ 20-24 is intentionally directed with the greatest possible exactness to the historically certified characteristics of His active life, but at the same time it is undertaken from the standpoint of the community of the kingdom of God founded by Him. These two criteria, historical and religious, for the understanding of His person should be coincident,⁶⁸ inasmuch as the purpose of Christ was directed to the founding of a community in which He was to be recognized in religious faith as the Son of God. If now this purpose is in any measure historically realized, it follows that the perfect historical estimate of Christ is possible only to His religious community, and that this estimate will be religiously correct in proportion as His community remains faithful to its unquestionable historical task. Accordingly, it is essential to the continuance of the Christian community as such, that it should keep alive within itself the memory of the finished life-work of Christ,⁶⁹ and that accordingly the personal impulse of its Founder should be ceaselessly operative in like efforts on the part of the members of His community.⁷⁰ In the fulfilment of these conditions we see the visible side of the mystery of Christ’s exaltation to the right hand of God, which is recognized by His community⁷¹ as a guarantee that the purpose of His life was not frustrated but rather fully accomplished in His death.⁷²

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