The Kingdom of God in 20th-Century Interpretation
Ed. Wendell Willis
Hendrickson Publishers
(C)1987
208 Pages

Editor: Willis is Associate Professor at Abilene Christian University. According to his faculty page, "Wendell earned his bachelor's degree from Midwestern State University in 1965. He received his master's degree from Abilene Christian University in 1967, his B.D. from Vanderbilt in 1969 and his Ph.D. from Southern Methodist University in 1981."

Authors in this work:
M. Eugene Boring
John J. Collins
Paul Donfried
W. Emory Elmore
Eldon Jay Epp
Ron Farmer
Everett Ferguson
Richard H. Hiers, Jr.
Robert Hodgson, Jr.
J. Ramsay Michaels
Robert O’Toole, SJ
Dale Patrick
B. T. Viviano, OP
Amos N. Wilder (foreword)
Wendell Willis

Intention: To present a thematic presentation on the topic of "Kingdom of God," allowing common reflection upon the topic.

Structure: The book is a collection of essays.

• The Discovery of the Eschatological Kingdom: Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer (Willis)
• Pivotal Reactions to the Eschatological Interpretations: Rudolf Bultmann and C. H. Dodd (Hiers)
• Mediating Approaches to the Kingdom: Werner Georg Kummel and George Eldon Ladd (Epp)
• Linguistic Approaches to the Kingdom: Amos Wilder and Norman Perrin (Elmore)
• The Kingdom of God in the Old Testament (Patrick)
• The Kingdom of God in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (Collins)
  
• The Kingdom of God in the Qumran Literature (Viviano)
• The Kingdom of God and the Historical Jesus (Michaels)
• The Kingdom of God in the Gospel of Matthew (Farmer)
• The Kingdom of God in Mark (Boring)
• The Kingdom of God in Luke-Acts (O'Toole)
• The Kingdom of God in the School of St. John (Hodgson)
• The Kingdom of Gos in Paul (Donfried)
• The Kingdom of God in Early Patristic Literature (Ferguson)
  

Resources: each chapter has either footnotes or endnotes. No indexes are provided.

Tag: books

The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus in 20th Century Theology
Mark Saucy
Word Publishing
(C) 1997
406 Pages

Author: PhD from Fuller Seminary; Professor at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University; Director of Talbot's extension program at Kyiv Theological Seminary; formerly missionary for 13 years with SEND in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Intention: To "use the findings from the study of the Kingdom in the last generation to fund yet another venture in understanding the Kingdom of God in Jesus' teaching."

Structure: After an introduction covering the procedures and limitations of the study and the recent trends in Kingdom studies, the book is divided into four parts and nine chapters.

Part 1: Foundations for the study of the Kingdom since 1960
Ch 1: Issues in the interpretation of the Kingdom of God prior to 1960

Part 2: NT trends since 1960
Ch 2: The non-apocalyptic Kingdom of the New Hermeneutic and the New Literary Criticism
Ch 3: The non-apocalyptic Kingdom of the Regnum Christi
Ch 4: The social-economic Kingdom of the Third Quest
Ch 5: The Apocalyptic Kingdom

Part 3: Systematic Presentation of the Kingdom since 1960
Ch 6: The political theology of the Kingdom in Jurgen Moltmann
Ch 7: The Kingdom in Latin American Liberation Theology
Ch 8: The Kingdom in Roman Catholicism, the World Council of Churches, and Evangelicalism

Part 4: Contribution to the Study of the Kingdom
Ch 9: The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus (M. Saucy's view)

Resources: copious footnotes; bibliography, three indexes (Scripture, Author, and Subject)

Tag: books

The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective
Russell D. Moore
Crossway Books, Wheaton, IL
(C) 2004
320 Pages

Author: Dean of the School of Theology and Senior VP for Academic Administration of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also serves as Executive Director of the Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement.

Intention: To look at the Kingdom through the "prism of evangelical political action" in order to call evangelicals to "shape our identity by our convictions about the Kingdom of God in Christ" and to begin confronting the kingdoms of this world with the proclamation, Jesus is Lord.

Structure: After an introduction that clarifies the tone of and purpose for the book, there are four chapters and a conclusion.

Ch 1--An uneasy conscience in the naked public square: evangelical theology and evangelical engagement.
Ch 2--Toward a Kingdom eschatology: the Kingdom as already and not yet
Ch 3--Toward a Kingdom soteriology: Salvation as holistic and Christological
Ch 4--Toward a Kingdom ecclesiology: the Church as Kingdom community

A conclusion wraps up the work, discussing the promise and the failure of evangelical theology.

Resources: 83 pages of extensive end notes, bibliography, general index, and Scripture index.


Tag: books

The Coming of the Kingdom
by Herman Ridderbos
Tr. H. de Jongste, Ed. Raymond O. Zorn
Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company
(C) 1962
556 Pages

Author: (1909-2007) Professor of New Testament Studies, Theological Seminary, Kampden, The Netherlands (1943-??)

Intention: To show that the Kingdom of God is the central theme in Jesus' message (xi) by studying the text of the gospels (xxxii).

Structure: The work is composed of an introduction and ten chapters. The introduction surveys Kingdom of God discussions in the 20th century. Chapters are grouped into six sections.

The general character of the Kingdom.

• I----The Background
• II---John the Baptist and Jesus

The Kingdom has come

• III--Fulfillment
• IV---The provisional character

The Gospel of the Kingdom

• V----The basic motif
• VI---Salvation
• VII--The commandments

VIII-The coming of the Kingdom and the Church
IX---The coming of the Kingdom and the Lord's Supper
X----The future of the Kingdom of Heaven

Resources: Three indexes: Subjects, Authors, Scripture References; endnotes for introduction and all chapters.

Tag: books

Jesus and the Kingdom of God
by G. R. Beasley-Murray
460 pages
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (January 1986)

Author: "[P]rofessor of New Testament 1973-1980, was born on October 10, 1916 in London, England... Minister in Ashurst Drive Baptist Church in East London. He guided the church through the tumultuous times of the Second World War and led it in sustained evangelistic mission to a broken country... From 1973 to 1980 he served as James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament at Southern. While at the seminary, Beasley-Murray was able to resume his writing career, which had fallen dormant during his tenure at Spurgeon’s College. He was the author of a number of works on the New Testament, most notably Baptism in the New Testament and The Book of Revelation (New Century Bible Commentary.) Beasley-Murray died on February 23, 2000 in Brighton, England."

Organization: The work is divided into three sections (The coming of God in the Old Testament, The coming of God in the writings of Early Judaism, and The coming of God in the teachings of Jesus). The third section is by far the longest (267 pages versus 33 and 32 for the first two sections). There are two excurses (the Date of the Similitudes of Enoch and The Relation of Jesus to the Kingdom of God in the Present). There are a number of reference sections, including 72 pages of endnotes (keyed by note number and page), a 16 page bibliography, and two indices (authors and Scripture references).

Intention: "This work is offered as a contribution toward clarifying this element [of the kingdom] in the teaching of Jesus and its implications for the question of who Jesus is. The length of this work is a reflection of the complexity and profundity of the instruction of Jesus... Prolonged meditation on the teaching of Jesus concerning the theme that dominated his life produces a remarkably consistent image. To provide an opportunity for such attention to Jesus is the aim of this book" (Beasley-Murray, x).

Tag: books