Joel Green on the kingdom of God, part 3

In his rather short third post on the kingdom of God, Joel Green begins by asking what we can learn about God’s royal rule by examining how the expression is used in the Gospels. He summarises the various contexts: the kingdom of God is entered, proclaimed, possessed, has drawn near, etc. Then he makes the important point that, contrary to much contemporary talk, the kingdom of God does not depend on what people do. “Humans do not create, build, construct, extend, or make present the kingdom. The kingdom is God’s” (emphasis removed).

The conceptual priority given to entrance into the kingdom of God suggests that it must be understood as a “container” or “place,” which makes little sense if the kingdom is “all-pervasive and eternal.” So better to think of it as a sphere or field of divine influence or activity.

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The coming of the Son of Man, the ascension, and the mission to the nations
Following on from the piece on Tucker Ferda’s attempt to disconnect the coming of the Son of Man from the war against Rome, I happened to come across Ian Paul’s post this week about the second coming (“or something else?”) in Luke 21. He covers a fair bit of ground, but I want to focus on his… ( | 3 comments)
The connection between the coming of the Son of Man and the destruction of the temple
I made some general comments on the relation of the coming of the Son of Man motif to historical events in my previous post on Tucker Ferda’s book Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins. I really don’t think he’s right to disconnect the disorder in… ( | 1 comment)
Tucker Ferda’s “process eschatology” and the coming of the Son of Man
In an excellent interview on the Protestant Libertarian Podcast about his book Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins (2024), Tucker Ferda uses the expression “process eschatology” to register the fact that in Jewish apocalyptic writings the “end” is… ( | 6 comments)
The form of this order of things is passing away: who is wrong—Paul or Matthew Thiessen?
I said I would come back to Matthew Thiessen’s “incoherent” account of Paul’s eschatology, so here we are. Chapter four of A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles is about Paul the “End-Time Jew.” Thiessen begins: “Paul never wrote an autobiography. Why would he when he… ( | 1 comment)
The “narrative-historical” method according to ChatGPT
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The politics of Jesus: why did he not condemn the imperial oppressor?
In a lengthy Theopolis essay entitled “Pentecost and the Gift of a New Politics,” Alastair Roberts asks why Jesus had so little to say about the evil empire in their midst. “Jesus declares the coming of the kingdom of God: should not such a kingdom have involved, at a bare minimum, the defeat… ( | 4 comments)
Paul and 4QMMT: works, faith, and justification
Matthew Thiessen says that to understand the historical Paul we must relocate him in the world of first century Judaism, and here’s a book that does just that: Ben C. Blackwell, John K. Goodrich, and Jason Maston, eds. Reading Romans in Context: Paul and Second Temple Judaism (2015).… ()