The Eschatological Relationship of the Two Kingdoms

Introduction

In this paper I will, first, describe three types of false eschatology and their presupposition of primacy of the law alone, rather than a law and gospel distinction, which ultimately results in a one-kingdom theology. Next, I will describe Luther ’s present and relational eschatology, drawing attention to his teaching on relatio. Then, I will examine some of the rich fodder of Luther ’s teaching on what he calls the two kingdoms distinction, as we find, for example, in his greater Lectures on Galatians (1535) and The Bondage of the Will (1525). Finally, I want to draw upon Luther ’s eschatology of the two kingdoms distinction for what it means for our preaching today. My reason for setting the discussion on the two kingdoms distinction as the “eschatological relationship” between them comes from a close analysis of what Luther is doing in these writings to reform what the chief task of the church is: preaching Word and Sacrament.

Initially, I want to briefly describe what we don’t mean by the two kingdoms distinction: “The relation of the church and the world is not ontological; it is not as if the church were located in a higher sphere called ‘spirit ’ and the state were located in a lower realm called ‘flesh,’ or world.”1 This is the sort of two kingdoms one might make of Plato’s allegory of the cave. Nor is the relationship between the two kingdoms a political struggle to conserve the paternal law of unchanging origin (Kant), or to move progressively in the law that adjusts to new purposes throughout history (Hegel). Nor is it the struggle of the proletariat over the bourgeoise. It is not the Old Testament God verses God in the New Testament. It is not the distinction between vices and virtues. All such distinctions are based in one fashion or another on a description of kingdom of the Left Hand of God, or the old kingdom which is a shuffling around under the law, constitutions, and institutions. The two kingdoms are related, eschatologically, as this old world under the law and the new kingdom to come under the gospel without the law.

Plato

Identifying Errant Eschatology

Eschatology, broadly defined, is the arrival of the future, final matters (the end, death; telos) and the beginning of the new (new birth, resurrection). There are three general types of errant eschatology. The first kind is an over-realized eschatology wherein Christians in the old world believe they are no longer under the law in their flesh (antinomian) and live in this life as though they are fully in the resurrection. This first example of this in the Christian church is documented in the Corinthian churches. The gospel was taken not as the end of the law for faith (Romans 10:4), but as the end the law for the flesh. The result was, for example, a variety of sexual licentiousness that Paul says would have shamed even the Pagans (2 Corinthians 5:1). In the sixteenth century, late in his life, Luther is forced to address the problem of antinomianism preached by Johann Agricola who believed that the law should not be preached to Christians, that it belongs not in the church house but in the Rathaus. All too briefly, the Antinomians argued that since Christ is the end the law, it should not be spoken anymore to Christians. Luther argued the opposite, that since the law always accuses, you must take it in your mouth and declare it ’s end in Christ.

The opposite of antinomianism can also result from this sort of over-realized eschatology, where the rigor of nomism in the “moral organization of humanity through love-prompted action,”2 is understood to be the manifestation of the kingdom of God on earth. This eschatology was brought to the fore by one of the chief German Lutherans of 19th century liberal theology, Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889). In Ritschl’s magnum opus, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, justification is described as the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation is the resultant harmonious action of the individual aligning with the moral law of Albrecht Ritschl God. Put simply, the bifurcation of justification and reconciliation as two separate foci of an ellipse, advances the positivistic theological anthropology of liberal theology in which Christ issues the forgiveness of sins, but the atonement is fulfilled through the moral influence he has on the community through his example.3 Ritschl makes extensive use of Kant ’s perception of the “supreme importance for ethics of the ‘Kingdom of God’ as an association of men bound together by laws of virtue.”4 Ritschl’s understanding of the kingdom of God on earth is dripping with the ice-cold language of morality, virtue, and the law. This kingdom is not a new kingdom of the gospel, but a reorganization and rehabilitation under a higher law called love. In Ritschl’s system, Christ fulfills his vocation of sacrificial love which morally influences the community to fulfill its vocation of love. Consequently, preaching Christ is reduced to imitating Christ through the moral organization of the community towards love in order that the kingdom of God be made manifest in the activity of humans on earth.

Albrecht Ritschl

By comparison, the second kind of errant eschatology, called proleptic eschatology, was systematized by the late German Lutheran theologian, Wolfhart Pannenberg (19282014). He described his eschatology as prolepsis when the final matters of heaven and eternal life—including the unity of God himself! —are in the process of unfolding, to be revealed sometime in the future, in the “consummation.”5 The death and resurrection of Christ serves as a proleptic revelation of the unfolding of salvation history towards the future consummation of all things. Pannenberg has made use of Hegel’s dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. In the tension of events in history, the dialectic of thesis and antithesis is the process through which God’s pure thought is manifested (synthesized) in the unfolding of world events through the world spirit (Weltgeist). Preaching of the cross is to project the gaze of faith, not in Christ who has fulfilled the law in his crucifixion, but in one whose future consummation of the kingdom is dependent upon the resolution of the dialectic of history, still unfolding. Faith is sent adrift in the suspicion that the wrath of God continues until the “consummation,” and my future is, therefore, uncertain. The eschatology seen in Corinth, in Agricola’s antinomianism, in Ritschl, and in Pannenberg face similar problems in that they are all based on a theology of the law, be it license, moral organization, or the unfolding of history, and therefore, they result in a one kingdom theology. In this theology, it is not only that the form of eschatology is the law which continues eternally (lex aeterna), for even the antinomians become a law unto themselves, but it means that the only way that God deals with the world and sinners is through the law alone. Then, Jesus Christ and his cross are the fulfillment of the law, not to cancel, remove or silence the law (lex vacua), but the law Wolfhart Pannenburg remains as an eternal guide for Christians to imitate. The broader society and activity of the community of Christ are necessary for the unfolding of the mind of God, the world spirit, which is the law alone. The key difficulty when the lawgospel distinction is confused or mixed into an eschatology of the law is that the law brings wrath (Romans 4:15) because it terrorizes by magnifying sin, which results in a kingdom of death (Romans 5:20-21).

Wolfhart Pannenberg

There is a third errant eschatology that can be categorized as “two kingdoms,” or “two worlds,” which results not from scripture’s own law-gospel distinction, but is the result of the Hellenization of Christianity, in particular Plato’s division and separation of matter and spirit in the Plato’s theory of the forms.6 The infiltration of this notion into Christian thought has led to a theology of heaven that is “somewhere, up there,” a distant, spirit world, where we look to ascend by progressing up a spiritual ladder of virtue and morality so that we may finally leave this body and the created world and all the trouble with which they have saddled our souls. Preaching out of this philosophical presupposition is to encourage the contemplation of the law of God as the true will of God and in so doing, transcend the desires of the flesh and the world to ascend spirituality and grow in godliness.

Luther ’s Eschatology

While Luther did refer to heaven “above” on occasion, he more often preferred the “more biblical idea of the world to come, the future world. He rejected the idea of the heaven “above,” in the sense that it is supposed to be a “reward” at the top of the ladder, the prize one gets for denying this world and its pleasures. The other world in which he placed his hope was the world to come, the new heaven and earth (not heaven without earth), the new age, God’s new creation.”7

Luther ’s particular understanding of eschatology comes from what scripture says regarding the arrival of the new kingdom through the advent of Christ into this old world, “The time has been fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:14). And yet, for the time being, there is not a replacement of the old world with the new, but a simultaneity, an overlap8 of the two kingdoms which God will eventually separate, “We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). Jesus himself prayed to his Father, “I do not ask that you take them out of this world, but that you keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15).

Furthermore, Luther ’s understanding of eschatology can be described as present and relational. It is a present eschatology for when Christ arrives in the present with his announcement, “ The kingdom of God is at hand,” it is the invasion of the new kingdom of gospel and the interruption of the old world’s way of business as usual according to the law alone. That is to say, the end (goal/telos) of the old kingdom comes not in the moral organization of human communities or the unfolding of political, social, or economic realities, but when Christ arrives with his whole kingdom of heaven in tow in the present. It is relational in that Christ speaks a word of promise into the ears of those whom he comes near, “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5) and “‘Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.’ And he said to her, ‘ Your sins are forgiven’’’ (Luke 7:47-48). When Christ comes near and directly addresses me with the absolution, giving me his very self, I am being made new and holy, freed from the law, sin, and death.

Luther begins to establish the category of relatio in his lecture on Psalm 51:2, “the Christian is not formally righteous, he is not righteous according to substance or quality. . . He is righteous according to his relation to something: namely, only in respect to divine grace and the free forgiveness of sins, which comes to those who acknowledge their sin and believe that God is gracious and forgiving for Christ ’s sake, who was delivered for our sins (Romans 4:25).”9 We can see this teaching on relatio again late in his career, “According to the category of relationship, sin is gone, and [this] through the forgiveness of sins. But not according to the category of quality. There it sticks to your flesh, and you feel a propensity to all sins.”10 One of the most insightful takeaways from Luther ’s eschatology is that “the two kingdoms are not two institutions or organizations but two different relations, correlated with law and gospel.”11 Luther understood that the law-gospel distinction are the two preaching offices of God (2 Corinthians 3:6): the preaching of the law kills the old Adam and the preaching of the gospel raises up a new creature of faith with the law put behind him, in his old life under the law in the old, left-hand kingdom.

Luther ’s Teaching on the Two Kingdoms

The seminal work on Luther ’s two kingdoms distinction comes from Gerhard Ebeling ’s article, “The Necessity of the Two Kingdoms Doctrine,” in his collection of essays, Word and Faith. 12 From the beginning of this writing, Ebeling insists upon showing us the relationship between the two kingdoms is not a political distinction; it is not the distinction between the church and the state. Nor is it the metaphysical ontological distinction between the spirit and the material, or even legal and moral distinction between vice and virtue. Rather the relationship between the two kingdoms is eschatological, “For when we are concerned with God, we are concerned with salvation and the eschaton in inseparable unity. To enquire into the necessity of the two kingdoms [distinction] is to enquire into the necessity of the theological justification of its at once soteriological and eschatological claim.”13 For where there is the unconditional promise of the forgiveness of sins, there is life and salvation.

Gerhard Ebeling

The one regnum (kingdom) is the terrenum (earthly) and the other is coeleste (heavenly) “the one temporal, the other aeternum (eternal).”14 He describes the iustitia (righteousness) in each kingdom. In the left-hand kingdom, there is the righteousness of the law, or works, active righteousness, earthly righteousness.15 In the righthand regnum Christi (kingdom of Christ) there is righteousness of the gospel, of faith, passive righteousness, and heavenly righteousness. The Christian exists, at the same time (simul) in the left-hand kingdom under the law we exist coram mundo (before the world) and in the right-hand kingdom we exist coram Deo (before God) by faith. What is crucial in understanding the eschatological distinction of the two kingdoms, Ebeling observes, is Luther ’s teaching on the conscientia (conscience) and the reality of a sinner hearing the promise. “The conscientia is the mathematical point at which the regnum Christi becomes one with the regnum mundi stripped of its power and freed from itself in order to be mere world. But as conscience, and that means as hearer, man remains dependent on the faith creating word, whose truth is observed through the two kingdoms doctrine, and by whose act alone the distinction of the two kingdoms takes place concretely.”16

That everything, the arrival of no less than Christ himself with his kingdom, which depends on the preached word rupturing one’s conscience (what Paul calls the hearing of faith) is the language of eschatology. When God remains unpreached, then one’s conscience remains ruled by the law alone in one kingdom. But when the hearing of faith comes by the preached God, then one is ruled in both the old and the new, left and right-hand kingdoms of God at the same time.

The left-hand kingdom is old because it is ruled by the law and has an end/telos: lex semper accusat. The kingdom of the right-hand of God is the new because it is ruled by the gospel, with no law in it (lex vacua) and this kingdom has no end. These two kingdoms are both God’s, though he rules each differently. They are related to each other in a very particular time and place: in the present preaching of the absolution, here and now. Therefore, to assert that there are two distinct kingdoms, through the proclamation of “Ego te absolvo,” means that Christ has accomplished what the law, weakened through the flesh, could not do: raise the dead, in the new creature of faith, now, and in the bodily resurrection on the last day. For where there is the forgiveness of sins, there is life and salvation.

The two kingdoms are distinguished by and derived from the distinction between the law and the gospel.17 More precisely, the law is constitutive of the kingdom on the left, the old kingdom and the gospel is constitutive to the kingdom on the right, the new kingdom.18 The law is what makes the kingdom on the left old; wherever the law rules, even and especially in one’s conscience, there is the old kingdom. For the law was given to reveal sin (Romans 3:20), the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. As shown above, Luther believes it is the preaching of Christ, not as mere example for moral rehabilitation, by specifically Christ ’s absolution to actual sinners, that brings in this new kingdom to interrupt and bring an end to the tyranny of the law. This interruption in the present, old way of going about things according to the law, whether progressive or conservative, by the oral promise of absolution, is eschatological. The proclamation of the absolution in the present, from one sinner to another is and eschatological event: the accusation of the law upon the sinner ’s conscience is quelled and a new creature, free from the law, arises in Christ by faith now, then bodily in the world to come.

The Bondage of the Will (1525)

One of the most important places we find Luther ’s discussion of the two kingdoms is in his 1525 writing, The Bondage of the Will. He notes that where there is no proclamation of the absolution, Satan will reign (though through deception) the kingdom on the left. “Satan reigns (which is why Christ calls him the ‘prince of this world’ (John 12:31), and Paul ‘the god of this world’ (2 Corinthians 4:4)). He . . . holds captive at his will all that are not wrest from him by the Spirit of Christ,”19 as in the parable of the strong man armed, in Mark 3:23-27. Christ plunders the palace of Satan in which he has enslaved the sinner by the seduction and condemnation of the law unto death. Christ plunders the captives from their chains in Satan’s shadowy nonkingdom by Jesus’ promise, “Your sin is forgiven.” Christ disarms Satan by the absolution. By this one eschatological promise Luther remarks, “we are translated into the other kingdom, not by our own power, but by the grace of God, which delivers us from this present evil world and tears us away from the power of darkness.”20 Without God sending Christ ’s preacher of the absolution, in the present, the sinner remains in bondage to terror and uncertainty.

Bondage of the Will

So, Luther ’s theological triple—double can be illustrated as the distinction of God’s two words 1) law and gospel, which constitutes 2) two eschatologically related kingdoms of God, where and when God sends a preacher so that 3) the unpreached God becomes God preached in the absolution in the present, to actual sinners. By this one and only key of categorical (unconditional) absolution, is anyone finally wrested from sin, death, the accusation of the law, and Satan’s grip on his conscience, his life. By this freeing key of absolution, one already lives in heaven, through faith which clings to Christ alone, with the law, sin, death, and captivity to Satan left behind forever.

Letters on Galatians (1535)

Another key location where Luther also takes time to lay out the two kingdoms distinction is in his Lectures on Galatians (1535). First, Luther observes Paul’s opening words to his churches in Galatia, “Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age” (1:3-4). This means there is no neutral ground on earth; there is no theological “Switzerland.” There is the present evil age and the age of grace and mercy, the old age and the new age. That Christ has delivered us from this present evil age means he has delivered, “the whole world that has been, is, and will be, in order to differentiate it from the eternal age to come. And he calls it “evil” because whatever is in this age is subject to the evil of the devil who rules the entire world.”21 Luther often calls the kingdom of the left hand of God the kingdom of Satan, or the shadow kingdom, because this is where and when the devil rules. The devil will deceive in the world through means of the law: by constantly holding our sins against us or by appealing to our religious inclinations in the external works of the love. Luther elaborates, “the kingdom of the devil is nothing but ignorance, contempt, blasphemy, hatred of God, and disobedience of all the words and works of God. We exist in this world and under it.”22 But since the devil is God’s devil, as we learn particularly in the book of Job, it means that the devil is not all-powerful or all-knowing. Our eyes and our experiences can be deceiving, however, and tempt us to doubt Christ and his promises. For, “the whole world, as John says, “is in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). All those who are in the world, therefore, are the slaves of sin and the devil and are members of the devil, who holds all men by his tyranny as captives to his will.”23 This means that we are not only warned against things we might Luther find abhorrent, but Luther warned especially against what we may esteem, things such as virtue, wisdom, beauty, and the religious – virtues that can become vices. Luther includes especially the religious orders where they invent their own good works. He gives the example of his own life, I was nursing incessant mistrust, doubt, fear, hatred, and blasphemy against God. This righteousness of mine was nothing but a cesspool and the delightful kingdom of the devil.24

Martin Luther

Under the deception of the devil and in his kingdom, we look to our outward acts of love and take leave of Christ and his promises. We would rather be right, do the good and beautiful and accomplish something that the world, or at least our family would praise, rather than being forgiven of our deeds. Our external deeds of righteousness according to the law are particularly seductive for our old Adam . . . [F]or even when [the evil world] is at its best. It is at its worst.” Because “you are still in the present evil age and not in Christ. If Christ is not present, it is certain that the evil age and the kingdom of Satan are.”25

It is worth noting Luther ’s unique distinction of the two hands of the devil, or the difference between the black devil and the white devil: his left-hand rule, which is seen in obvious outward persecution and destruction, as well as his right-hand rule which deceives by appearing glorious and righteous according to the law.26 Both hands of the devil are the means by which he rules the present evil age. Luther ’s own confession of slavery to Satan through his sanctity to the monastic laws is an example of what he calls the reign of the right-hand of the devil, or the white devil, or what scripture calls the angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). Luther further depicts this specialty of the devil’s right-hand rule,

For in his ministers, the devil does not want to be deformed and black but beautiful and white. To put on such an appearance, he presents and adorns everything he says and does with the color of truth and the name of God. . . If he cannot do his damage by persecuting and destroying, he will do it under the guise of correcting and edifying. . .

He is arousing false teachers. At first, they accept our teaching and preach it in agreement with us. But later on, they say that we have made a good start, but that the more sublime things have been saved until now, etc. In this way the devil impedes the progress of the Gospel, both on the right side and on the left – but more on the right, by edifying and correcting than on the left, by persecuting and destroying.27

Precisely because the rule of the right-hand of the devil is under the guise of “correcting and edifying,” (law) that this shadowy non-kingdom falls entirely under the left-hand kingdom of God, rather than the right-hand kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ who is the end of the law.

The Kingdom of Christ Comes by a Promise

For now, the two kingdoms remain. The law continues to rule over our flesh in the old, earthly kingdom, and the gospel alone rules our new creature of faith, whose life is in Christ Jesus. Into this present evil age and into this earthly kingdom, God sends Christ ’s preachers into particular locations to bring his new and heavenly kingdom into this world. Preachers are not called to their geographic locations to straighten out the community through the moral organization of the church. Nor are preachers called to doctor up the word of God by attempting to remove the condemning law by trying to replace it with a fabricated, milk toast, doable law dressed up in religious sounding words like “spiritual” or “discipleship,” which turns faith into a project. Preachers are certainly not called to leave their congregations in a quagmire of uncertainty about their future destination by speculating about the signs of the times (Zeitgeists) as we watch them unfold (Weltgeist), as though God is playing a guessing game with us about the end and where we are headed. Preachers are ambassadors of Christ whose mandate is to place the whole Jesus Christ, human and divine, into the ears of those whom sin, death, the law, and the devil hold captive. Then Christ is the end of the law for faith and the new creature resides in heaven now and forever. Christ ’s heavenly kingdom arrives “for you” by this promise, “Your sins are forgiven on account of the Crucified and Rise Christ. You are free.”18

(This paper was first presented at the 2021 St. Paul Lutheran Seminary Theological Conference in Jekyll Island, Georgia).

Rev. Dr. Marney Fritts is an instructor of Systematic Theology for Saint Paul Lutheran Seminary. Her Ph.D. dissertation was “Responses to Gustaf Aulén’s Christus Victor and their Impact on the Doctrine of Atonement for Proclamation” (Luther Seminary, 2011). She has written an essay for the festschrift, Handing Over the Goods: Determined to Proclaim Nothing but Jesus Christ and Him Crucified (1517 Publishing: Irvine, California, 2018), in honor of Dr. James A. Nestingen, and is a regular contributor to the Connections magazine published by Sola Publishing.

Endnotes

1Steven D. Paulson, “The Simul and Two Kingdoms,” Logia 25 no. 4 Reformation (2016),

2Albrecht Ritschl, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation (Reference Book Publishers: Clifton, NJ, 1966), 13.

3Ibid., 11, 78ff.

4Ibid., 11.

5Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, volume 1 (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1988), 56.

6Paulson, Two Kingdoms, p. 18.

7Gerhard O. Forde, Where God Meets Man: Luther ’s Down-to-Earth Approach to the Gospel (Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 1972), 89-85.

8Paulson, Two Kingdoms, p. 18.

9Martin Luther, Selected Psalms I, LW 12, p. 329.

10WA 49:95, 33-35, Sermon on Easter Saturday [27 March] 1540.

11James A. Nestingen, “The Two Kingdoms Distinction,” Word & World Volume XIX, Number 3 Summer, 1999, p. 270.

12Gerhard Ebeling, “The Necessity of the Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms,” in Gerhard Ebeling, Word and Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1960), 387.

13Ibid., 387.

14Ibid., 396.

15Ibid., 401.

16Ibid., 406.

17Nestingen, Distinction, p. 269.

18Ebeling, Necessity, p. 338.

19Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, translated by J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1957), 312.

20Ibid., 312.

21Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1535 Chapters 1-4, LW 26: 39.

22Ibid., 40.

23Ibid., 40.

24Ibid., 70.

25Ibid., 40.

26Ibid., 41.

27Ibid., 70.