DEFINITIVE FORM OF THE IDEAS OF JESUS RESPECTING THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
We suppose that this last phase of the activity of Jesus continued
about eighteen months from the time of his return from the Passover of
the year 31, until his journey to the feast of tabernacles of the year
32.[1] During this time, the mind of Jesus does not appear to have
been enriched by the addition of any new element; but all his old
ideas grew and developed with an ever-increasing degree of power and
boldness.
[Footnote 1: John v. 1, vii. 2. We follow the system of John,
according to whom the public life of Jesus lasted three years. The
synoptics, on the contrary, group all the facts within the space of
one year.]
The fundamental idea of Jesus from the beginning, was the
establishment of the kingdom of God. But this kingdom of God, as we
have already said, appears to have been understood by Jesus in very
different senses. At times, we should take him for a democratic leader
desiring only the triumph of the poor and the disinherited. At other
times, the kingdom of God is the literal accomplishment of the
apocalyptic visions of Daniel and Enoch. Lastly, the kingdom of God is
often a spiritual kingdom, and the approaching deliverance is a
deliverance of the spirit. In this last sense the revolution desired
by Jesus was the one which has really taken place; the establishment
of a new worship, purer than that of Moses. All these thoughts appear
to have existed at the same time in the mind of Jesus. The first one,
however--that of a temporal revolution--does not appear to have
impressed him much; he never regarded the earth or the riches of the
earth, or material power, as worth caring for. He had no worldly
ambition. Sometimes by a natural consequence, his great religious
importance was in danger of being converted into mere social
importance. Men came requesting him to judge and arbitrate on
questions affecting their material interests. Jesus rejected these
proposals with haughtiness, treating them as insults.[1] Full of his
heavenly ideal, he never abandoned his disdainful poverty. As to the
other two conceptions of the kingdom of God, Jesus appears always to
have held them simultaneously. If he had been only an enthusiast, led
away by the apocalypses on which the popular imagination fed, he would
have remained an obscure sectary, inferior to those whose ideas he
followed. If he had been only a puritan, a sort of Channing or
"Savoyard vicar," he would undoubtedly have been unsuccessful. The two
parts of his system, or, rather, his two conceptions of the kingdom of
God, rest one on the other, and this mutual support has been the cause
of his incomparable success. The first Christians were dreamers,
living in a circle of ideas which we should term visionary; but, at
the same time, they were the heroes of that social war which has
resulted in the enfranchisement of the conscience, and in the
establishment of a religion from which the pure worship, proclaimed by
the founder, will eventually proceed.
[Footnote 1: Luke xii. 13, 14.]
The apocalyptic ideas of Jesus, in their most complete form, may thus
be summed up. The existing condition of humanity is approaching its
termination. This termination will be an immense revolution, "an
anguish" similar to the pains of child-birth; a _palingenesis_, or,
in the words of Jesus himself, a "new birth,"[1] preceded by dark
calamities and heralded by strange phenomena.[2] In the great day,
there will appear in the heavens the sign of the Son of man; it will
be a startling and luminous vision like that of Sinai, a great storm
rending the clouds, a fiery meteor flashing rapidly from east to west.
The Messiah will appear in the clouds, clothed in glory and majesty,
to the sound of trumpets and surrounded by angels. His disciples will
sit by his side upon thrones. The dead will then arise, and the
Messiah will proceed to judgment.[3]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xix. 28.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxiv. 3, and following; Mark xiii. 4, and
following; Luke xvii. 22, and following, xxi. 7, and following. It
must be remarked that the picture of the end of time attributed to
Jesus by the synoptics, contains many features which relate to the
siege of Jerusalem. Luke wrote some time after the siege (xxi. 9, 20,
24). The compilation of Matthew, on the contrary (xxvi. 15, 16, 22,
29), carries us back exactly to this precise period, or very shortly
afterward. There is no doubt, however, that Jesus predicted that great
terrors would precede his reappearance. These terrors were an integral
part of all the Jewish apocalypses. _Enoch_, xcix., c., cii., ciii.
(division of Dillman); _Carm. sibyll._, iii. 334, and following, 633,
and following, iv. 168, and following, v. 511, and following.
According to Daniel also, the reign of the saints will only come after
the desolation shall have reached its height. Chap. vii. 25, and
following, viii. 23, and following, ix. 26, 27, xii. 1.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xvi. 27, xix. 28, xx. 21, xxiv. 30, and following,
xxv. 31, and following, xxvi. 64; Mark xiv. 62; Luke xxii. 30; 1
_Cor._ xv. 52; 1 Thess. iv. 15, and following.]
At this judgment men will be divided into two classes according to
their deeds.[1] The angels will be the executors of the sentences.[2]
The elect will enter into delightful mansions, which have been
prepared for them from the foundation of the world;[3] there they will
be seated, clothed with light, at a feast presided over by Abraham,[4]
the patriarchs and the prophets. They will be the smaller number.[5]
The rest will depart into _Gehenna_. Gehenna was the western valley of
Jerusalem. There the worship of fire had been practised at various
times, and the place had become a kind of sewer. Gehenna was,
therefore, in the mind of Jesus, a gloomy, filthy valley, full of
fire. Those excluded from the kingdom will there be burnt and eaten by
the never-dying worm, in company with Satan and his rebel angels.[6]
There, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.[7] The kingdom of
heaven will be as a closed room, lighted from within, in the midst of
a world of darkness and torments.[8]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiii. 38, and following, xxv. 33.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 39, 41, 49.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxv. 34. Comp. John xiv. 2.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. viii. 11, xiii. 43, xxvi. 29; Luke xiii. 28, xvi.
22, xxii. 30.]
[Footnote 5: Luke xiii. 23, and following.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. xxv. 41. The idea of the fall of the angels,
detailed in the Book of Enoch, was universally admitted in the circle
of Jesus. Epistle of Jude 6, and following; 2d Epistle attributed to
Saint Peter, ii. 4. 11; _Revelation_ xii. 9; Gospel of John viii. 44.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. v. 22, viii. 12, x. 28, xiii. 40, 42, 50, xviii. 8,
xxiv. 51, xxv. 30; Mark ix. 43, &c.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. viii. 12, xxii. 13, xxv. 30. Comp. Jos., _B.J._,
III. viii. 5.]
This new order of things will be eternal. Paradise and Gehenna will
have no end. An impassable abyss separates the one from the other.[1]
The Son of man, seated on the right hand of God, will preside over
this final condition of the world and of humanity.[2]
[Footnote 1: Luke xvi. 28.]
[Footnote 2: Mark iii. 29; Luke xxii. 69; _Acts_ vii. 55.]
That all this was taken literally by the disciples and by the master
himself at certain moments, appears clearly evident from the writings
of the time. If the first Christian generation had one profound and
constant belief, it was that the world was near its end,[1] and that
the great "revelation"[2] of Christ was about to take place. The
startling proclamation, "The time is at hand,"[3] which commences and
closes the Apocalypse; the incessantly reiterated appeal, "He that
hath ears to hear let him hear!"[4] were the cries of hope and
encouragement for the whole apostolic age. A Syrian expression, _Maran
atha_, "Our Lord cometh!"[5] became a sort of password, which the
believers used amongst themselves to strengthen their faith and their
hope. The Apocalypse, written in the year 68 of our era,[6] declares
that the end will come in three years and a half.[7] The "Ascension of
Isaiah"[8] adopts a calculation very similar to this.
[Footnote 1: _Acts_ ii. 17, iii. 19, and following; 1 _Cor._ xv. 23,
24, 52; 1 Thess. iii. 13, iv. 14, and following, v. 23; 2 Thess. ii.
8; 1 Tim. vi. 14; 2 Tim. iv. 1; Tit. ii. 13; Epistle of James v. 3, 8;
Epistle of Jude 18; 2d Epistle of Peter, iii. entirely; _Revelations_
entirely, and in particular, i. 1, ii. 5, 16, iii. 11, xi. 14, xxii.
6, 7, 12, 20. Comp. 4th Book of Esdras, iv. 26.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xvii. 30; 1 _Cor._ i. 7, 8; 2 Thess. i. 7; 1 Peter
i. 7, 13; _Revelations_ i. 1.]
[Footnote 3: _Revelations_ i. 3, xxii. 10.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xi. 15, xiii. 9, 43; Mark iv. 9, 23, vii. 16; Luke
viii. 8, xiv. 35; _Revelations_ ii. 7, 11, 27, 29, iii. 6, 13, 22,
xiii. 9.]
[Footnote 5: 1 _Cor._ xvi. 22.]
[Footnote 6: _Revelations_ xvii. 9, and following. The sixth emperor,
whom the author represents as reigning, is Galba. The dead emperor,
who was to return, is Nero, whose name is given in figures (xiii.
18).]
[Footnote 7: _Revelations_ xi. 2, 3, xii. 14. Comp. Daniel vii. 25,
xii. 7.]
[Footnote 8: Chap. iv., v. 12 and 14. Comp. Cedrenus, p. 68 (Paris,
1647).]
Jesus never indulged in such precise details. When he was interrogated
as to the time of his advent, he always refused to reply; once even he
declared that the date of this great day was known only by the Father,
who had revealed it neither to the angels nor to the Son.[1] He said
that the time when the kingdom of God was most anxiously expected, was
just that in which it would not appear.[2] He constantly repeated that
it would be a surprise, as in the times of Noah and of Lot; that we
must be on our guard, always ready to depart; that each one must watch
and keep his lamp trimmed as for a wedding procession, which arrives
unforeseen;[3] that the Son of man would come like a thief, at an
hour when he would not be expected;[4] that he would appear as a flash
of lightning, running from one end of the heavens to the other.[5] But
his declarations on the nearness of the catastrophe leave no room for
any equivocations.[6] "This generation," said he, "shall not pass till
all these things be fulfilled. There be some standing here, which
shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his
kingdom."[7] He reproaches those who do not believe in him, for not
being able to read the signs of the future kingdom. "When it is
evening, ye say, It will be fair weather; for the sky is red. And in
the morning, It will be foul weather to-day; for the sky is red and
lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can
ye not discern the signs of the times?"[8] By an illusion common to
all great reformers, Jesus imagined the end to be much nearer than it
really was; he did not take into account the slowness of the movements
of humanity; he thought to realize in one day that which, eighteen
centuries later, has still to be accomplished.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxiv. 36; Mark xiii. 32.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xvii. 20. Comp. Talmud of Babyl., _Sanhedrim_, 97
_a_.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxiv. 36, and following; Mark xiii. 32, and
following; Luke xii. 35, and following, xvii. 20, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Luke xii. 40; 2 Peter iii. 10.]
[Footnote 5: Luke xvii. 24.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. x. 23, xxiv., xxv. entirely, and especially xxiv.
29, 34; Mark xiii. 30; Luke xiii. 35, xxi. 28, and following.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. xvi. 28, xxiii. 36, 39, xxiv. 34; Mark viii. 39;
Luke ix. 27, xxi. 32.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. xvi. 2-4; Luke xii. 54-56.]
These formal declarations preoccupied the Christian family for nearly
seventy years. It was believed that some of the disciples would see
the day of the final revelation before dying. John, in particular, was
considered as being of this number;[1] many believed that he would
never die. Perhaps this was a later opinion suggested toward the end
of the first century, by the advanced age which John seems to have
reached; this age having given rise to the belief that God wished to
prolong his life indefinitely until the great day, in order to realize
the words of Jesus. However this may be, at his death the faith of
many was shaken, and his disciples attached to the prediction of
Christ a more subdued meaning.[2]
[Footnote 1: John xxi. 22, 23.]
[Footnote 2: John xxi. 22, 23. Chapter xxi. of the fourth Gospel is an
addition, as is proved by the final clause of the primitive
compilation, which concludes at verse 31 of chapter xx. But the
addition is almost contemporaneous with the publication of the Gospel
itself.]
At the same time that Jesus fully admitted the Apocalyptic beliefs,
such as we find them in the apocryphal Jewish books, he admitted the
doctrine, which is the complement, or rather the condition of them
all, namely, the resurrection of the dead. This doctrine, as we have
already said, was still somewhat new in Israel; a number of people
either did not know it, or did not believe it.[1] It was the faith of
the Pharisees, and of the fervent adherents of the Messianic
beliefs.[2] Jesus accepted it unreservedly, but always in the most
idealistic sense. Many imagined that in the resuscitated world they
would eat, drink, and marry. Jesus, indeed, admits into his kingdom a
new passover, a table, and a new wine;[3] but he expressly excludes
marriage from it. The Sadducees had on this subject an apparently
coarse argument, but one which was really in conformity with the old
theology. It will be remembered that according to the ancient sages,
man survived only in his children. The Mosaic code had consecrated
this patriarchal theory by a strange institution, the levirate law.
The Sadducees drew from thence subtle deductions against the
resurrection. Jesus escaped them by formally declaring that in the
life eternal there would no longer exist differences of sex, and that
men would be like the angels.[4] Sometimes he seems to promise
resurrection only to the righteous,[5] the punishment of the wicked
consisting in complete annihilation.[6] Oftener, however, Jesus
declares that the resurrection shall bring eternal confusion to the
wicked.[7]
[Footnote 1: Mark ix. 9; Luke xx. 27, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Dan. xii. 2, and following; 2 Macc. vii. entirely, xii.
45, 46, xiv. 46; _Acts_ xxiii. 6, 8; Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. i. 3;
_B.J._, II. viii. 14, III. viii. 5.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvi. 29; Luke xxii. 30.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxii. 24, and following; Luke xx. 34-38; Ebionite
Gospel, entitled, "Of the Egyptians," in Clem. of Alex., _Strom._ ii.
9, 13; Clem. Rom., Epist. ii. 12.]
[Footnote 5: Luke xiv. 14, xx. 35, 36. This is also the opinion of St.
Paul: 1 _Cor._ xv. 23, and following; 1 Thess. iv. 12, and following.]
[Footnote 6: Comp. 4th book of Esdras, ix. 22.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. xxv. 32, and following.]
It will be seen that nothing in all these theories was absolutely new.
The Gospels and the writings of the apostles scarcely contain anything
as regards apocalyptic doctrines but what might be found already in
"Daniel,"[1] "Enoch,"[2] and the "Sibylline Oracles,"[3] of Jewish
origin. Jesus accepted the ideas, which were generally received among
his contemporaries. He made them his basis of action, or rather one of
his bases; for he had too profound an idea of his true work to
establish it solely upon such fragile principles--principles so liable
to be decisively refuted by facts.
[Footnote 1: See especially chaps. ii., vi.-viii., x.-xiii.]
[Footnote 2: Chaps. i., xiv., lii., lxii., xciii. 9, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Book iii. 573, and following; 652, and following; 766,
and following; 795, and following.]
It is evident, indeed, that such a doctrine, taken by itself in a
literal manner, had no future. The world, in continuing to exist,
caused it to crumble. One generation of man at the most was the limit
of its endurance. The faith of the first Christian generation is
intelligible, but the faith of the second generation is no longer so.
After the death of John, or of the last survivor, whoever he might be,
of the group which had seen the master, the word of Jesus was
convicted of falsehood.[1] If the doctrine of Jesus had been simply
belief in an approaching end of the world, it would certainly now be
sleeping in oblivion. What is it, then, which has saved it? The great
breadth of the Gospel conceptions, which has permitted doctrines
suited to very different intellectual conditions to be found under the
same creed. The world has not ended, as Jesus announced, and as his
disciples believed. But it has been renewed, and in one sense renewed
as Jesus desired. It is because his thought was two-sided that it has
been fruitful. His chimera has not had the fate of so many others
which have crossed the human mind, because it concealed a germ of life
which having been introduced, thanks to a covering of fable, into the
bosom of humanity, has thus brought forth eternal fruits.
[Footnote 1: These pangs of Christian conscience are rendered with
simplicity in the second epistle attributed to St. Peter, iii. 8, and
following.]
And let us not say that this is a benevolent interpretation, imagined
in order to clear the honor of our great master from the cruel
contradiction inflicted on his dreams by reality. No, no: this true
kingdom of God, this kingdom of the spirit, which makes each one king
and priest; this kingdom which, like the grain of mustard-seed, has
become a tree which overshadows the world, and amidst whose branches
the birds have their nests, was understood, wished for, and founded by
Jesus. By the side of the false, cold, and impossible idea of an
ostentatious advent, he conceived the real city of God, the true
"palingenesis," the Sermon on the Mount, the apotheosis of the weak,
the love of the people, regard for the poor, and the re-establishment
of all that is humble, true, and simple. This re-establishment he has
depicted as an incomparable artist, by features which will last
eternally. Each of us owes that which is best in himself to him. Let
us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, and of a second coming in
great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors
of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself
shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered
him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle, to which he
might otherwise have been unequal?
We must, then, attach several meanings to the divine city conceived by
Jesus. If his only thought had been that the end of time was near, and
that we must prepare for it, he would not have surpassed John the
Baptist. To renounce a world ready to crumble, to detach one's self
little by little from the present life, and to aspire to the kingdom
about to come, would have formed the gist of his preaching. The
teaching of Jesus had always a much larger scope. He proposed to
himself to create a new state of humanity, and not merely to prepare
the end of that which was in existence. Elias or Jeremiah, reappearing
in order to prepare men for the supreme crisis, would not have
preached as he did. This is so true that this morality, attributed to
the latter days, is found to be the eternal morality, that which has
saved humanity. Jesus himself in many cases makes use of modes of
speech which do not accord with the apocalyptic theory. He often
declares that the kingdom of God has already commenced; that every
man bears it within himself; and can, if he be worthy, partake of it;
that each one silently creates this kingdom by the true conversion of
the heart.[1] The kingdom of God at such times is only the highest
form of good.[2] A better order of things than that which exists, the
reign of justice, which the faithful, according to their ability,
ought to help in establishing; or, again, the liberty of the soul,
something analogous to the Buddhist "deliverance," the fruit of the
soul's separation from matter and absorption in the divine essence.
These truths, which are purely abstract to us, were living realities
to Jesus. Everything in his mind was concrete and substantial. Jesus,
of all men, believed most thoroughly in the reality of the ideal.
[Footnote 1: Matt. vi. 10, 33; Mark xii. 34; Luke xi. 2, xii. 31,
xvii. 20, 21, and following.]
[Footnote 2: See especially Mark xii. 34.]
In accepting the Utopias of his time and his race, Jesus thus was able
to make high truths of them, thanks to the fruitful misconceptions of
their import. His kingdom of God was no doubt the approaching
apocalypse, which was about to be unfolded in the heavens. But it was
still, and probably above all the kingdom of the soul, founded on
liberty and on the filial sentiment which the virtuous man feels when
resting on the bosom of his Father. It was a pure religion, without
forms, without temple, and without priest; it was the moral judgment
of the world, delegated to the conscience of the just man, and to the
arm of the people. This is what was destined to live; this is what has
lived. When, at the end of a century of vain expectation, the
materialistic hope of a near end of the world was exhausted, the true
kingdom of God became apparent. Accommodating explanations threw a
veil over the material kingdom, which was then seen to be incapable of
realization. The Apocalypse of John, the chief canonical book of the
New Testament,[1] being too formally tied to the idea of an immediate
catastrophe, became of secondary importance, was held to be
unintelligible, tortured in a thousand ways and almost rejected. At
least, its accomplishment was adjourned to an indefinite future. Some
poor benighted ones who, in a fully enlightened age, still preserved
the hopes of the first disciples, became heretics (Ebionites,
Millenarians), lost in the shallows of Christianity. Mankind had
passed to another kingdom of God. The degree of truth contained in the
thought of Jesus had prevailed over the chimera which obscured it.
[Footnote 1: Justin, _Dial. cum Tryph._, 81.]
Let us not, however, despise this chimera, which has been the thick
rind of the sacred fruit on which we live. This fantastic kingdom of
heaven, this endless pursuit after a city of God, which has constantly
preoccupied Christianity during its long career, has been the
principle of that great instinct of futurity which has animated all
reformers, persistent believers in the Apocalypse, from Joachim of
Flora down to the Protestant sectary of our days. This impotent effort
to establish a perfect society has been the source of the
extraordinary tension which has always made the true Christian an
athlete struggling against the existing order of things. The idea of
the "kingdom of God," and the Apocalypse, which is the complete image
of it, are thus, in a sense, the highest and most poetic expressions
of human progress. But they have necessarily given rise to great
errors. The end of the world, suspended as a perpetual menace over
mankind, was, by the periodical panics which it caused during
centuries, a great hindrance to all secular development. Society
being no longer certain of its existence, contracted therefrom a
degree of trepidation, and those habits of servile humility, which
rendered the Middle Ages so inferior to ancient and modern times.[1] A
profound change had also taken place in the mode of regarding the
coming of Christ. When it was first announced to mankind that the end
of the world was about to come, like the infant which receives death
with a smile, it experienced the greatest access of joy that it has
ever felt. But in growing old, the world became attached to life. The
day of grace, so long expected by the simple souls of Galilee, became
to these iron ages a day of wrath: _Dies iræ, dies illa!_ But, even in
the midst of barbarism, the idea of the kingdom of God continued
fruitful. In spite of the feudal church, of sects, and of religious
orders, holy persons continued to protest, in the name of the Gospel,
against the iniquity of the world. Even in our days, troubled days, in
which Jesus has no more authentic followers than those who seem to
deny him, the dreams of an ideal organization of society, which have
so much analogy with the aspirations of the primitive Christian sects,
are only in one sense the blossoming of the same idea. They are one of
the branches of that immense tree in which germinates all thought of a
future, and of which the "kingdom of God" will be eternally the root
and stem. All the social revolutions of humanity will be grafted on
this phrase. But, tainted by a coarse materialism, and aspiring to the
impossible, that is to say, to found universal happiness upon
political and economical measures, the "socialist" attempts of our
time will remain unfruitful until they take as their rule the true
spirit of Jesus, I mean absolute idealism--the principle that, in
order to possess the world, we must renounce it.
[Footnote 1: See, for example, the prologue of Gregory of Tours to his
_Histoire Ecclesiastique des Francs_, and the numerous documents of
the first half of the Middle Ages, beginning by the formula, "On the
approach of the night of the world...."]
The phrase, "kingdom of God," expresses also, very happily, the want
which the soul experiences of a supplementary destiny, of a
compensation for the present life. Those who do not accept the
definition of man as a compound of two substances, and who regard the
Deistical dogma of the immortality of the soul as in contradiction
with physiology, love to fall back upon the hope of a final
reparation, which under an unknown form shall satisfy the wants of the
heart of man. Who knows if the highest term of progress after millions
of ages may not evoke the absolute conscience of the universe, and in
this conscience the awakening of all that has lived? A sleep of a
million of years is not longer than the sleep of an hour. St. Paul, on
this hypothesis, was right in saying, _In ictu oculi!_[1] It is
certain that moral and virtuous humanity will have its reward, that
one day the ideas of the poor but honest man will judge the world, and
that on that day the ideal figure of Jesus will be the confusion of
the frivolous who have not believed in virtue, and of the selfish who
have not been able to attain to it. The favorite phrase of Jesus
continues, therefore, full of an eternal beauty. A kind of exalted
divination seems to have maintained it in a vague sublimity, embracing
at the same time various orders of truths.
[Footnote 1: 1 _Cor._ xv. 52.]