Page 21 - TH130 Kingdom of God A4 Final

Historical Approaches to the Kingdom

One reformer, John Calvin, went further in his thinking. He taught a
christocratic (meaning the government or rule of Christ) theology of the
kingdom of God. In Geneva, Switzerland, he started a community where
the church had control over all the affairs of people. Life in this community
was based on the values of the kingdom of God as Calvin saw them.

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were times of debate
concerning the meaning of the kingdom of God. The debate, however,
had little to do with the life and mission of the church. Some teachers,
such as Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89) and his followers, were influenced
by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. These teachers held a social or
evolutionary view of the Kingdom. They said that the kingdom of God was
at work in the evolutionary progress of human history. They believed that
history was progressing toward higher levels of civilization and morality.
The idea of Christ’s second coming was lost. This was the view of most
liberal Protestants in the late nineteenth century. It became a part of the
religious ideology of humanism, the teaching that man can solve his own
problems by human reason, apart from the help of God.

The Twentieth Century

At the beginning of the twentieth century, certain theologians rejected
the evolutionary teaching about the kingdom of God. Johannes Weiss and
Albert Schweitzer developed what became known as a “thoroughgoing
eschatology” of the kingdom of God. They maintained that the kingdom
of God had not yet come; it was only in the future. They said that it is
wrong to say that the kingdom of God came in the ministry of Jesus. He,
rather, expected an entirely future apocalyptic coming of the Kingdom.
According to these teachers, Jesus believed that this would occur in the
near rather than distant future, that is, during His own lifetime. They
further denied that Jesus and His message came from God.

Charles H. Dodd taught a different doctrine concerning the kingdom
of God. He called his teaching “realized eschatology.” He said that the
kingdom of God was already present. It came with the appearance and
ministry of Jesus. Dodd taught that Jesus’ teachings about a coming
kingdom are not to be taken literally. Rather, they are to be taken only
as symbols for the kingdom of God that was already present. In this view,
there is no room for the second coming of Christ.

::: 13 :::