George Eldon Ladd. Jesus and the Kingdom: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism. New York: Harper and Row, 1964.
Some of my readers may know that I grew up in an offshoot of Herbert
W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God. One thing that Herbert
Armstrong liked to harp on was that Jesus’ Gospel was about the Kingdom
of God. The Gospel, according to Mr. Armstrong, was not a message about
Jesus, but rather it was Jesus’ message about the Kingdom of God, which
Mr. Armstrong understood to be the world government that Jesus Christ
would establish on earth after his second coming.
Over time, I came to be aware of Christians who interpreted Jesus’
message about the Kingdom in terms of present or spiritual realities,
not just as a future event. Some understood the Kingdom that Jesus
proclaimed to be a spiritual kingdom, in which God rules over the hearts
of human beings. Others contended that the Kingdom of God was actually
in the world in the person of Jesus Christ during the first century,
since Jesus was the king of the Kingdom and was bringing Kingdom
blessings to people, such as healing, exorcism, and forgiveness of sins.
I recall a career day session that I attended back when I was in high
school. I went to the session on ministry, which was led by a local
evangelical pastor. Another student who was there was a Jehovah’s
Witness. This student was ordinarily very quiet, so it was surprising
to hear him suddenly opening up and voicing his religious beliefs! In
the course of the session, the Jehovah’s Witness asked the evangelical
pastor to define the Kingdom of God. The pastor defined the Kingdom as
God’s moral standards and spiritual rule, though he acknowledged that it
also included Christ’s future rule over the earth after his second
coming. The Jehovah’s Witness responded that Jehovah’s Witnesses
believe that the Kingdom is “real,” and he defined the Kingdom as the
paradise that God will one day set up on earth. In my experience, that
is often what Jehovah’s Witnesses focus on when they go door to door.
But, as I talked with Jehovah’s Witnesses and read old JW works, my
impression was that they do acknowledge some present or spiritual
dimension to the Kingdom. One JW evangelist told me that he will not
fight in a war because he follows the standards of Jehovah’s Kingdom, in
which war will not exist and all people will be at peace. And I was
reading a book by Judge Rutherford, an influential figure in the early
days of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I vaguely recall him interpreting
Luke 17:21 to mean that the Kingdom of God was among the first century
Jews in the person and ministry of Jesus.
At college, as I was taking religious studies courses, I came across
the view that Jesus in the first century believed that the end was
imminent, but he turned out to be wrong. That view troubled me as a
Christian, but I could not easily dismiss it, for there were passages in
the Gospels that appeared to support it. Moreover, as I read the Old
Testament prophets, I wondered if they themselves had an imminent
eschatology, for they seemed to me to envision God bringing paradise
amidst the historical situations of their own day, in which nations such
as Assyria, Babylon, or Edom were prominent. “Is that what the Bible
is?”, I wondered, “A book of people’s frustrated expectations?”
In Jesus and the Kingdom, evangelical scholar and pastor
George Eldon Ladd interacts with these issues. No, he does not mention
Herbert Armstrong or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but he does talk about
biblical scholars and theologians who have sought to define the Kingdom
of God that Jesus preached: some treat it as a future kingdom over the
earth, whereas others see it as a present reality—-as ethics, or as the
church, for example. Essentially, Ladd argues that the Kingdom of God
existed in the ministry of Jesus—-which included healing, exorcism,
forgiveness, and conversions—-but that Jesus’ ministry foreshadowed the
future Kingdom of God that would one day be over the entire earth.
Ladd also interacts with the works of biblical scholars and
theologians who have wrestled with the idea that Jesus inaccurately
predicted an imminent end of the world. Ladd disputes that Jesus was
wrong. Ladd disagrees, for example, with the view that Jesus in Mark
13:30 was predicting that the parousia would occur within “this
generation,” meaning the generation of the disciples; rather, Ladd
maintains that Jesus was saying that Jerusalem would experience peril
within “this generation,” which is what happened. Ladd notes that Jesus
in Mark 13 denied that the Son knew the time of the parousia, which
means that Jesus was not setting dates for his return, and Ladd also
observes that Jesus in Mark 13 affirms that the end is not yet during
some of the cataclysmic events that Jesus narrates. In discussing the
Old Testament prophets, Ladd acknowledges that they mixed history with
eschatology, but he does not believe that they were expecting an
imminent paradise in their own day. Rather, Ladd argues, the Old
Testament prophets acknowledged in places that paradise would come in an
unknown future (the latter days), and they mentioned what would occur
in the distant future because they deemed that to be relevant to their
audience. They chose to inform people of God’s larger plans for
humanity, not just God’s plans for Israel and the nations within their
own historical contexts. The same God who would soon bring them a “Day
of the LORD” (i.e., conquest by a foreign power) would one day bring
about a larger “Day of the LORD”—-one that would precede paradise on
earth—-and they should repent before such a God!
Although Ladd disputes that Jesus predicted an imminent end of the
world, Ladd does believe that Jesus wanted for Christians to be
continually anticipating the Kingdom while avoiding spiritual compromise
and slumber. Consequently, Ladd acknowledges some tone of imminence in
the preaching of the Kingdom by Jesus and the early church. Such a
tone is also intended to encourage repentance, Ladd claims.
Was I convinced by Ladd’s arguments? I do not thoroughly dismiss
them. I agree that Jesus in the synoptic Gospels believed that the
Kingdom was present in his own ministry. I also think that redactors
and canonizers of the Old Testament prophets interpreted the prophets’
eschatological promises as what would occur in the future, beyond the
historical contexts of the Old Testament prophets themselves, and that
is why the redactors and canonizers deemed the promises to be still
relevant. I am very hesitant to say that the Old Testament prophets
themselves, Jesus, and the early church lacked an imminent eschatology,
however. Moreover, I think that Ladd should have explained more fully
why Jesus came to earth in the first century and gave people a preview
of what the distantly future Kingdom of God would be like. What exactly
was the point? Ladd does affirm that the future kingdom in some sense
rests on what Jesus accomplished at his first coming (i.e., his
crucifixion and resurrection), but he should have fleshed that out more.
Ladd also thoughtfully discusses other issues, such as the
distinction between prophecy and apocalyptic (the first is historical,
whereas the second expects God to intervene from outside of history, and
yet the two can overlap), the meaning of discipleship (the same thing
was not expected of all disciples), and the role of grace in fulfilling
the Sermon on the Mount.
The book is unsatisfying, yet thought-provoking.