1892 - Johannes Weiss - Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God

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of t h e K i n g d o m of God

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Reprints and Translations Series

Published t h r o u g h the c o o p e r a t i o n and s u p p o r t of t h e A m e r i  can A c a d e m y of Religion, t h e Society of Biblical L i t e r a t u r e , t h e A m e r i c a n Society of P a p y r o l o g i s t s , the A m e r i c a n Philolog ical Association, a n d B r o w n J u d a i c Studies.

Editorial Board Paul Achtemeier Union Theological Seminary

Richmond, Virginia Elizabeth Clark

Duke University Divinity School John Dillenberger Berkeley, California

Ernest Frerichs Program in Judaic Studies

Brown University Joseph Kitagawa The Divinity School University of Chicago

L u d w i g Koenen Department of Classical Studies

University of Michigan Roland E. M u r p h y Duke University Divinity School

Jacob Neusner Program in Judaic Studies

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Jesus' Proclamation

of the

Kingdom of God

Johannes Weiss

T r a n s l a t e d , e d i t e d , a n d w i t h a n I n t r o d u c t i o n b y R i c h a r d H y d e H i e r s a n d D a v i d L a r r i m o r e H o l l a n d Scholars Press C h i c o , C a l i f o r n i a

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of t h e K i n g d o m of G o d

J o h a n n e s W e i s s

Edited by Richard Hyde Hiers

and

David L a r r i m o r e Holland

This book is a translation of Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche

Gottes (First edition; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,

1 8 9 2 ) .

e 1 9 7 1 by Fortress Press

Scholars Press Reprint, 1 9 8 5

Reprinted b y permission of Fortress Press

L i b r a r y of C o n g r e s s C a t a l o g i n g in P u b l i c a t i o n D a t a

Weiss, Johannes, 1 8 6 3 - 1 9 1 4 .

Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom of God.

(Scholars Press reprints and translations series) Translation of: D i e Predigt Jesu v o m Reiche Gottes. Reprint. Originally published: Philadelphia : Fortress Press, 1 9 7 1 . (Lives of Jesus series).

Bibliography: p. Includes index.

1. Kingdom of God. 2 . Jesus Christ—Teachings. I. Hiers, Richard H. II. Holland, D a v i d L a r r i m o r e . III. Title. IV. Series.

[ B S 2 4 1 7 . K 5 W 4 5 1 3 1 9 8 5 2 3 1 . 7 ' 2 8 5 - 2 5 0 2 ISBN 0 - 8 9 1 3 0 - 8 5 9 - 8 (alk. paper)

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FOREWORD

Rudolf Bultmann*

Johannes W e i s s ( 1 8 6 3 - 1 9 1 4 ) is characterized in the sec ond edition of Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart as "one of the founders of the eschatological movement in critical theology." In fact, his book Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes . . . established his reputation. Here a con sistent and comprehensive understanding of the eschato logical character of the person and proclamation of J e s u s was achieved and the course of further research definitively indicated. . . . At that time even W e i s s himself could not have appreciated the importance of his findings.

Today the eschatological meaning of the preaching of Jesus, indeed, of the earliest Christian preaching generally, has become self-evident, and systematic theology d r a w s the consequences from this recognition. Then, however, it came as a shock to the theological world. I still recall how J u l i u s Kaftan in his lectures on dogmatics said, "If the Kingdom of God is an eschatological matter, then it is a useless concept so far as dogmatics is concerned." But de spite numerous rejoinders and attempts to distort it, Johannes W e i s s ' s judgment on the matter has prevailed triumphantly.

Most jolting w e r e the consequences of the new insight for the understanding of J e s u s ' ethical instruction: The negative character of his crucial demands, the " i n t e r i m "

-* Originally published in Theologische Blätter 1 8 ( 1 9 3 9 ) , pp. 2 4 2 - 2 4 6 , and republished as a foreword to Predigt3 ( 1 9 6 4 ) . Reproduced here in English translation by permission of Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

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character of his ethics. H o w all this has worked itself out cannot be traced here. But one does well indeed to remem ber that the work once done by Johannes W e i s s , Hermann Gunkel, W i l h e l m Bousset, W i l h e l m Heitmiiller and their colleagues, precisely because it pushed the ideas of the New Testament back into the past, and because over against a middle class conception of Christianity it brought the strangeness of the New Testament startlingly to light, as sisted in bringing forth a new and authentic understanding of the New Testament proclamation which at present is working itself out in all areas of theology. And for precisely that reason, Johannes W e i s s ' s Predigt Jesu in particular has been of special importance.

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INTRODUCTION

Richard H. Hiers and David Larrimore Holland

B I O G R A P H I C A L NOTE

Johannes W e i s s w a s born in Kiel, Germany, on Decem ber 13, 1 8 6 3 . He w a s the son of Bernhard W e i s s , the noted New Testament scholar, commentator and textual critic. Johannes W e i s s ' s education w a s at the Universities of Mar burg, Berlin, Göttingen and Breslau between 1 8 8 2 - 1 8 8 8 . As a licentiatus tbeologiae, he became a Privatdozent for New Testament in the University of Göttingen in 1 8 8 8 . T w o years later he became an associate professor (ausser ordentlicher Professor) of New Testament at the same uni versity. W e i s s accepted a call to become Professor (ordent licher Professor) for New Testament at the University of Marburg in 1 8 9 5 , and three years later he moved to the University of Heidelberg where he remained until his sud den death at the age of fifty-one on August 14, 1 9 1 4 . H i s scholarly work encompassed not only his New Testament specialties, but also a rather w i d e range of social and reli gious interests.1 He is generally associated w i t h the

so-called History of Religions School (Religionsgeschichtliche Schule) of German scholarship, though it is clear that his father's rather conservative perspective w a s not altogether obliterated from his outlook; likewise, his attitudes toward the German theologian, Albrecht Ritschl,2 distinguished him from others of that school of thought. W h e n he died,

1. See Bibliography for a partial listing. 2. See below, pp. 5 - 1 2 , 1 5 ff.

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W e i s s left his Das Urchristentum (Earliest Christianity), one of his most important and majestic w o r k s , unfinished. It w a s completed by his friend and colleague, Rudolf Knopf. W e i s s also left an important legacy of students whom he had trained; perhaps best known among them is Rudolf Bultmann.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF W E I S S ' S PREDIGT Johannes W e i s s is a name familiar to English-reading students primarily in connection w i t h his Earliest Christi anity.3 Some are also acquainted w i t h his commentary on

M a r k , Das alteste Evangelium. Both of these substantial works are important in their own right. But although both are informed by and consonant with W e i s s ' s interpretation of New Testament eschatology, neither contains a system atic presentation of his findings w i t h respect to this basic question. And yet the work in which these findings appear, Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes (11 8 9 2 , 21 9 0 0 ) , strangely has been neglected by British and American New Testament critics and theologians.

It w a s this work, however, which marks the turning point from nineteenth to twentieth century New Testa ment research. Both the "demythologizing" controversy and the " n e w quest of the historical J e s u s , " which first came to the attention of most American readers only in the

1950s, are responses to the eschatological interpretation of Jesus and the early Christian community. T h e eschato logical interpretation made it clear that Jesus w a s not a modern man, that many of his beliefs and ideas ( a n d those of the early church as w e l l ) cannot be presented to modern

3. For citations of Weiss's major works, see Bibliography. A short resume of Weiss's career and writings is given in F. C. Grant's "Preface to the Torchbook Edition" of Earliest Christianity ( N e w Y o r k : Harper, 1 9 5 9 ) , 1 :v—xi.

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believers as articles of faith. The mythological elements— so Rudolf Bultmann proposed4—must be interpreted in categories intelligible and credible to modern men. Of course, the choice of existentialist categories by Bultmann and his school did not follow inevitably from W e i s s ' s recog nition of the gap between the eschatological beliefs of Jesus and those of modern men. But it certainly w a s Bultmann's intention to express thereby the "understanding of exist ence" contained in such " m y t h s . "

Recognition of the eschatological beliefs of J e s u s — a recognition that by no means took place immediately or without resistance—also meant that the historical Jesus could no longer be identified either w i t h the modern Jesus of the "liberal lives of J e s u s " or with the traditional Jesus of Christian piety. W h e r e a s the " o l d " quest of the histor ical J e s u s had been undertaken by liberal writers in the hope of finding a Jesus who, like themselves, could be liber ated from traditional dogmas/' the " n e w " quest has been pursued by more theologically oriented writers w i t h the hope of discovering a historical Jesus who is not altogether uncongenial, and, if possible, somehow related to the kerygmatic Christ.

4. His classic statement of 1 9 4 1 , "New Testament and Mythology," is printed as the first essay in Hans W e r n e r Bartsch, ed., Kerygma and Myth, trans. R. H. Fuller ( N e w Y o r k : Harper Torchbooks, 1 9 6 1 ) , pp. 1 - 4 4 ; see also Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology ( N e w Y o r k : Scribner's, 1 9 5 8 ) .

5. The "old" quest was not without other dogmatic interests, however: see Reinhard Slenczka, Geschichtlichkeit und Personsein Jesu Christ/ (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1 9 6 7 ) . But Robinson misrepre sents the "old" quest when he claims that its intent was to present the historical Jesus "as a proven divine fact": James M. Robinson, A New

Quest of the Historical Jesus (London: SCM, 1 9 5 9 ) , pp. 44, 7 6 f. Cf.

Paul W . Meyer, "The Problem of the Messianic Self-consciousness of Jesus," NT 4 ( I 9 6 0 ) : 1 3 1 ff. For a critique of Robinson and defense of Ritschl in this connection, see Daniel L. Deegan, "Albrecht Ritschl on the Historical Jesus," SJT 1 5 ( 1 9 6 2 ) : 1 3 3 - 5 0 .

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One might also recognize W e i s s as one of the prophets of form criticism. He w a s certainly as aware that the synop tic tradition had a history prior to its literary fixation as were such contemporaries as Martin Kahler and W i l h e l m W r e d e : "Every narrative that has been preserved, every saying that has survived, is evidence of some particular in terest on the part of the primitive church."6 But his most important contribution remains his recognition of the es-chatological beliefs of Jesus and the early church and espe cially his willingness, against the stream of then contem porary theology, to try to discover what J e s u s really understood the Kingdom of God to mean. In order to ap preciate both the theological impact and the critical sub stance of the book, it seems fitting to take up these two questions separately.

Its Theological Impact

The appearance of Johannes W e i s s ' s Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes in 1892 produced a major crisis in Euro pean Protestant liberal theology. Since the time of Schleier macher, that theology had been growing accustomed to the idea that the Christian religion w a s concerned primarily w i t h religious experience of which Jesus w a s the great teacher and exemplar. The Kingdom of God, about which Jesus had preached and taught, w a s understood to refer ultimately to this experience. W i l h e l m Herrmann and Adolf von Harnack, for example, understood it to mean the rule of God in the hearts of men. In circles more influ enced by Immanuel Kant and Albrecht Ritschl, such as those of J u l i u s Kaftan in Germany and the so-called Social Gospel movement as represented by W a l t e r

Rauschen-6. W e i s s , Earliest Christianity, 1 : 1 2 ; see also Predigt2, pp. 36 ff., 1 7 6 ff.; and Das älteste Evangelium (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1 9 0 3 ) , pp. 1 ff., 1 2 0 ff.

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busch in America, the Kingdom w a s construed to mean the exercise of the moral life in society. The Kingdom of God w a s thought to be both immanent in individual religious experience and to be realized gradually in an ideal society on earth.

In less than sixty-seven pages, W e i s s demonstrated that J e s u s did not regard the Kingdom of God as a religious experience.

The Kingdom of God as Jesus thought of it is never some thing subjective, inward, or spiritual, but is always the ob jective messianic Kingdom, which usually is pictured as a territory into which one enters, or as a land in which one has a share, or as a treasure which comes down from heaven.7

W e i s s thereby also prevented his contemporaries from continuing to identify their idea of the Kingdom as supreme ethical ideal w i t h what J e s u s meant by it.

In setting forth the results of his research, W e i s s raised two major questions. H i s primary concern w a s w i t h the historical question: W h a t does the New Testament reveal Jesus to have thought and taught about the Kingdom of G o d ? But at the same time a second, essentially theological question also emerged: W h a t is and w h a t ought to be the relationship between J e s u s ' notion of the Kingdom and that of his disciples and of the church subsequently? In other w o r d s , W e i s s w a s able to keep the historical and theological questions radically distinct in his own mind, and for that reason, so must w e in our treatment of them here.

To turn to the first of the problems: W e i s s w a s prodded into print by the growing tension between his own New Testament studies and the v i e w s of Ritschl ( h i s father-in-l a w as w e father-in-l father-in-l as his teacher) and the other father-in-liberafather-in-l theofather-in-logians

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(especially those influenced by Kant and the theology of the E n l i g h t e n m e n t )8 which he and his generation of stu dents had imbibed. No doubt filial respect caused him to delay publication of his v i e w s until 1 8 9 2 , three years after the death of Ritschl, but by then he felt it necessary to make his findings public. As he writes in the foreword to his second edition of the Predigt,

. . . the clear perception that Ritschl's idea of the Kingdom of God and the corresponding idea in the proclamation of Jesus were two very different things disturbed me quite early. My publication of 1 8 9 2 was an attempt to stress this difference sharply and vigorously. . . . The modern theological assertion is of a completely different form and mood from that of the

earliest Christian notion.9

8. Weiss's Die Idee des Reiches Gotles in der Theologie (Giessen: J . Ricker'sche, 1 9 0 1 ) contains a succinct and more explicit statement than

Predigt1 of Weiss's conviction that Ritschl's views were derived from the Enlightenment. ( N . B . : Throughout the editor's introduction, Predigt1'2'3 w i l l be used for the first through the third editions respectively of Die

Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes. The third edition was edited by Fer

dinand Hahn with a foreword by Rudolf Bultmann and published in Gottingen by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in 1 9 6 4 ; except f o r Hahn's intro duction and a different pagination for the preface by W e i s s , the text in the third edition is identical with that of the second, which was published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1 9 0 0 . )

9. Predigt2, p. v. ( = Predigt3, p. x i . ) Though the main thrust of J . Weiss's historical-critical study was directed against the kind of liberal theological position represented by his father-in-law, A . Ritschl, there was also a tacit repudiation of the more conservative theology of his father, Bernhard W e i s s . The latter's Life of Jesus, published in 1 8 8 2 , trans. J . W . Hope (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1 8 8 3 - 8 4 ) , had been written as if there were no significant differences between the historical Jesus of the synoptic Gospels and traditional Christian affirmations about him. Accordingly, the elder W e i s s did not bring the question of Jesus' eschatological beliefs into focus. B. W e i s s was still living when Die

Predigt was published, and his son pays him due respect (e.g., infra,

pp. 6 1 , 1 2 4 ) . But the implications of J . Weiss's position pointed not only to the end of the era of liberal theology, but also placed in serious doubt the conservative equation of the historical Jesus with the Christ of tradi tional or "Biblical" piety.

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W h e n W e i s s turned from current theology to the New Testament evidence, which he v i e w e d through the eyes of the best critical scholarship of his time, he saw J e s u s pro claiming a Kingdom of God which was unfamiliar. Ritschl's putative identification of his own v i e w of the Kingdom w i t h that of Jesus seemed false to W e i s s . W h a t e v e r theo logical verdict one might render on Ritschl's notion of the Kingdom, one dared not, one could not—at least not on the New Testament's witness—confuse that v i e w w i t h what J e s u s had thought and taught. Hence the first edition of the Predigt was at once a positive statement of the re sults of W e i s s ' s New Testament research and a protest against what he regarded to be Ritschl's misunderstand ings. Much of the form of W e i s s ' s statement is controlled by this negative impulse. As a historian, he w a s determined to spike the weapons in the liberal arsenal. Therefore he set out not only to describe J e s u s ' v i e w s of the Kingdom of God accurately, but also to disarm the positions espoused by Ritschl and his followers and to defuse each of the exe-getical arguments they had adapted to fortify their case.

The Eschatological Kingdom vs. the Ritschlian

The Kingdom of God which W e i s s found on J e s u s ' lips in the New Testament had very different characteristics from that of R i t s c h l .1 0 Ritschl had said,

Those who believe in Christ are the Kingdom of God insofar as they, without reckoning the differences of sex, condition or nationality against each other, act reciprocally out of love and so bring forth on all possible levels and to the ends of the

1 0 . On the w h o l e question of the role of W e i s s in the breakup of this sort of liberal theology, see. D. L. Holland, "History, Theology and the Kingdom of G o d : A Contribution of Johannes W e i s s to Twentieth Cen tury Theology," Biblical Research 1 3 ( 1 9 6 8 ) : 5 4 - 6 6 .

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human race the expanding community of moral conviction

and moral goods.1 1

The sort of Kingdom of God W e i s s traced to J e s u s , how ever, w a s first of all " a religious, and in this case that means an eschatological, e v e n t . "1 2 The Kingdom w a s not primarily an ethical relationship of love for God and man. Moreover, the eschatology in which Jesus had framed his concept of the Kingdom w a s apocalyptic eschatology, which gave his proclamation a "religio-forensic c h a r a c t e r "1 3 and severed its customary connections w i t h the ethical idealism of nine teenth century liberal theology as W e i s s k n e w it. The whole Ritschlian concept w a s out of kilter from this point of view.

W e i s s traced the source of J e s u s ' notion of the Kingdom of God primarily to so-called late J e w i s h apocalypticism. In that thought-milieu, there w a s a dualism of worlds, one above and one here below. W h a t happens here simply mir rors what has already happened decisively a b o v e .1 4 One of the consequences of this line of thought is that a sharp dualism appears not only between the world above and this world below, but also between the rule of God and the rule of S a t a n .1 5 Both sorts of dualism stand in conscious rebuke to the Ritschlian identification w i t h J e s u s ' of its own mon istic v i e w s of the Kingdom as a situation to be w o r k e d out here on earth among men. W e i s s employs this sort of apoc alyptic framework as his major touchstone of authenticity for distinguishing that which is genuinely attributable to Jesus in the New Testament from that which is plausibly the creation of the faith of the early church, a methodology

1 1 . Albrecht Ritsehl, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und

Versöhnung'' (Bonn: Marcus, 1 8 9 5 ) , vol. 3, p. 2 7 1 .

1 2 . Predigt2, p. 1 4 6 ; cf. Predigt1, below, pp. 8 2 , 1 1 3 - 1 1 5 , 1 3 2 - 1 3 5 .

1 3 . Predigt2, p. 1 4 6 .

1 4 . See below, pp. 7 4 - 7 9 .

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which made the reproof of Ritschlian exegesis still more pronounced.1 6

Consequently, W e i s s finds a number of characteristically apocalyptic and eschatological elements in J e s u s ' view of the Kingdom. Important among them is the radical tran scendence of the Kingdom of G o d .1 7 It is supramundane: "this old world cannot assimilate the Kingdom of God, the

alcov fiikXcDv; it must become n e w . "1 8 W h e t h e r conceived in terms of individual or collective morality or in terms of civic or ecclesiastical life, the Kingdom is not susceptible of being transposed into the world. Jesus, says W e i s s , awaited a new heaven and a new earth. Secondly, the Kingdom of God w a s a matter for the future, not the present. " H e

( J e s u s ) has nothing in common w i t h this world; he stands w i t h one foot already in the future w o r l d . "1 9 To the ques tion of whether Jesus expected the end to come immedi ately or whether he thought in terms of its being delayed until some time further off, W e i s s finds a double answer in the New Testament. At first, he suggests, it is clear that Jesus expected the end imminently. All things were to come to their culmination shortly w i t h the resurrection, the judgment, the millenial reign, and so forth.2 0 But later in his life, J e s u s ' outlook on this matter shifted. He had been preaching a call to repentance, but the people had not re pented. H e then came to the conviction that the Kingdom would not come before his death and even that his own death w o u l d have a part in making it possible: his death would be a ransom for the people who w e r e not responding

1 6 . Cf. Christian W a l t h e r , Typen des Reich-Gottes-Verstdndnisses (Munich: Kaiser, 1 9 6 1 ) , pp. 1 6 1 f., for further discussion of this matter. 1 7 . Predigt*, pp. 7 7 ff.

1 8 . See below, pp. 93 ff.

1 9 . Predigt2, p. 1 4 5 . Cf. Predigt1, see below, pp. 8 4 - 9 2 . 20. See below, pp. 8 6 f., 1 2 9 - 1 3 1 .

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to his call to repent.2 1 The end w a s still to come soon, but not before his own death had paved the w a y for it. Thirdly, the Kingdom was not to develop gradually from a small beginning. To think that w a s to grasp J e s u s ' meaning inade quately. "Either the Kingdom is here or it is not yet h e r e ! "2 2 And, fourthly, it w a s not J e s u s ' mission—or even his view of his mission—to found or inaugurate the King dom. For every man, and that includes J e s u s , the only via ble attitude to take vis-a-vis the advent of the Kingdom w a s one of passivity. Men could pray that the Kingdom might come, but they could do nothing to bring it into existence. That remained forever solely the prerogative of God. The Kingdom w a s a gift, not an assignment.2 3

The ethic which one automatically expects to emerge from this view of the coming Kingdom will be negative and lean toward asceticism. The orientation will be a w a y from this world and toward the future world. And such is what W e i s s marks out in J e s u s ' teachings. Perhaps the ethic of Jesus, as W e i s s details it, is most appropriately labeled a "penitential e t h i c . "2 4 It is not a positive ideal of worldly morality, such as Ritschl and his followers w e r e disposed to elaborate, but the diametric opposite.2'1 Every man is, however, enjoined to live so as to be prepared for the

com-2 1 . See below, pp. 8 4 - 8 9 .

22. See below, pp. 73 f. Cf. pp. 74 ff., and Predigl2, pp. 82 ff.

23. Liberal theology regarded it mainly as assignment: through moral effort, men were to build the Kingdom on earth. Adolf von Harnack thought that Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom as both gift and task (What

Is Christianity? trans. T. B. Saunders [ N e w Y o r k : Harper Torchbooks,

1 9 5 7 ] , p. 6 7 ) .

24. Albert Schweitzer, in The Quest of the Historical Jesus, trans. W . Montgomery (New Y o r k : Macmillan, 1 9 5 0 ) , writes as follows: Weiss's "ethic is . . . completely negative . . . ( i n ) character; it is, in fact, not so much an ethic as a penitential discipline" (p. 2 4 0 ) . Both W e i s s and Schweitzer understand Jesus to mean that only those who gave up all worldly ties and treasures would be fit to enter the Kingdom.

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ing Kingdom."" The end is upon us! Repent and get your selves ready to enter the Kingdom! That is the crucial mes sage. You yourselves can do nothing to effect the coming of the Kingdom of God. God w i l l see to that himself in his own good time. But its appearance is close at hand, and you can prepare yourselves so as to be ready when it comes. " J e s u s proclaimed what God desired of those who wished in the future to participate in the Kingdom of God. The new morality which he proclaimed w a s thought of as a con dition for entrance into the Kingdom of G o d . "2 7 Thus, as W e i s s reads J e s u s ' teachings, the role of the Kingdom in ethics is very different from Ritschl's assessment. It is no longer the goal man strives to realize in his ethical life. It is rather the motive for one's ethical life; one acts in such and such a w a y because of the impending advent of the King dom. Ethics almost constitutes a sort of self-preparation of a psychological sort, as Folke Holmström s u g g e s t s .2 8 Any theory of rewards and punishments relating the notion of the Kingdom of God and ethics, however, W e i s s rejects out of hand. The Kingdom itself is eitel Gnade (nothing but g r a c e ) !2 9

It should be noted, further, that there is a specific denial in W e i s s ' s study of any attempt to identify the Kingdom w i t h J e s u s ' circle of disciples. Idealistic theology in many of its forms had too readily granted that identification, but

26. See below, pp. 1 0 5 ff; cf. Predigt2, pp. 9 5 f., 1 2 3 - 1 2 5 , 1 5 7 , 1 6 0 . 27. Predigt2, p. 1 3 8 ; cf. p. 1 2 6 . Cf. also Predigt1, below, pp. 1 0 5 ff., 1 3 2 -1 3 4 .

2 8 . Folke Holmström, Del eskalologiska motiret i nutida tvologi (Stock holm; Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelses, 1 9 3 3 ) , pp. 6 3 - 7 3 , esp. p. 7 1 ; an abridged German translation of this work appeared under the title

Das eschatologische Denken der Gegenwart, trans. Harold Kruska (Güter

sloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1 9 3 6 ) , p. 6 9 ; cf. also below, pp. 1 0 3 ff., and

Predigt*, pp. 1 3 8 f., 1 5 0 f.

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W e i s s is explicit in his argument that the Kingdom of God does not consist in the disciples' recognition of the lord ship of God in J e s u s .3 0 This argument is a good illustration of the w a y in which W e i s s ' s exposition w a s controlled by his desire to rebuff the interpretation of the Ritschlians. There i s , of course, a certain innate plausibility in W e i s s ' s treating the question of the relationship of the disciples to the Kingdom, but there is certainly no necessity for his hav ing raised the question w i t h just this facet highlighted. One can conceive of his not having raised the question in this form at all save for the fact that this w a s the w a y liberal German theology w a s discussing this portion of the whole complex of problems surrounding the notion of the King dom of God.

W e i s s thus found Jesus teaching about the Kingdom of God in purely eschatological terms. It w a s properly antici pated as an event to be brought about solely by the agency of God in the near future. One needed to prepare himself for its advent—that w a s the meaning of the preaching of J e s u s — b u t one could then only w a i t passively for its com

ing-i n working-ing out hing-is eschatologing-ical ing-interpretating-ion of the New Testament data, W e i s s encountered a major difficulty: certain dominical sayings which give every appearance of regarding the Kingdom as present. In Predigt1, for in

stance, he is forced to treat L u k e 1 7 : 2 1 ( " . . . for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of y o u " ) as the result of "prophetic e n t h u s i a s m "3 1 and to relegate the " p r e s e n c e " sayings in general to a paradoxical manner of s p e a k i n g3 2 or to "expressions of spiritual e c s t a s y . "3 3 As he writes in 30. See below, pp. 68 ft., 1 2 9 ; Predigt2, pp. 7 8 - 8 8 .

3 1 . See below, pp. 78 f.

32. See below, pp. 7 2 - 7 5 ; cf. Predigt2, p. 8 7 .

33. Predigt2, p. 9 0 . Cf. the discussion in general in Predigt1, below, pp. 6 5 - 8 1 , and in Predigt2, pp. 6 5 - 9 9 .

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Predigt', " . . . it is only an intensification of his general cer tainty if now and then in joyful prophetic enthusiasm Jesus leaps across the short span of expectancy and speaks as if he w e r e already at the g o a l . "3 4

There is also a sense in which J e s u s , according to W e i s s , was a w a r e that the forces of Satan had been broken in the world above and that, though he himself w a s still engaged in the battle here below, particularly in his exorcistic ac tions, the victory against the forces of Satan is in some meaningful w a y already a s s u r e d .8 5 To observe this also helps to explain J e s u s ' occasional proleptic utterances about the Kingdom's presence. Thus W e i s s ' s final conclu sion respecting the problems raised by these sayings is that they represent not so much shifts in J e s u s ' understanding as nuances of mood.3 6 Basically these exceptional state ments do not alter the judgment that J e s u s ' role in respect to the coming Kingdom is one of preparing the people for its future incursion, not one of presiding over its inaugura tion or development.

A related problem lies in what W e i s s describes as a dichotomy between J e s u s ' v i e w s of the Kingdom and those of the earliest church as they are attested in the New Testa ment. It is an interesting feature of W e i s s ' s whole enter prise in the two editions of the Predigt that he deals w i t h this further question: Should J e s u s ' conception of the Kingdom be normative for subsequent Christian under standing? This question constitutes the second of the com cerns mentioned above ( p . 5 ) .

W e i s s discovered that even J e s u s ' disciples' idea of the Kingdom of God differed from J e s u s ' : they weakened its eschatological character and brought it into the center of

34. Predigt11, p. 7 0 .

35. See below, pp. 7 4 - 7 9 .

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their thought not as a future event but as something already present. W e i s s found this quite comprehensible in v i e w of the fact that these men, living as they did in the presence of Jesus, had a sense of the new order of things and the pres ence of the Kingdom in Jesus himself which obscured their perception of the eschatological kernel of J e s u s ' own under standing of the Kingdom. His interpretation of this phe nomenon comes out perhaps most clearly in his treatment of Matt. 1 3 : 2 4 ff.37 W e i s s admits the evangelist understood his materials in terms of a present Kingdom but denies that the parable of the tares is really susceptible to that sort of exegesis. Such a rendering misses J e s u s ' message in the par able, and historical integrity demands w e release it from the scheme in which the evangelist has enmeshed it. Thus Weiss exposes an important hiatus between the proclama tions of Jesus and the early church.

Before w e go on to the question of the perpetuation of that hiatus in modern theology and W e i s s ' s comments upon it, a word or two is in order respecting the adequacy of W e i s s ' s eschatological criterion for the authenticity of the tradition attributed to J e s u s . Rolf Schäfer has restated an important kind of criticism of this facet of W e i s s ' s w o r k .3 8 H e suggests that the very standard W e i s s employs to dis tinguish J e s u s ' words from those created by the faith of the church is artificial. For Schäfer, to use the thought-world of apocalypticism as the keystone for J e s u s ' genuine teach ings is to take something foreign to the synoptic materials by which to judge them without first seeing what it is they can tell us. He sees a methodological contradiction in W e i s s ' s w o r k at this point. W h e n one is trying consciously to rule out the views of the later church and to recapture

37. See below, pp. 61 f., 7 2 ; cf. Predigt2, pp. 40, 4 8 .

3 8 . Rolf Schäfer, "Das Reich Gottes bei Albrecht Ritsehl und Johannes W e i s s , " ZThK 6 1 ( 1 9 6 4 ) : 6 8 - 8 8 .

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the pristine teaching of J e s u s , he suggests, it is inappro priate to subordinate the ethical teachings ascribed to Jesus to the apocalyptic m a t e r i a l .3 9 This is especially the case when W e i s s uses later materials—Pauline passages, sec tions from John, and even portions from the Revelation— to embellish and corroborate his p o i n t s .4 0 Furthermore, he thinks, this criterion causes W e i s s to impute an apocalyptic sense to words which would not automatically incur such a meaning. And, more important still, it forces him to be a sort of Marcionite w i t h respect to those portions of the text which do not readily support his theory; either such texts must be "corrected" to fit his view, or they must be elimi nated for one reason or another. In other words, the major charge against W e i s s ' s apocalyptic eschatology as a stand ard of authenticity is that it amounts to a petitio principii.

In a certain sense, of course, such a charge can scarcely be wholly denied, but the point is overstated. That W e i s s sought to interpret the synoptic evidence w i t h the help of other contemporary sources where similar or related apoc alyptic concepts appear is certainly a less dubious procedure than that which w a s customary in his time, viz., to ignore the apocalyptic character of the New Testament materials. Moreover, in the academic and theological context in which the Predigt appeared, W e i s s had to put his case as strongly as possible. If he overemphasized the eschatologi-cal aspects of the parables of the sower, the mustard seed, the leaven, the tares and the seeds growing secretly, it w a s clearly in order to counter the opposite interpretation at the hands of the R i t s c h l i a n s .4 1 If he denied interpretations which described the growth and expansion and develop ment of the Kingdom when he treated these parables, it w a s

39. Ibid., pp. 73 ft.

40. See below, pp. 7 4 f., 9 2 f., 1 2 7 .

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primarily to win a hearing for certain data and for an inter pretive option which w e r e being totally neglected. Perhaps it would be fairer to W e i s s to suggest that his criterion con stitutes an exaggerated exegetical emphasis rather than a petitio principa. To be sure, W e i s s also believed his inter pretations to be essentially correct as well as an essential corrective for liberal theology's misconceptions—the vigor w i t h which he defended his work against his critics in Predigt2 attests to that—but the taut form in which he

couched his first statement is rendered comprehensible and excusable in terms of the historical situation in which he wrote.

Ritschlian Theology, Nevertheless

W e can now return to the question of the relationship between J e s u s ' proclamation of the Kingdom of God and the church's. W e i s s , in recognizing that the earliest church had not followed J e s u s ' lead, that even among the disciples there had apparently been no ability to appropriate J e s u s ' idea without modification and mutation, also articulated an issue which went beyond the historical questions of J e s u s ' eschatology, namely, the question of the relation of the re sults of historical scholarship and contemporary theology. That i s , he raises the question of hermeneutics. The timeli ness of that question for today scarcely needs to be labored. W e i s s as a historian and a theologian tried earnestly and honestly to ask how historical results coalesce w i t h and im pinge upon modern forms of the faith. He w a n t e d to do both the historical and the contemporary theological tasks as well as possible, and, on the question of their relation ship, he would allow the chips to fall where they might. H e especially wanted to let the historical data speak for them selves, even if that eventuated in a break between New Testament exegesis and contemporary systematic theology.

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As he examined both the New Testament and contem porary theology, he discovered a continuing hiatus between J e s u s ' and the church's thought on the Kingdom. That he regarded this gap as continuing down into the present from the earliest church is plain in his treatment of the position of J u l i u s Wellhausen in Predigt2.42 W e i s s singled

Well-hausen out as one who saw the Kingdom of God through Goethian glasses. H e is quite complimentary of W e l l -hausen's treatment of the suprahistorical meaning of the Kingdom, but then goes on to say that " W e l l h a u s e n suc cumbs here to an old and widespread theological tradition which goes back finally to the Gospel of J o h n , " namely, the immanent and ethical interpretation of the K i n g d o m .4 3 That is to say, W e i s s does not treat W e l l h a u s e n ' s v i e w as a uniquely modern malady, but sees it rather as yet another example of the de-eschatologizing which is already evident in the New Testament tradition.4 4

The basis for W e i s s ' s attitude is clearly presented in his work Die Idee des Reiches Gottes in der Theologie ( T h e Idea of the Kingdom of God in T h e o l o g y ) , where he writes as follows:

But however modernizing and dogmatizing Ritschl's biblical-theological foundation may be, the idea of the Kingdom of God as he formulates it need not therefore be unusable. For history shows that the idea of Jesus, except in the most ancient period, is never used in unabridged and undistorted form, but is always transposed and reinterpreted. It was sim ply impossible to use it otherwise. And if it is only useful and

42. J u l i u s W e l l h a u s e n , „Des Menschen Sohn," in Skizzen und

Vorar-beiten, sechstes Heft (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1 8 9 9 ) , pp. 1 8 7 - 2 1 5 . W e i s s

treats this point in Predtgt2, pp. 5 5 - 6 5 . It is worth noting, however, that W e i s s did not really trace this issue in all its ramifications through the history of Christian theology.

43. Predigt*, p. 6 0 .

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pertinent in another form, then a use which deviates from the Bible appears to me at least inoffensive—especially if one is

clear about the difference and regards it as essential.4 5

That is, W e i s s regarded the historical and theological ques tions as separable. Historically speaking, J e s u s ' v i e w of the K i n g d o m was eschatological but that of the church in W e i s s ' s day w a s not, certainly not in the sense that Jesus' had been. But the theological evaluation of that discrepancy w a s a separate matter. W e i s s was certainly neither a proto-"fundamentalist" nor one w h o s e call w a s simply "back to the B i b l e ! " He did not deny modern thought its viability. But he w a n t e d to be sure his peers fully recognized that modern thought is not identical w i t h Jesus' thought and expressions.

To make his position even clearer, W e i s s w a s willing to ask if " K i n g d o m of G o d " w a s an appropriate designation for the modern concept, differing as it does f r o m J e s u s ' use of the term.

Jesus' idea of the Kingdom of God appears to be inextrica bly involved with a number of eschatological-apocalyptic views which systematic theology has been accustomed to take over without critical examination. But it is now neces sary to ask whether it is really possible for theology to em ploy the idea of the Kingdom of God for the purpose for which it has recently been considered serviceable. The ques tion arises whether it is not thereby divested of its essential traits and, in fact, so modified that only the name still re

mains the same.4 0

The position W e i s s himself w a n t s to embrace can be traced in his various w o r k s . W h e n one compares the t w o

4 5 . Weiss, Idee des Reiches Cottes, p. 1 1 3 .

4 6 . See below, p. 1 3 1 ; cf. pp. 1 3 4 f.; cf. Johannes W e i s s , Die

Nach-folge Christi und die Predigt der Gegenwart (Gôttingen: Vandenhoeck &

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editions of the Predigt, it is clear that his historical position remained the same. In the eight years that lay between his two statements, he seems to have modified his views only in two respects: first, he could be somewhat less relentless in the exposition of his argument and the absoluteness of his terminology ( a s w e shall see l a t e r ) ; second, the later edition shows some traces of W e i s s ' s own theological affin ity for precisely the same Ritschlian position whose histori cal assumptions he so vigorously rejected. It is this latter element which introduces a certain diffuseness in W e i s s ' s statement in the second, expanded edition. By the time of Predigt*, there appears to be a certain minoration of the eschatological outlook of the first edition. This alteration appears less as a change of mind or the result of new re search than as a difference in the language chosen to ex pound the same historical materials.

This ambiguity becomes especially clear in the context of W e i s s ' s other post-1892 writings which handle the same questions. Die Nachfolge Christi und die Predigt der Ge-genwart ( T h e Imitation of Christ and Contemporary P r e a c h i n g )4 7 for example, appeared in 189.5 and was a clear declaration by W e i s s that whatever the results of his his torical research, the theological position demanded by the present w a s that approximated by liberal theology. One sees this position also emerging in a long article W e i s s con tributed to the Archiv fiir Religionswissenschaft entitled "Das Problem der Entstehung des Christentums" ( T h e Problem of the Origin of C h r i s t i a n i t y ) ,4 8 There he writes as follows:

For whoever already experiences the help and grace of God in the present life and has learned to rely on them has by that fact in principle overcome metaphysical dualism and

4 7 . Ibid.

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the tension toward the future. Now we observe this also in the proclamation of Jesus. Here the belief in God which, in itself, is completely uneschatological stands next to the es-chatological frame of mind like something that can hardly be reconciled to i t .4 9

The author of Predigt' would scarcely have written those lines even though they do not necessarily contradict the historical position he w a s expounding there. Certainly the emphasis has shifted.

But W e i s s the liberal Ritschlian theologian is apparent also in Predigt2 ( he had managed to remain largely hidden

in Predigt1). For example, in the second edition W e i s s

talked about the relation of the future and present sayings of J e s u s concerning the Kingdom of God as nuances of mood, but in the first edition he found them rather more embarrassing exceptions to his stated position. Or, to take another example, the treatment of the commandment to love God and neighbor in Predigt2 is handled as one of a

series of noneschatological sayings which represent a differ ent side of J e s u s ' teachings.5 0 In this mood, J e s u s repeated ethical dicta which w e r e in common currency in his time and which reflect a more world-affirming tone than his own eschatological teachings. These noneschatological sayings, W e i s s suggests, have a kind of abiding relevance which J e s u s ' own eschatological words by their very nature can not have. ( S e e the discussion b e l o w . )

W h a t w e have here labeled a diminution or minoration of the strict eschatology of Predigt1 by the time of Predigt2

is, as suggested, less an intentional change on W e i s s ' s part than a reflection—disallowed in the first edition, for the most part—of his own theology. H e had made his point against the Ritschlians. Now his own questions as a son of

4 9 . Ibid., p. 4 5 1 .

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liberal theology could come to the fore w i t h some sense of security against misunderstanding. W e i s s w a s perfectly willing to accept the results of honest historical scholar ship, whatever they might be. H e w a s not prepared, how ever, to insist that the church in subsequent ages had to ad here to interpretations which were identical with those held by J e s u s . H e w a s ready to allow a radical hiatus to exist between J e s u s ' teachings and those of subsequent Christians. Indeed, he could see no alternative to that posi tion. The plain meaning of the New Testament texts, as even the earliest Christian exegetes (e.g., Clement of Alex andria and O r i g e n ) had recognized, w a s utterly inapplica ble in any literal sense to succeeding ages: J e s u s ' command ments were moral absolutes, but they were impossible to obey because they were inappropriate to changing situa tions. W e i s s shared that judgment and notes, respecting J e s u s ' mandates, " I t is self-evident that Jesus did not in tend w i t h them to promulgate for Christianity in* all ages a continuing ethical l a w , an 'ordinance for the Kingdom of G o d ' . "5 1 It had seemed to the church that those absolute commandments, therefore, had somehow either to be alle gorized away or disposed of by some sort of exegetical exer cise. A n d it w a s precisely those sorts of exegetical aberra tions which W e i s s rejected. The difficulty which had evoked them W e i s s could appreciate, but as solutions they were unacceptable, for they attempted to confuse the his torical and theological tasks by making their own findings seem to come from J e s u s himself. " W e must protest only against one w h o wants to eisegete this v i e w , which w a s produced later, into the words and the faith of J e s u s . "5 2 Historical integrity w a s required.

Nevertheless, after all the historical work w a s done,

5 1 . Predigt', p. 1 4 3 ; cf. Nachfolge, p. 1 6 2 . 52. Predigt1, p. 117.

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W e i s s w a s still to maintain that the " m o d e r n " (sc. Ritschl-i a n ) notRitschl-ions of the KRitschl-ingdom of God w e r e the best for Christianity in his time. H i s point w a s simple, and it marked his views off from those of the other liberal theo logians: W e i s s did not need to have his own position seem to be identical with J e s u s ' . W e i s s found, as did Schweitzer after him, that the historical J e s u s , with his concern for an eschatological Kingdom, had almost nothing explicit to say respecting modern ethical issues. Consequently, if our mod ern notions of the Kingdom of God can help us w i t h these issues, they, and not the views our historical research shows us Jesus held, are proper to us. This position comes to lucid expression all through W e i s s ' s Nachfolge; there he says, for instance, "For these "hew questions, those words of Jesus give no directive however much one may want to apply t h e m . "5 3 Further, " I t can scarcely be imagined what a transformation of mood and ideas has taken place since it has become clear to mankind that they also have indeed to prepare this world as a place for the Kingdom of God, and that one is obliged to bequeath the coming generation a better world than one r e c e i v e d . "5 4 The same v i e w w a s in-cipiently present in Predigt1: " W e no longer pray ' M a y

grace come and the world pass a w a y ' , but w e pass our lives in the joyful certainty that this world will evermore become the showplace of a 'humanity of G o d ' . "5 5 And this modern notion of the Kingdom could be described by W e i s s as follows:

53. Nachfolge, p. 1 6 4 . 54. Nachfolge, p. 1 6 3 .

55. See below, p. 1 3 5 . Cf. Predigt2, p. v ( = Predigt3, p. x i ) : "I am still of the opinion today that his (Ritschl's) system and precisely this central idea represent that form of dogmatic statement which is best suited to draw our race to the Christian religion and, correctly understood and correctly expressed, to awaken and nurture a healthy and powerful religious life such as we need today."

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We can trust permanently in the love of God with good con science only if we desire with all our determination to be fellow-members of the community of the Kingdom of God, which, since Christ's work, is present within humanity, and if we are determined to cooperate with his wish in the strengthening and extension of the rule of God within our selves and others and in his way to make the right, reverent, humble and faithful use of our position as children of our kingly Father.5 0

Neither historical research and modern theology nor the historical Jesus and the modern situation need be com pletely divorced, however. For even if W e i s s refuses to re late them by means of what he considers bad exegesis so that modern versions—or perversions—of what Jesus is supposed to have taught are denied the authority of " a s Jesus taught," he attempts another sort of reconciliation between Jesus and the present. If the eschatological words of Jesus give us no directive for our new questions, w e can still rely upon the guidance of the exalted Christ. " H e r e again, our leader in ( t h e social) struggle cannot be the his torical Christ, but only the exalted Christ, of whom w e be lieve that w e r e he among us today, he w o u l d lead us in re organizing the world according.to the ideas which God reveals to us through h i s t o r y . "5 7 Just how that relationship w i t h the exalted Christ is to come about and how it is to be described and what the relationship is between him and the historical Christ are matters W e i s s does not clarify, but he relies explicitly and entirely on the veracity of Matt. 2 8 : 2 0 b , " l o , I am w i t h you a l w a y s , to the close of the a g e . " It would be wrong to imply, however, that w e cannot have hints from the synoptic accounts of what w e might find Jesus doing w e r e he to reappear among us. H i s passionate

56. Nachfolge, p. 1 6 8 . 57. Nachfolge, p. 1 6 4 .

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love for God and man and his earnest desire to bring all men to God would surely span the centuries. But w e should not expect that he would simply repeat the Sermon on the Mount for us. Nor would he, in our circumstances, simply wait patiently for the coming of the Kingdom. He would set out to work for it in the framework of history. At one point W e i s s goes so far as to claim of the historical Jesus that even " H a d he not been drawn into the messianic move ment through the call at the Jordan, possibly—in accord with his wholesome and luminous inmost nature—he would have become the founder of just as serious an 'evangelical' ethic, but one which delights in the w o r l d . "5 8 This, rather than a reproduction of J e s u s ' eschatological stance, is the sort of thing W e i s s feels the world is now called upon by God to produce.

Subsequent Response

To review the subsequent discussions of the significance of eschatology for theology and ethics would require space beyond that allotted for this introduction. But a few words may be permitted.

Rudolf Bultmann has summarized the impact of W e i s s ' s thesis upon the historical foundations of liberal theology: When I began to study theology, theologians as well as lay men were excited and frightened by the theories of Johannes Weiss. I remember that Julius Kaftan, my teacher in dog matics in Berlin, said: "If Johannes Weiss is right and the conception of the kingdom of God is an eschatological one, then it is impossible to make use of this conception in dog matics." But in the following years the theologians, J . Kaftan among them, became convinced that Weiss was correct.5 9 It is not surprising, then, that Bultmann describes W e i s s ' s

58. Predigl*, p. 1 4 5 .

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little book as " e p o c h - m a k i n g . "6 0 Albert Schweitzer had earlier acclaimed it "one of the most important works in historical theology. It seems to break a spell. It closes one epoch and begins a n o t h e r . "6 1

In the realm of moral theology, it needs scarcely be men tioned that the term "Kingdom of G o d " has now passed out of currency. Once the watchword of the Social Gospel movement, which looked for the establishment of the Kingdom—slowly, perhaps, but surely—on earth through human moral effort, this category has given place to others, for instance, in the terminology of Reinhold Niebuhr, to "prophetic religion." It is not the Kingdom of God, but, at best, "proximate solutions" which men strive to achieve on earth. Niebuhr's appreciation of the significance of the future eschatological fulfillment of the human situation ap pears in the second volume of his Gifford L e c t u r e s .6 2

The impact of the eschatological interpretation upon sys tematic theology has been somewhat less decisive. Prior to

60. Ibid., p. 1 2 .

6 1 . Schweitzer, The Quest, p. 239- It should be noted that this book, originally published in English in 1 9 1 0 , was translated from Schweitzer's

Von Reimarus zu Wrede (Tubingen: M o h r [Siebeck], 1 9 0 6 ) . A revised

and expanded edition was published in 1 9 1 3 under the title, Geschichte

der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (Tubingen: M o h r [Siebeck], 1 9 1 3 ) . The latter

edition has been reprinted, but not, to date, translated. Schweitzer w r o t e a new foreword in 1 9 5 0 for the 6th edition of Geschichte (Tubingen: M o h r [Siebeck], 1 9 5 1 ) in which he restated and reaffirmed his basic viewpoint. This new foreword is translated by J . R. Coates—rather freely — i n the 3rd English edition of The Quest (London: A . & C. Black, 1 9 6 4 ) . Schweitzer also reviewed his position with respect to Jesus' understanding of the Kingdom in another manuscript completed in 1 9 5 1 :

The Kingdom of God and Primitive Christianity ( N e w Y o r k : Seabury,

1 9 6 8 ) , pp. 6 8 - 1 3 0 .

62. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (New- Y o r k : Scribner's, 1 9 4 3 ) , esp. pp. 2 4 4 - 3 0 0 . Cf. Harvey Cox's hopeful effort to revive the Kingdom of God as a basic category for contemporary social ethics: The Secular City ( N e w Y o r k : Macmillan, 1 9 6 5 ) , pp. 1 1 0 - 1 1 3 , 1 2 4 ff.

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the discovery of J e s u s ' ( a n d early C h r i s t i a n i t y ' s ) eschato-logical world-view, there w a s no need for a program of de my thologizing. Eschatology had been demythologized, but for the most part, covertly and even subconsciously, not only, as w e shall see, by the writers of the " l i v e s of J e s u s , " but also by preachers and the writers of dogmatics. Escha tology w a s generally treated as meaning life after death, and the Kingdom of God w a s equated—if not w i t h social progress a n d / o r individual religious experience—with the church, especially the " d e a d in Christ" now in heaven. Rudolf Bultmann proposed to express the essential mean ing of New Testament eschatology in existentialist cate gories. In the " n o w " or "crisis of decision," in response to the address or demand of the kerygma, one makes a deci sion of final consequence for his own future. This " n o w " of hearing and responding to the kerygma, in fact, consti tutes the eschatological moment, linking one w i t h the " e s -chatological event," Jesus C h r i s t .8 3 But in Bultmann's in terpretation of eschatology, nearly everything is concen trated upon the present. If the link between the present eschatological moment and the past, the "Christ event," is tenuous and problematic ( a point of concern to many of Bultmann's " p u p i l s , " e.g., E. K a s e m a n n ) , the line to the future seems to be missing entirely. Bultmann believes that the virtual elimination of the future may be justified by pointing to the Fourth Gospel's proclivity toward "realized eschatology." Further to justify this procedure, Bultmann insists that the traces of a futuristic eschatology which

ap-6 3 . See the discussions in the several volumes edited by Hans W e r n e r Bartsch entitled Kerygma and Mythos, some of which have been trans lated by R. H. Fuller: Kerygma and Myth, 1, 2 (London: S P C K , 1 9 5 3 , 1 9 6 2 ) . For criticism of Bultmann's (and his f o l l o w e r s ' ) tendency to eliminate the significance of the Kingdom as future event, see Otto Betz,

What Do We Know About Jesus? (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1 9 6 8 ) ,

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pear in John should be discounted as secondary interpola tions! Karl Barth's interpretation of eschatology, like that of the Fourth Gospel, begins and all but ends w i t h the in carnation. Bultmann is preoccupied with the present sub jective moment of existential decision; Barth w i t h the past and ( t o h i m ) objective events from J e s u s ' incarnation through his ascension. Each interprets eschatology pri marily in terms of his respective theological interest; neither takes chronological futurity seriously. Oscar Cull-mann's Christ and Time presents another interpretation of the meaning of New Testament eschatology: Christ stands midway between the beginning and end of time and history — t h e end is yet to come as "final completion," but the " w h e n " makes no difference, for "the 'end' as the meaning of redemptive history . . . is J e s u s Christ, who has already a p p e a r e d . "6 4 So far as dogmatics is concerned, the general tendency of these writers is toward realized eschatology. The same is true of most of the so-called post-Bultmannian writers, e.g., Giinther Bornkamm, Hans Conzelmann, and J a m e s M . Robinson.

Various other eschatological doctrines appear which are less influenced by the eschatological interpretation of the New Testament. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Teilhard de Chardin, both of whom have posthumously enjoyed con siderable interest recently in America, thought in terms of an evolutionary or developmental teleology: respectively, toward a secular world "come of a g e , " and toward increas ing consciousness on the part of being. Tillich used the cate gory "Kingdom of G o d " as a subtitle in volume 3 of his Systematic Theology, but wrote as if he had not yet heard of W e i s s or Schweitzer. For Tillich, the Kingdom of God

64. Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time, trans. F. V . Filson, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1 9 6 4 ) , pp. 1 3 9 - 4 3 .

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meant basically "the transition from the temporal to the e t e r n a l . "6 5

Recently, however, new efforts to express the signifi cance of the eschatological future for theology have ap peared, most notably, those of Jürgen M ö l l m a n n .6 8 W h a t place eschatology will have in future discussions of dog matics remains to be seen. It is unlikely, however, that it will be tacitly demythologized or simply ignored.

The Consequences for New Testament Research Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes also opened a new era in New Testament research. W h e n the eschatological beliefs of Jesus were taken seriously, it w a s no longer pos sible for modern interpreters to fashion the "historical J e s u s " after their own images, as had been the custom among the nineteenth century writers of "lives of J e s u s . "8 7 Now a more historically accurate account of his preaching, activity, and intention w o u l d have to be attempted. Hither to, it had generally been supposed that J-esus did not really believe that the Kingdom of God or messianic age would soon appear. These topics had been subsumed under theo logical ethics. But now it w a s possible and, indeed, neces sary to raise the more basic question: W h a t religious mean ing do these beliefs express? Bultmann's famous program of "demythologizing" is concerned with precisely this ques tion. The n e w appreciation of eschatology also made

possi-6 5 . Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1 9 6 3 ) , esp. pp. 3 9 4 - 4 2 3 . D . M. Smith, J r . , observes that Tillich, in Systematic Theology 2, "utilizes C. H. Dodd's realized eschatology as the true understanding of Jesus' K i n g d o m proclamation": "The Historical Jesus in Paul Tillich's Christology," JR 46 ( 1 9 6 6 ) : 1 4 6 .

66. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, trans. J . W . Leitch (London: S C M ; New Y o r k : Harper, 1 9 6 7 ) , and "Resurrection as Hope," HTR 6 1 ( 1 9 6 8 ) : 1 2 9 - 4 8 . A l s o Paul S. Minear, Christian Hope and the Second

Coming (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1 9 5 4 ) .

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ble a more accurate understanding of the beliefs and expec tations of the early Christian community, which now could be characterized as the "eschatological c o n g r e g a t i o n . "8 8 Earlier Eschatological Theories

W e i s s w a s not, however, the first to identify the eschato logical character of J e s u s ' beliefs. He notes w i t h apprecia tion the appearance in 1891 of the volumes by Otto Schmoller and Ernst I s s e l .6 9 And Hermann Samuel Rei-marus, in the eighteenth century, had proposed that Jesus and his disciples shared the eschatological beliefs of their contemporaries and had gone on to claim that J e s u s under stood his role as that of the political messiah who would lead his people in revolt against the Roman authorities and thereby establish the messianic Kingdom.7 0 Though it is 6 8 . E.g., Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testment, trans. Ken-d r i c k G r o b e l ( N e w Y o r k : Scribner's, 1 9 5 4 ) , 1 : 37 ff.

69. Otto Schmoller, Die Lehre vom Reiche Gottes in den Schriften des

Neuen Testaments (Leiden: E. J . Brill, 1 8 9 1 ) , and Ernst Issel, Die Lehre vom Reiche Gottes im Neuen Testament (Leiden: E. J . Brill, 1 8 9 1 ) ;

W e i s s commended both in his preface to Predigt1; see below, p. 56. Issel maintained that Jesus regarded himself as the "Founder" of the Kingdom of God, which was to be interpreted as "highest good" and "highest task" ( p . 5 1 ) ; but insisted that Jesus ta l s o looked forward to the consummation of the Kingdom or its coming "in power" at the time of the Judgment. Schmoller's interpretation more closely approaches that of Johannes W e i s s and A l b e r t Schweitzer. He maintained that Jesus came as Messiah, but that his earthly ministry was preparatory; the Kingdom of G o d was as yet present only in heaven; it w o u l d first come to earth upon Jesus' return in the future (see esp., pp. 1 5 5 - 1 7 0 ) . Schmoller also anticipated Weiss's and Schweitzer's interpretation of the relation of ethics and eschatology: Jesus proclaimed repentance as "a condition for admission into the Kingdom" ( p . 4 4 ) .

70. Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Von dem Zwecke Jesu und seiner

]linger, ed. G . E. Lessing ( B e r l i n : Sander, 1 7 7 8 ) . This w o r k has been

published as Reimarus: Fragments, The Lives of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1 9 7 0 ) . The interpretation of Jesus as a political messiah or revolutionary has recently been popularized in the writings of S. G . F. Brandon and H. J . Schonfield.

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now generally agreed that Reimarus w a s mistaken in clas sifying J e s u s mainly as a political and revolutionary mes-siah, W e i s s was to follow him and recognize that J e s u s ' eschatological expectation did indeed contain radical politi cal implications: when the Kingdom of God w a s estab lished, the Roman authorities naturally would no longer rule. Jesus and the twelve disciples would then reign over the members of the Kingdom. But God himself, not human arms, w o u l d bring about this " r e v o l u t i o n . " M e n could only wait and make themselves ready for this momentous event and e r a .7 1 A few others such as D. F. Strauss, in his first Life of Jesus ( 1 8 3 5 ) , F. W . Ghillany, and W i l h e l m Balden-sperger, had partially grasped the eschatological character of J e s u s ' beliefs and ministry also, but none had set it forth as clearly and simply as did W e i s s in 1 8 9 2 .

Weiss, Schweitzer and Consistent Eschatology

W e i s s w a s soon joined by a formidable ally, Albert Schweitzer. The latter's Skizze des Lebens Jesu ( S k e t c h of the Life of J e s u s )7 2 appeared a year after the publication of W e i s s ' s revised and expanded edition of the Predigt. Ap parently Schweitzer had not as yet read either edition of W e i s s ' s w o r k ,7 3 but many of his conclusions w e r e similar to W e i s s ' s . Schweitzer later believed in retrospect that he had gone further than W e i s s . W h i l e W e i s s had defined the

es-7 1 . See below, pp. 1 0 2 f.; cf. Predigt1, pp. 1 2 1 - 1 2 5 .

72. A l b e r t Schweitzer, Das Messiani/ats- und Leidensgehejmnis. Eine

Skizze des Lebens Jesu (Tubingen: M o h r [ S i e b e c k ] , 1 9 0 1 ) ; trans. W .

I.owrie, The Mystery of the Kingdom of God (London: A . & C. Black, 1 9 2 5 ; N e w Y o r k : Macmillan, 1 9 5 0 ) .

73. Evidently Schweitzer's position was based on his o w n independent studies of the text beginning as early as 1 8 9 4 : see A l b e r t Schweitzer,

Out of My Life and Thought, trans. C. T. Campion ( N e w Y o r k : Henry

Holt & Co., 1 9 3 3 , 1 9 4 9 ) , pp. 6 - 8 , 13 f. There is no mention of W e i s s in Schweitzer's own "sketch" of the life of Jesus published in 1 9 0 1 .