The Kingdom of God is the idea that the Messiah Jesus will come back to earth, resurrect the saved, and initiate an age of restoration, eventually making everything wrong with the world right. We find robust belief in this idea in the New Testament; however, by the Middle Ages, heaven or hell at death had entirely replaced the Kingdom idea.
Kingdom Believers
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- First Century
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- Didache 8.2; 9.4; 10.5; 16.7-8
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- Clement of Rome, 1 Clement 42.3; 50.3
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- Psuedo-Barnabas, Epistle of Barnabas 1.7; 6.13; 10.11; 15.4-5
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- Second Century
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- Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Ephesians 16.1
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- Polycarp of Smyrna, Epistle to the Philippians 5.2; 11.2
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- Hermas, Similitude 9.15.2-3; 9.20.2-3
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- Pseudo-Clement; 2 Clement 5.5; 9.6; 11.7; 12.1, 6; 17.4-5
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- Papias of Hierapolis, cited in Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.33.3-4; see also Jerome, Lives of Illustrious Men 18
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- Justine Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 80
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- Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 5.32-5.36
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- Third Century
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- Hippolytus, On Genesis Fragment 3; On Daniel 2.4; Scholia of Daniel 7.22; Treatise on Christ and Antichrist 65
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- Commodian, Instructions 29; 33; 34; 35; 44
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- Nepos of Egypt, cited in Eusebius, The Church History 7.24.1
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- Victorinus, Commentary on Revelation 1.5, 15; 14.15; 20.2, 5, 6 (Greek version1); On the Creation of the World 5
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- Fourth Century
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- Lactantius, Divine Institutes 4.12; 5.24
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- Fifth Century
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- Augustine, Sermon 259.2
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- Jerome, Commentary to Isaiah 18. Prologue
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Kingdom Deniers
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- Too crude
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- Origen of Alexandria, Commentary on Song of Songs Prologue
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- Eusebius of Caesarea, The Church History 3.39
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- Too hedonic
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- Dionysius of Alexandria, cited in Eusebius, The Church History 7.25
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- Jerome, Commentary to Isaiah 18. Prologue
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- Augustine, City of God 20.7
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- Too Jewish
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- Origen of Alexandria, On First Principles 2.11.2
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- Eusebius of Caesarea, Commentary on Isaiah 2.1-4
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- Jerome, Commentary to Isaiah 11.15-16
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Review
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- From the first to the fifth centuries, many important authors spoke about their belief in the coming Kingdom of God on earth.
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- They conceived of the Kingdom as a new age we enter at the coming of Christ.
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- Early on, going to heaven was considered a serious heresy.
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- Over time, a relatively small number of influential Christians began arguing against the Kingdom.
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- They considered living on a mutable earth forever in physical bodies to be too crude and out of touch with their cosmology.
1 Jerome changed Victorinus’ book in his Latin translation. The Greek version is online at http://www.bombaxo.com/victorinus-in-apocalypsin/
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