The biggest challenge to traditional kingdom theory is coming from NT scholars and tide is changing. The kingdom trend is to think Jesus and the apostles mean one of two things when they use the expression. Either it means the dynamic rule or reign of God or it means social justice and peace. In my book Kingdom Conspiracy I call these two options the pleated pants theory and the skinny jeans kingdom theory. This post will focus on the challenge to the pleated pants (reduction to dynamic reign).

My contention in that book, and the reason I wrote it is because my mind has shifted from the pleated pants and at times a hint of the skinny jeans theories to another view, is that these two theories are missing the mark and that kingdom is a complex of five elements: king, rule, people, place and law. I became dissatisfied with both theories and summoned myself to the Bible and historical texts to investigate this all over again. What I see in each is a reduction of kingdom to one or two elements — for the skinny jeans to justice and peace and for the pleated pants to redemptive rule. Both say something right, but both are reductive.

So, when someone like Reggie McNeal leans as he does toward the skinny jeans crowd in his book Kingdom Come, I both don’t blame him and think at the same time he’s fundamentally wrong. I will dip into his book in the weeks ahead, but today I want to call your attention to two scholars who have written about the kingdom in ways that show that the tide is moving away from reductionism and moving toward much greater appreciation of the Jewish context of what kingdom meant and what it therefore means for us today.

From the first of the NT scholarly challenges I provide only a quotation and from the second, perhaps America’s most knowledgeable NT scholar (and I don’t say that lightly), a sketch of his fresh analysis of what kingdom meant to Jesus.

First, R. McL. Wilson, one of the UK’s most prominent experts in gnosticism and in the NT. The most highly respectable English-language commentary series of the 20th-21st Centuries is the ICC (International Critical Commentary). Wilson is the author of the commentary on Colossians, and I grab this quotation from him as he summarizes what kingdom means in the NT. [1]

It has been argued that the primary significance is that of sovereignty, the rule of God in the hearts and lives of men and women, rather than that of a realm or kingdom. This, however, may be to introduce a false contrast: sovereignty implies a territory within which that sovereignty is exercised, a community over which the sovereign rules, people who accept that rule.

Notice his elements: (1) rule of God, (2) territory (or land), (3) community (people), and “people who accept that rule” implies there is (4) a law by which that sovereign king rules.

Notice, too, what he is opposing: the pleated pants theory so typical among NT scholars. What do they think? That kingdom means “the rule of God in the hearts and lives of men and women” (so Dalman-ish, so Harnack-ian, and also so evangelical-sounding) and the pleated pants sorts believe this over against “a realm or kingdom” (that is, a place or a territory). You may know that the major alternative many of us were taught and also taught was that you must choose between “rule” (the reality of ruling, of sovereignty, the dynamic, the spirituality) and “realm” (which implies territory and land and a geographical space). It can’t be both, we were taught and we continued to teach.

Wilson thinks that alternative is false, as do I, and he thinks kingdom implies rule, space, people and law. This from someone who is famous for his historical analysis, wherever that analysis might lead. He also has no dog in this fight theologically from what I can tell.

Now to Dale Allison, Jr., and his book Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (BakerAcademic, 2010). Two observations: try as you may you won’t discover Dale’s theology, unless it is a-theology; instead, what you will find with Dale is rigorous historical investigation wherever the evidence leads. Dale has written the finest commentary ever written — the ICC — on Matthew (with WD Davies, 3 volumes), and as well the best commentary ever written on James (again, the ICC). In addition, he is the author of a number of exceptional studies, my favorite being his book The New Moses. His newest big book, Constructing Jesus, is yet another example of his meticulous efforts. He, too, has no dog in this fight. He sets out to discern just what Jesus meant by kingdom, and he approaches the five points I outlined above though his emphasis is heavily futuristic.

In this book is an “excursus” on kingdom of God (164-204), and he makes 18 points. Here they are:

1. “Gustaf Dalman famously affirmed, “No doubt can be entertained that both in the Old Testament and in Jewish literature mlkwt, when applied to God, means always the ‘kingly rule’ (Herrschaft), never the ‘kingdom’ (Reich), as if it were meant to suggest the territory governed.” Dalman supported this statement, which much subsequent discussion has almost taken for granted, by appealing to Ps 22:29… 103:19; 145:11-13; Obad 21; and a number of rabbinic texts” (170).

Dale Allison calls into question all the evidence Dalman uses here and offers counter evidence, which is what I offer in Kingdom Conspiracy, both from the OT and Josephus, with brief glances elsewhere. I, too, in Kingdom Conspiracy, pointed a long finger at Dalman — what Dale says here is accurate: “has almost taken for granted” — I might have said it stronger: most have relied upon Dalman and simply assumed he got it right. Here’s a big point: if Dalman was wrong, the kingdom theory of the pleated pants folks falls off their legs into a heap!

2. “Both basileia and mlkwt, as the dictionaries indicate, often mean “kingdom,” and it takes only rudimentary acquaintance with Jewish texts to realize that God is the ruler of the realm known as “heaven,” and further that, in both this age and the age to come, God’s kingship cannot be separated from the people of Israel, who in turn are inextricably bound up with the fate of their land and its capital, Jerusalem. It is almost inescapable, then, that many passages about God’s eschatological rule, even some in which mlkwt could mean “royal rule,” have a territorial dimension…” [for which he offers abundant support, e.g., Isa 24:23].

3. “Christian exegetical tradition has, however, habitually sought to separate the kingdom of God from Jewish territorial expectations.” He calls this “ecclesiastical eisegesis” (175). He continues: “After the fourth century, conceptualizing the kingdom of God as an earthly, territorial kingdom ceased to be an option for the vast majority of exegetes. Thereafter orthodox theologians and commentators usually agreed with Augustine, who closely associated the kingdom with the church invisible, that is, the elect on earth and in heaven” (175).

Let us call what it is: this is anti-Judaism and de-Judaizing of the Bible and Christian theology; sometimes it become anti-Semitic as well. But most importantly, it is universalizing the Bible at the expense of its Jewishness. Dale provides a good quotation from Dalman to this point.

4. The term “kingdom of God” is kingdom plus ruler, and this is found in the OT all over the place — and refers to the “ruler’s realm” (177), where “realm” means territory not simply dynamic reign (which was what Dalman handed on).

5. Frequently the Gospels use “kingdom” for a “territory ruled by a king, kingdom” (BDAG, and Allison cites Mark 3:24; 6:23; 13:8; Matt 4:8; 12:25-26; Luke 19:12, 15).

6. Sometimes in the Gospels “kingdom” sounds like a “place” (178), and he cites Matt 13:41-42; 14:25…

7. The sayings about “entering” the kingdom have to be entering into some kind of “place” (pp. 179-181), where they are modeled upon “entering into the land” (Exod 12:25). This is a theology of “second entry” (181).

8. He refers to and embraces the work of Jonathan Pennington’s work on kingdom where kingdom of heaven is posed as more than simply an equivalent for “God” (which also goes back to Dalman). Further, “of heaven/s” is territorial in Matthew, the place where God rules now.

9. The Beatitudes confirm this: Matthew 5:3; 5:5 — the second one is “land” (not earth) and it defines the first one, hence “kingdom” and “land” are territorial in connotation.

10. At the cross — Luke 23:42 — Jesus is asked by the one co-crucified about remembering him when he enters kingdom and kingdom here is defined by Jesus as “paradise,” which always means a place/territory (183).

11. The Gospel of Thomas conceptualizes the kingdom as a place (GThom 49, 50, 82; p. 184).

12. “Although much Christian theology eventually made the exegetical mistake of more or less identifying the kingdom with the church, sources up until the fourth century often envision the kingdom as a future time and place. In many of these, moreover, basileia and regnum seem to mean above all “realm” or “kingdom.” In this respect, these later, extracanonical texts preserve, in my judgment, an original feature of the Jesus tradition” (184). [Allison looks at many texts. I added some italics above.]

13. Some kingdom texts are land texts: Matt 8:11-12 and 19:28 and pars. He observes:

If Jesus ever spoke of the kingdom of God as a place, as the Synoptics more than suggest he did, we can be sure that his Jewish hearers would have thought in terms of the land of Israel, its capital, and the temple, which together “were the sacred centre of the earth’ that “would one day attract all peoples.” Once his sayings became the property of Gentile churches, alternative, nonterritorial readings could and did come into being. That, however, tells us next to nothing about the historical Jesus (186, italics added).

14. Sometimes kingdom is the same as life or eternal life, and this shows that kingdom blended quickly into the future (territorial?) place of God’s final rule. This captures kingdom as utopia.

15. Critiques Dalman’s slide from kingdom of heaven (malkuth shamayim) into “age to come” (olam haba). Here Dalman should have seen that kingdom is connected to the future place of God’s eternal reign. He has here an extensive discussion. With this conclusion:

My judgment, then, is that basileia is, in the Synoptics, a realm as well as a reign; it is a place and a time yet to come in which God will reign supreme. The term designates, in many or perhaps most cases, the “grosse Heilszustand am Ende der Tage,” [Hans Windisch] “the future which God will bring about.” The formulation of Johannes Weiss remains valid: basileia is “the objective messianic Kingdom, which usually is pictured as a territory into which one enters, or as a land in which one has a share’ (201).

Allison here is pressing the eschatological, final kingdom more than the present realizations of that kingdom, but notice how territorial kingdom is to the futuristic language of Jesus.

16. Yes, at times kingdom means rule. He points to Luke 11:20. [In my Kingdom Conspiracy, I break down the second element — the rule of the king — into two dimensions: redemptive rule and governing rule. I see Luke 11:20 as the redemptive rule of God breaking in.]

17. Now notice this point: “With this in mind, I want to suggest that, in addition to the meanings given in the dictionaries, basileia may on occasion mean neither God’s “rule” nor “reign” but refer rather, by metonymy, to God’s people.6 One recalls Ps 102:22 … ” (202).

Here Allison observes that kingdom means people — and I would contend that people is implicit constantly in the Jewish world since God’s rule of God’s territory requires a people in order for it to be a kingdom. Allison states this explicitly: “A kingdom is empty and so nothing without its subjects, and Exod 19:6 famously declares, “You [Israel] will be to me a kingdom [MT: mmlkt; Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion: fiaoiXeia] of priests and a holy nation'” (203). He sees a royal people as crucial to a number of sayings of Jesus.

18. “When speaking of the eschatological future, scholars, observing that Jesus, if the Synoptics have it right, preferred instead to employ “the kingdom of God,” have found here verbal innovation, maybe even a deliberate theological decision” (203). We don’t, he observes, know when this rabbinic language became the official language. Hence, we don’t know if Jesus’ use is novel or not. Nor does it matter.

In Allison then we have a king, a rule, a future territorial rule by God the king, and a people. All that we need here is the law and Allison would have the same five elements I listed at the top of this post. What Allison focuses on is the future territorial rule of the king (the kingdom of God of the future) and not enough on the present dimensions of the kingdom (if kingdom is territorial, where is that territory now?) and as a result he doesn’t explore the relationship of the present kingdom and the present church.

But make no mistake: kingdom cannot be separated, as both Wilson and Allison show, from God, God’s rule, God’s rule over God’s people, and God’s rule in God’s place.

[1] Wilson, 118.