What God’s Kingdom Means to Many
JESUS CHRIST often spoke about the Kingdom of God. In this regard historian H. G. Wells wrote: “Remarkable is the enormous prominence given by Jesus to the teaching of what he called the Kingdom of Heaven, and its comparative insignificance in the procedure and teaching of most of the Christian churches. This doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main teaching of Jesus, and which plays so small a part in the Christian creeds, is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines that ever stirred and changed human thought.”
Why do the churches have so little to say about God’s Kingdom? One reason may be that there is uncertainty about the Kingdom. What views have been held concerning it?
How the Kingdom Has Been Viewed
Some have identified God’s Kingdom with the Catholic Church. After the bishops accepted Emperor Constantine as their head at the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 C.E., the church became involved in politics, and the people were told that the Kingdom had already come. The Encyclopædia Britannica explains that according to the theology of Augustine (354-430 C.E.), “the Kingdom of God has already begun in this world with the institution of the church” and is “already present in the sacraments of the church.”
Others view God’s Kingdom as a human achievement. Says the same encyclopedia: “The Reformation churches . . . soon became institutional territorial churches, which in turn repressed the end-time expectation” regarding the coming of God’s Kingdom. H. G. Wells wrote: “Men shifted the reference of their lives from the kingdom of God and the brotherhood of mankind to those apparently more living realities, France and England, Holy Russia, Spain, Prussia . . . They were the real and living gods of Europe.”
In modern times too, the Kingdom has been secularized. The Encyclopædia Britannica explains: “Characteristic is the basic attitude that man himself has to prepare the future perfect society in a formative and organizing manner and that ‘hoping’ and ‘awaiting’ are replaced by human initiative.” Regarding the “social gospel,” the same reference work continues: “This movement viewed the Christian message of the Kingdom of God mainly as an impulse for the reorganization of the secular conditions of society in the sense of a Kingdom of God ethic.”
Many Jews have also viewed the Kingdom as a human achievement. In 1937 a conference of Reform rabbis in Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A., said: “We regard it as our historic task to co-operate with all men in the establishment of the kingdom of God, of universal brotherhood, justice, truth and peace on earth. This is our messianic goal.”
Another widely held view is that God’s Kingdom is a condition of one’s heart. In the United States, for instance, the Southern Baptist Convention of 1925 declared: “The Kingdom of God is the reign of God in the heart and life of the individual in every human relationship, and in every form and institution of organized society. . . . The Kingdom of God will be complete when every thought and will of man shall be brought into captivity to the will of Christ.”
So, then, is the church the Kingdom of God? Will that Kingdom be brought about through secular means? Is it a condition of the heart? And what can God’s Kingdom mean to you?