THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
and the objects of the victory of God and the triumph of the just. Irenaeus (Haer., v. 32 sqq.), in opposition to the Gnostic allegorical interpretation of the New Testament, understood the cosmic Sabbath of the millennium (cf. Heb. iv.), and the heavenly feast (Matt. viii. 11) as the expectation of the kingdom, that the just might rightly enjoy the reward of their patience where they had suffered oppression. Among the Greek Fathers it was Origen who, under the influence of the Greek ideal of the dominion of reason over the passions, originated an ethical and individualistic concept of the kingdom of God based on Luke xvii. 21; Rom. xiv. 17, vi. 12; I Cor. xv. 28, but so modified that the gift of God and of his saving blessings transcends ethical duty, and the spiritual state of the Christian is considered the beginning of heavenly perfection. He understands the second petition of the Lord's Prayer expressly after the analogy of the rule of a king over his subjects in a well-ordered city, so that the soul must submit to the governance of God and obey his spiritual laws. The perfection of the kingdom of God, so that God will be all in all, takes place in every individual when Christ has conquered the enemies in him, and he progresses unceasingly until knowledge, wisdom, and other virtues come to perfection in him. The same thoughts are found in Cyril of Jerusalem (" Mystagogical Lectures," v. 13) and Gregory of Nyssa (De oratione, ii.), while Chrysostom, influenced by the Stoic idea of the wise man as king, develops the thought that with the coming of the kingdom the soul itself will become a king, thus coming into harmony with the New-Testament test of the kingdom of God that we shall acquire dominion in it (De oratione dominica horn.). Ephraem {Cohortatio ad poenitentiam, xxiv., cf. ix., x.), like Johannes Cassianus (Cohortatio, i. 13), following Origen, laid stronger stress on the mystic indwelling of God.
Augustine unites in the concept of the kingdom of God the two characteristics of " being ruled by God " and of " reigning with God," the latter, which begins after the resurrection, being the decisive indication. The saints or the just themselves constitute the kingdom of God, since their hearts are governed inwardly by Christ or God (MPL, xxxix. 830, 832); but the kingdom, strictly speaking, is still in the future (MPL, xxxiv. 1814, xxxvi. 388), and he declared it madness to connect temporal life with the kingdom of heaven. With Augustine 5. Augus- the future " reigning with God " had tine's Doc- no analogy with a rule to be exercised trine of the over others or with an influence upon Kingdom, others, but consisted wholly of the contemplation and enjoyment of God. Nevertheless, Augustine gave up his former expectation of the millennium and referred the promises of Rev. xx. to the present (De civitate Dei, xx. 9), so that the reign of the saints with Christ promised for the millennium must exist in the present, though with a power far inferior to that of the future. The kingdom consequently implies for him, as for Barnabas before him, Sabbath rest (ed. MPL, xxxvi. 1198). However personal this conception of the kingdom in which God rules may be, Augustine regarded it from the very first as a community, a
phase in the battle which is waged in the course of the world between the " kingdom of heaven " and the " kingdom of earth " or " of the devil." On the other hand, he also identified the empirical church, which includes sinners, with the kingdom of God (MPL, xxxvi. 409, xxxvii. 672 sqq.). This organization is for him an instrument of the rule of God, and the activity of its ministers is useful to the kingdom, even if their personal conduct is evil (MPL, xxxvi. 1169). It was not strange, therefore, that scholasticism should make Augustine's ethical " Church of conflict " the " Church militant," and in like manner he influenced the course of medieval development by his idea that the secular state should submit to the guidance of the Church, which embodies true justice for the community. Alongside the concept of the kingdom of God as relating to organized society, there developed after Augustine the idea of the kingdom in relation to the individual. St. Bernard, like the Greek Fathers (cf . Thomas Aquinas, Catena aurea, on Matt, vi. and Luke xi.) and Augustine, distinguished, on the basis of Luke xvii. 21, between a free submission of mans will to the will of God in the present world, and the future reign with Christ. Bonaventura (Stimulus amoris, iii. 17) regards devotion to God and the experience of salvation as the highest good, which is the indwelling of God; while according to Tauler (Predigten, Frankfort, 1703, 774, 926, 1202, 1206), the kingdom of God is God himself, dwelling in the soul in his own nature and essence, with all his heavenly gifts and treasures.
Luther follows, on the whole, the thoughts of Augustine, though with important modifications. He treats the kingdom of God from the standpoint of the law and the Gospel, the law expressing the eternal destiny of man, which is realized by the Gospel, so that life according to the law is life in the kingdom of God. In this connection
6. Luther he also uses the analogy of a commandon the ing king and an obedient people. The
Kingdom, life of voluntary submission to the will of God is at the same time the blessed life, so that " blessedness means that God rules in us, and we are his kingdom " (Werke, Erlangen ed., xxi. 184). Thus the kingdom of God as the ethical rule of God is for him the highest good in the ethical as well as in the religious sense. Man is under the dominion of sin, but the Gospel comes as a message of redemption through Christ, whereby the law is fulfilled, or tho rule of God is realized according to its two factors, beginning in the present and completed in the future. Upon earth this is called the kingdom of Christ, but for Luther there is no real difference between the kingdom of Christ and that of God. Owing to Luther's concept of redemption, he differs from Augustine in regard to the realization of the kingdom of God. While both regard the kingdom as voluntary devotion untrammeled by the law, and as a miraculous gift of the spirit of God, Luther derives the effect of this change, which still takes place through the miraculous powers of God, psychologically from the individual assurance of forgiveness through Christ. Moreover, in consequence of his doctrine that, more than all human actions, faith resting upon the