CHAPTER III
THE PREACHING OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD
1. The New Morality as Repentance.
IF the thought of the eschatological realisation of the Kingdom is the fundamental factor in Jesus’ preaching, his whole theory of ethics must come under the conception of _repentance_ as a preparation for the coming of the Kingdom. This conception seems to us too narrow a one to apply to the whole extent of this moral-religious proclamation. This is due to the fact that the word repentance as we use it has rather a negative significance, laying emphasis as it does chiefly upon foregoing guilt. It is a far richer conception, however, which the Synoptists express by the word repentance (_μετάνοια_). It is not merely a recovery which stands in retrospective relation with a sinful condition in the past, but also—and this is its predominant character—_it is a moral renewal in prospect of the accomplishment of universal perfection in the future._
Thus “the repentance in expectation of the Kingdom” comprises all positive ethical requirements. [pg 095] In this sense it is the lively echo of the “repentance” of the early prophets. For what Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah mean by repentance is moral renovation in prospect of the Day of the Lord. Thus Isaiah says: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Isai. 1:16, 17). It is precisely this Old Testament conception of repentance, with its emphasis upon the new moral life, which one must have in mind in order to understand aright the Synoptical repentance. Both have a forward vision, both are dominated by the thought of a condition of perfection which God will bring to pass through the Judgment. This, in the Prophetic view, is the Day of the Lord; in the Synoptic it is the dawn of the Kingdom.
The ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is therefore repentance. The new morality, which detects the spirit beneath the letter of the Law, makes one meet for the Kingdom of God. Only the righteous can enter into the Kingdom of God—in that conviction all were agreed. Whosoever, therefore, preached the nearness of the Kingdom must also teach the righteousness pertaining to the Kingdom. [pg 096] Hence Jesus proclaimed the new righteousness which is higher than the Law and the Prophets,—for they extend only up to the Baptist. Since the days of the Baptist, however, one stands immediately within the pre-messianic period.
The Day of Judgment puts this moral transformation to the proof: only he who has done the will of the heavenly Father can enter into the Kingdom (Mt 7:21). The claim that one is a follower of Jesus, or has even wrought signs and wonders in his name, is of no avail as a substitute for this new righteousness (Mt 7:22, 23). Hence the Sermon on the Mount concludes with the admonition to build, in expectation of the momentous event, a firmly founded structure capable of resisting storm and tempest (Mt 7:24-27).
The Beatitudes (Mt 5:3-12) come under the same point of view. They define the moral disposition which justifies admission into the Kingdom. This is the explanation of the use of the present and the future tense in the same sentence. Blessed are the meek, those that hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the poor in spirit, those that endure persecution for righteousness’ sake, because such character and conduct is their security [pg 097] that with the appearing of the Kingdom of God they will be found to belong to it.
A series of parables illustrates the same thought. Thus the parables of the treasure in the field and of the pearl of great price (Mt 13:44-46) show how one must stake all upon the hope of the Kingdom when the prospect of it is held out to him, and must sacrifice all other goods for the sake of acquiring this highest good that is proposed to him.
Thus already in the ethics of the Galilean period we find the “now and then” which accounts for the estimate put upon serving (Mk 10:45). _As repentance unto the Kingdom of God the ethics also of the Sermon on the Mount is interim-ethics._ In this we perceive that the moral instruction of Jesus remained the same from the first day of his public appearance unto his latest utterances, for the lowliness and serviceableness which he recommended to his Disciples on the way to Jerusalem correspond exactly to the new moral conduct which he developed in the Sermon on the Mount: they make one meet for the Kingdom of God. Only, they constitute a climax in the attainment of the new righteousness, inasmuch as they render one meet not merely for entrance into the Kingdom but for bearing rule in it.
[pg 098]
We encounter again the _Leitmotiv_ of the Sermon on the Mount in the epilogue to the great parables uttered in Jerusalem. Nothing but the maintenance of the new morality in all relations of life guarantees entrance into the Kingdom. Hence Jesus can say to the Pharisee who agrees to the summary of this new morality as it is expressed in the commandment of love: Thou art not far from the Kingdom of God (Mk 12:34). That does not mean that the Pharisee by such a disposition of mind has already well nigh risen to the height of the “morality of the Kingdom.” For if the double commandment of love constituted the morality of the _Kingdom,_ Jesus must have said to him (since he entirely agreed to these commandments): Thou belongest to the Kingdom. The “not far” must in fact be understood in a purely chronological sense, not as denoting some small measure of perfection which the man still lacks. He is not far from the Kingdom of God because he possesses the moral quality which will identify him as a member of the same when after a short space it appears. The “not far” contains therefore the same mixture of present and future tense which we have remarked in the Beatitudes.
Reasoning from our ethical point of view [pg 099] we are inclined to apply the conception of reward to this relation between membership in the Kingdom and the new morality. This, however, does not completely render the thought of Jesus, which had to do above all with the _immediateness_ of the transition from the condition of moral renewal into the super-moral perfection of the Kingdom of God. Whosoever at the dawning of the Kingdom is in possession of a character morally renovated, he will be found a member of the same. This is the adequate expression for the relation of morality to the coming Kingdom of God.
2. The Ethics of Jesus and Modern Ethics.
The depth of Jesus’ religious ethics encourages us to expect that we can find our own modern-ethical consciousness reflected in it. With respect to its eternal inward truth it is indeed independent of history and unconditioned by it, since it already contains the highest ethical thoughts of all times. Nevertheless there exists a great difference between Jesus’ sentiment and ours. Modern ethics is “unconditional,” since it creates of itself the new ethical situation,—the presumption being that this situation will evolve unto final perfection. Ethics is here an end in itself, [pg 100] inasmuch as the moral perfection of mankind comes to the same thing as the perfection of the Kingdom of God. That is Kant’s thought. This self-sufficiency of ethics (which however, exacts a certain resignation in view of the distant consummation) shows that the modern-Christian theory is permeated by Hellenistic-rationalistic ideas and has undergone a development of two millenniums.
The ethics of Jesus on the other hand is “conditional,” in the sense that it stands in indissoluble connection with the expectation of a state of perfection which is to be supernaturally brought about. Thereby its Jewish origin is revealed, and its immediate connection with the Prophetic ethics, in which the moral conduct of the people was conditioned by a definite expectation. Hence, if any parallel at all may be adduced in explanation of the ethics of Jesus, it can be only the Prophetic, never the modern. For in proportion as the latter enters into it the mode of conception becomes unhistorical, Jesus’ ethics being treated as self-sufficient, whereas in fact it is oriented entirely by the expected supernatural consummation.
So there has been created the insoluble [pg 101] problem, that a person thoroughly modern so far as his ethics is concerned should incidentally give utterance to eschatological expressions. But if we once perceive the conditional character of Jesus’ ethics, and seriously consider its connection with the ethics of the Prophets, it is immediately clear that all conceptions of the Kingdom as a growth out of small beginnings, all notions about an ethics of the Kingdom, or about the development of it, have been foisted upon Jesus by our modern consciousness—simply because we could not readily familiarise ourselves with the thought that the ethics of Jesus is conditional.
We make him conceive of the Kingdom of God as if its historical realisation represented a narrow opening through which it had to squeeze before attaining the full stature which belongs to it. That is a modern conception. For Jesus and the Prophets, however, it was a thing impossible. In the immediateness of their ethical view there is no place for a morality of the Kingdom of God or for a development of the Kingdom—it lies beyond the borders of good and evil; it will be brought about by a cosmic catastrophe through which evil is to be completely [pg 102] overcome. Hence all moral criteria are to be abolished. _The Kingdom of God is super-moral._
To this height of hyper-ethical idealism the modern consciousness is no longer capable of soaring. History has aged us too much for that. But for the historical understanding of the ethics of Jesus it is the indispensable assumption.
In addition to this, when we think of the Kingdom, our thought stretches forward to the coming generations which are to realise it in ever increasing measure. Jesus’ glance is directed backward. For him the Kingdom is composed of the generations which have already gone down to the grave and which are now to be awakened unto a state of perfection. How should there be for him any ethics of sexual relations, when he explains to the Sadducees that in the Kingdom of God after the great Resurrection there will be no longer any sexual relations at all, “but they will be like the angels of heaven” (Mk 12:25)?
Every ethical form of Jesus, be it never so perfect, leads therefore only up to the frontier of the Kingdom of God, while every trace of a path disappears so soon as one advances upon the new territory. There one needs it no more.
[pg 103]
We have a prejudice against this conception of conditional ethics. It is an unjustified prejudice if it is due to a suspicion that Jesus’ ethics is thereby disparaged. Exactly the opposite is the case. For this conditionality springs from an absolute ethical idealism, which postulates for the expected state of perfection conditions of existence which are themselves ethical. In our unconditional and self-sufficing ethics we, however, assume that the conflict between good and evil must go on forever, as belonging constantly to the nature of the ethical. Ethics and theology do not stand for us in the same lively relationship as they do with Jesus. The vividness of the colours of the absolute ethical idealism has been faded by history. So, to render the ethics of Jesus unconditional and self-sufficing is not only unhistorical, but it means also the degradation of his ethical idealism.
On one point, however, our ethical sentiment is justified in its prejudice. If ethics has to do only with the expectation of the supernatural consummation, its actual worth is diminished, since it is merely individual ethics and is concerned only with the relation of each single person to the Kingdom of God. The thought, however, that the moral community [pg 104] which has been constituted by Jesus’ preaching must as such be in some way the effective first stage in the realisation of the Kingdom of God—this thought belongs not alone to _our_ ethical sentiment, but it animated also the preaching of Jesus, for he wrought out in strong relief the social character of his ethics. This explains the reluctance one feels to admit that the eschatological idea of the Kingdom of God lay at the basis of Jesus’ preaching from beginning to end, since _then_ one cannot explain how the new moral community which he formed about himself was in his thought organically connected with the Kingdom which was supernaturally to appear.
One glides here unintentionally into a modern line of thought. The idea of development furnishes what we want, allowing us to conceive of the moral community as an initial stage which by constant growth, extensive and intensive, is ever approaching the final stage. The gradually widening circle represents, however, a modern way of viewing history. It is completely foreign to Jesus. Yet even though he cannot have made use of this explanation of ours, the _fact_ that this new community stands in an organic relation with the final stage was for him as [pg 105] certain as for us. But because he expected this final stage as a purely supernatural event the connection was not to be apprehended by human reflection, rather it was a _divine secret,_ which he illuminated only by pointing to analogies in the processes of nature.
[pg 106]