KINGDOM OF GOD. The idea of the Kingdom of God is prominent in the Old Testa ment, but especially so in the New Testament, finding its centre in the teachings of Jesus. The Kingdom of God is a goal set before the race; not a Utopian dream, but a realization through character development. It is also a philosophy of history. The phrase Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven is not found in the Old Testament, but the idea was early de veloped (Judges xvii, 6, xviii, 1, xxi, 25) and all the prophets foretold it. Back of their be lief in a coming Kingdom of God was faith in God himself and their earliest political unity was theocentric. Their faith was built on a future in which there was to be a more perfect kingdom. The idea of a Messianic reign is carried from the prophets into Apocryphal literature where it is sometimes strongly stated. Archibald Robertson well sums up the Jewish faith in the Kingdom of God as Christ found it : *These beliefs and hopes took shape, no doubt, to many minds as crude and political aspirations. But among the stricter Pharisees — or at least the more spiritually minded of them, they comprised the following elements: 1. Israel was ideally the Kingdom of God, and destined to become what it already was in idea.
2. Israel as it was was not the Kingdom of God, for it contained unworthy elements. The existing faithful Jews are the nudges of the future kingdom.
3. The future kingdom was to be on earth, with Jerusalem with its seat and centre. It was variously conceived as (a) eternal or (b) of limited duration.
4. It was to include the faithful who are dead, and will be raised again.
S. It was to be inaugurated by a Day of Judgment, which appears to be identified with the day of the Messiah's appearance.
6. It was to be an embodiment of all elements of national well-being — social, ethical. spiritual.
7. It was to embrace all peoples, who would come to worship at Jerusalem." From the beginning Jesus connected his own person with the Messianic Kingdom and dis tinctli taught that it was to be a spiritual king oat, culminating in the heavenly kingdom. The members of the kingdom were to be, first of all, his immediate followers, and then their successors in the years to come. The fully de
veloped kingdom cannot be recognized here, only in heaven. In the Book of Revelation be gan the idea of the millennial reign of Christ on earth before His final reign in heaven. The Gnostics and Montanists held their own views 'of the Kingdom of God—a puritanical rigor of morals was fundamental. The mil lennial idea continued until it was superseded under Constantine with the idea of a Christian empire. Monasticism next arose as a possible method for the seeker after the Kingdom of God.
Augustine developed the idea that the Church is the Kingdom of God on earth. This was in two parts — the visible and invisible. The medieval theologians built on that con ception the idea of an omnipotent Church with its complete centralization of power, culminat ing finally in the work of, Gregory VII and Innocent III.
Dante combated this idea in his 'De Mon archia) in which he argues for the divine sanc tion for the secular life apart from the spirit ual, and demands that the Pope be only the spiritual head of the spiritual Church. And again, as in the early Church, monastic poverty was sought as a means for entrance into the kingdom and so the Orders of Friars flourished. William of Ockham and Marsilius continued to develop the idea of Dante. John Wyclif was the first to oppose the medieval idea theo logically. Then came the Reformation follow ing the intellectual awakening of Europe, in which many voices protested against an om nipotent Church. As a universal idea it was a failure. The Reformation, however, did not put an ideal in its place. The Counter-Ref ormation and the Renaissance were Catholic attempts to reconstruct the idea. The present day tendency in Protestant circles is to rein terpret the biblical sources of the doctrine. It is a part of the growth of the new science of biblical theology. The present idea is that cthe Church is the Kingdom of God in the as far as she represents the ideals of the sources of the doctrine. The bibliography of the subject is very extensive. Consult Robertson, Archibald, Dci — Eight Lectures on the Kingdom of God in the His tory of Christian Thought) (1901).