Kingship and kingdom of God

The term kingdom of God, also kingly rule of God or reign of God, Hebrew מלכות malkût, ancient Greek βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ basileía toũ theoũ denotes in the Bible the dynamic activity of YHWH, God of the Israelites, in the world and the spatial sphere of rule in which God's will prevails.

The term is linked to the title of YHWH as king in the Tanakh and expresses on the one hand the belief that God rules over the whole creation from the beginning, and on the other hand that God's will of salvation will be universally enforced against all odds in the Last Days. Biblical prophecy and apocalyptic therefore associate the term with various ideas, including the universal enforcement of the Torah, the liberation of all Israelites from foreign domination and of all peoples from tyranny, God's coming to final judgment, and a revolutionary transformation of creation that will overcome all evil, forgive all guilt, and end all suffering, pain, and death.

According to the New Testament Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed this kingdom of God as "near at hand" (Mk 1,15 EU) and illustrated it in many ways: for example through healing miracles, narrative parables and doctrinal speeches like the Sermon on the Mount. For early Christianity the work, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are the inbreaking of this kingdom into the world hostile to God, with which he ultimately confirmed the future promises of the biblical prophets (e.g. Isa 25,8) and began to fulfill them (e.g. Rev 21,4).

According to the Bible, God's kingdom limits, relativizes and criticizes all human exercise of power and all earthly systems of rule as their final future. The term therefore plays a significant role in millenarianism, messianism and political theology.

Christian History

Patristics

The extremely influential and almost equally controversial theologian Origen (185-253/254 AD), in his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, uses the term autobasileia to describe the close proximity between Jesus and the reign of God that he proclaimed. Thus Jesus Christ becomes the epitome of the kingdom and is thus the already begun realization of what he himself proclaimed.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.) wrote in his famous work The Divine State: "The present church on earth is both the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of heaven." Thus he described the church not only as an image but as part of that kingdom, albeit intermixed (corpus mixtum) with the power of evil that dominates the world.

Medieval mysticism

Meister Eckhart does not understand the "nearness" of the kingdom of God in time. Man recognizes the kingdom of God "in" himself through the conversion (metanoia) from the outside to the inside demanded by Jesus (Lk 17,20 EU):

"God is nearer to me than I am to myself [...] In whichever soul 'God's kingdom' becomes visible and which recognizes 'God's kingdom' as being 'near' to it, there is no need to preach or to give instruction: it is thereby instructed and assured of eternal life. He who knows and recognizes how 'near' to him 'God's kingdom' is, can say with Jacob, 'God is in this place, and I knew it not' (Gen. 28:16); but now I know it."

- Meister Eckhart, Sermon 36

Johannes Tauler referred several times in his sermons to the fact that the kingdom of God "[...] rests in the innermost, most hidden, deepest ground of the soul [...]" and this was meant by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke with the words: The kingdom of God is within you (Lk 17:21). "Take heed to the ground that is in you, seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness alone; that is, seek God alone, he is the true kingdom."

German Idealism

"Kingdom of God!" was also the slogan with which Hölderlin and Hegel parted from each other after they had finished their theological studies at the Tübingen Stift: "By this slogan we shall recognize each other after every metamorphosis," Hölderlin wrote to Hegel (July 10, 1794)

Recent dogmatics

In the Catholic Church, even if the kingdom of God had been restored on earth, there had never been a doctrinal decision on the concept of the kingdom of God.

Among German-speaking Baptists, the "kingdom of God" (or "reign of God") is the central concept of their account of faith; the Baptist understanding of faith is unfolded on the basis of this concept: The Establishment of the Reign of God (Part 1), Life under the Reign of God (Part 2), The Completion of the Reign of God (Part 3).

For the British New Testament scholar and Anglican Nicholas Thomas Wright the kingdom of God is the central theme of Jesus' presence and proclamation. He had not put off his listeners, disciples and followers to an individual salvation in a heaven beyond, but introduced them to the present and coming kingdom of God. In the creeds and the practice of the churches this teaching had hardly found expression.