"The Kingdom of God
was at the center not only of Jesus' proclamation but also of his teaching,
his healing, even his death and resurrection... one has to conclude that the
kingdom of God was central to the historical ministry of Jesus ... Astounding
as it may seem, however, neither in the church, nor in academic circles has
the kingdom of God been assigned the political significance its derivation
and its consequences demand."
R.
David Kaylor (Presbyterian Professor)
Jesus the Prophet, pp.70,71, 1994
"As a teacher of New
Testament literature, and particularly as an interpreter of the synoptic
gospels, it early became obvious to me that the central theme of the
preaching of the historical Jesus of Nazareth was the near approach of the
kingdom of God. Yet, to my amazement, this theme played hardly any role in
the systematic theology I had been taught in the seminary. Upon further
investigation I realized that this theme had in many ways been largely
ignored in the theology and spirituality and liturgy of the church in the
past 2000 years, and when not ignored, often distorted beyond recognition.
How could this be?"
Benedict
T. Viviano (Roman Catholic Priest)
The Kingdom of God in History, p.9, 1988
"In few, if any,
instances of the use of the word 'heaven' in the synoptic gospels is there
any parallel with modem usage. The gospel records of our Lord's life and
teachings do not speak of 'going to heaven', as a modern believer so
naturally does. Rather is the emphasis on that which is 'heavenly' coming
down to man, when any movement is thought of. Again, our modern way of speaking
of life with God as being life 'in heaven' is not the way the gospels speak
of the matter. Especially is there no suggestion that Jesus is offering to
his disciples the certainty of 'heaven' after this life."
William
Strawson (Methodist Minister)
Jesus and the Future Life, p.38, 1959
"The Christian
attitude in relation to Messianism is rather strange. Christians believe in a
personal Messiah. Notwithstanding this belief, they are far less
Messianically-minded than the Jews. Their lack of Messianic consciousness
takes two forms. They have largely lost the sense of Jesus' Messiahship. And
they have, largely also, lost the Messianic vision. The Greek name Christos
means "anointed" and is the literal translation of the Hebrew Meschiah.
Now the idea of the Anointed is a specifically Jewish idea. It fell decidedly
into the background when Christianity left its Palestinian home and became a
Gentile religion...Christians who think or speak of Christ almost always
forget the Semitic word and the ideas which this name translates; in fact,
they forget that Jesus is primarily the Messiah. The very idea of Jesus'
Messiahship has passed away from their minds...Having lost the original sense
of the word "Christ", Christians (or, to be exact, most of them)
have also lost the Messianic vision, i.e., the expectation of the divine
future, the orientation towards 'what is coming.'"
Lev
Gillet (Russian Orthodox Priest)
Communion in the Messiah, pp.104,105, 1941
"It is... clear that
in Christian usage the word [Christ]... lost all real meaning, and became
simply a proper name like 'Jesus' itself. [This] development was all but
inevitable among [second century] Greek-speaking Gentile Christians, who were
not interested in a 'Christ' who should restore the kingdom to Israel, and
who did not understand the literal meaning of the word"
Alan
Richardson (Anglican Canon)
A Theological Word Book of the Bible, p.46, 1950
"The church has not
usually in practice (whatever it may have claimed to be doing in theory)
based its christology exclusively on the witness of the New Testament... Christological
doctrine has never in practice been derived simply by way of logical
inference from the statements of Scripture."
Maurice
Wiles (Oxford Professor)
The Remaking of Christian Doctrine, pp.54,55, 1974
"Interpreters of
Christian persuasion ordinarily have not been especially interested in what
Jesus intended and did in his own time. Usually they have been concerned with
the meaning of Jesus and his message for faith and life in their own times
... Christian interpreters tend to suppose that Jesus set out to establish
the kind of Christianity they experience as familiar and meaningful... It has
been less than a century since a few biblical scholars first began to realize
that the historical Jesus proclaimed to his contemporaries as of the first
importance something quite unfamiliar to either modern Christianity or modern
thought: the Kingdom of God. The significance of that recognition has not yet
been grasped by many who have written about Jesus and his message in the
intervening years."
Richard
H. Hiers (Professor of Religion, U. of Florida)
Jesus and the Future, p.1, 1981
"Nearly all schools
[of interpretation] seem agreed that Jesus' futuristic expectations, if
permitted to stand, would be an embarrassment, if not a disaster, for
contemporary faith. Consequently, critics evidently are willing to read into
Jesus' mind all sorts of modernizing reinterpretations. Often interpreters
suggest that Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God symbolically; therefore no one
need suppose that he really looked for it to come as eschatological event,
unless perhaps in some psychological or 'spiritual' sense."
Richard
H. Hiers
Jesus and the Future, p.10, 1981
"The mainstream
churches are committed to a certain doctrine about Jesus, but specialists in
early Christian thought are questioning the arguments by which that doctrine
was reached. New Testament scholars ask if the New Testament teaches it at
all, and historians wonder at the gulf between Jesus himself and
fully-developed Christianity. These questions are very unsettling, for they
imply that Christianity may be in a worse condition than was thought. It is
perhaps not a basically sound structure that needs only to be modernized, but
may be in need of radical reconstruction."
Don
Cupitt (Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge)
The Debate About Christ, p.vii, 1979
