Deliver Us from the Jesus Seminar:The Church as Kingdom—Davidic and Eucharistic

One thing missing from biblical scholarship today is an understanding of the kingdom that Jesus came to establish. Nowhere, perhaps, is this more apparent than in the minimalist work of the Jesus Seminar. To counteract this tendency, we need to clarify the nature of the kingdom that Jesus came to establish.

When Jesus spoke of the kingdom, He did not merely refer to God’s “reign” over creation. God’s reign has continued uninterrupted since the beginning of time.

Jesus meant something else. He meant specifically the kingdom established by the covenant God swore with Jesus’ ancestor, King David, a thousand years before. For the kingdom God promised to David was an international kingdom, including both Israel and the Gentiles. This covenant was renewed in Solomon’s temple, which included a court where the Gentiles could pray.

It was through a Davidic king, then, that God would rule the nations and indeed the entire universe. Every first-century Jew knew that. But Jesus had a surprise: the kingdom He established in the line of David would be the Church.

The Gospel of David

Matthew’s Gospel could not make this clearer, starting with Jesus’ genealogy in Chapter 1, which traces His ancestry according to the flesh as the Son of David.

In Chapter 2, Matthew gives us Jesus’ Davidic birthplace—Bethlehem. In Chapter 3, Matthew gives us the Davidic pronouncement at Jesus’ baptism when a voice from heaven is heard saying, “This is My beloved Son,” just as the voice of God decreed to the son of David, “You are My son; today, I have begotten you” (Psalm 2:7). In Matthew 4, Jesus leaves His hometown of Nazareth for Capernaum. For Matthew, this strategic relocation brings about the fulfillment of Isaiah 9:1-2: “The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light.” He was referring to the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, the Galilee of the Gentiles.

What did Isaiah have in mind? When the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom, they started up north in Galilee by destroying Zebulun and Naphtali in 733 B.C. From there, they moved down and completed the conquest of the northern kingdom of Samaria in 722 B.C. The Davidic kingdom was disintegrated. Thus Isaiah announces that when the messianic King comes, the restoration will begin precisely where the deportation began. Capernaum, the city where Jesus based His Galilean ministry, was situated precisely at the point of intersection where the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali meet. This was no coincidence—it was the divine plan.

In Matthew 5, the first of the beatitudes reads: “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom [emphasis added].” Then, climaxing in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:24, Jesus says: “Whoever hears my words and keeps them is like a wise man who built his house upon a rock.” This is a clear evocation of the son of David, King Solomon, the wisest man of all, the man given divine wisdom, who built God’s house, the temple, on the rock—where the Dome of the Rock is in Jerusalem today.

In Matthew 10, Jesus sends forth the twelve, telling them not to go among the Gentiles or the Samaritans but only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And thus begins not the Judean ministry in the South but the Galilean ministry among Israelites in the North. Only later, with the commissioning of the 70, is that extended to include the area of Samaria, as Luke shows (see Luke 9:51-10:2; 17:11-19).

In Matthew 12:6, at the high point of the tension between Jesus and the rulers in Jerusalem, He announces, to their shock, “Something greater than the temple is here.” The people who hear it ask, “Can this be the son of David?” Jesus responds, “If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:28). He does not mean the generic reign of the Creator God over all creation. He announces the specific reign of the covenant Lord of Israel in the Davidic dynasty, through the Son of David. He makes this very clear: “Something greater than Solomon is here” (Matthew 12:23).

Border Lines

In Chapter 13, Jesus uses seven parables to describe how the kingdom is a mystery. The kingdom He promised is the Church; they are not to be understood as separate realities. He’s preparing His disciples to recognize that the Church, as the kingdom of heaven on earth, will be a mixed bag. The Church is characterized by diverse types of soil, wheat mixed with tares, treasure hidden in a field, and a dragnet that gathers fish, both good and bad.

In Matthew 16:13-19, the connection between the Church and the Davidic kingdom is made explicit. Jesus renames Simon as “Rock”: “You are the rock upon which I will build my Church.” This may be understood in terms of Jesus as the new Solomon, David’s son who built the house of God on a rock. The connection is completed in the next verse, when Jesus gives to Peter “the keys of the kingdom?’ In Matthew 19, all the apostles come to share Jesus’ Davidic, royal authority, when He announces that they will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28).

This may be understood in terms of Jesus as the new Solomon—and a wise man builds his house on a rock. He says to Peter in the next verse, “I give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus can say “You are the rock,” “I will build my Church?’ and “the keys of the kingdom” because He is the Son of David—and the Son of God.

As His public ministry nears its end, Jesus makes His triumphal entry, vividly recalling the ancient prophecy, “Tell the daughter of Zion, behold your king is coming to you humble and mounted on an ass” (Matthew 21:5; Zechariah 9:9). Those along the roads, seeing the prophecy’s fulfillment, reply, “Hosanna to the Son of David” (Matthew 21:9).

These convergences are hardly coincidental—they are providential—and theologically significant.

In the first century, all Jews were expecting the restoration of God’s people from a very long and protracted exile that began for the northern tribes with the Assyrian deportation and for the southern kingdom of Judah with the Babylonian exile in 586 B.C. The restoration of the Jews 70 years after the Babylonians deported them was only a partial restoration, a partial fulfillment of God’s promise to restore Israel. A greater and fuller restoration was awaited when the messianic King arrived. With that, a golden age would come that would surpass the golden age of David and Solomon—for under David and Solomon all twelve tribes were united, as one kingdom with the Gentiles.

With this foundation, other important scriptural passages can be more fully understood. For example, in Acts 1:3, during the 40 days after His resurrection, Jesus spoke frequently of the kingdom of God. He spoke so much of the kingdom that in Acts 1:6, the last time the apostles had any conversation with Him, they asked Him: “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”

Jesus responds that His disciples will receive the power of the Holy Spirit to become witnesses in Jerusalem first, then Judea and Samaria, and finally to “the ends of the earth.” The theological map of the Davidic kingdom begins precisely with Jerusalem, the royal city, extending to Judea, the royal tribal territory, and Samaria, containing the northern tribes that rebelled against the royal house of David; and finally to the ends of the earth, which God promised the Son of David. “You shall receive power to go forth and bear witness,” Jesus said. That is how the kingdom comes. When He had finished speaking to His apostles on that day, He was lifted up, and a cloud took the Son of Man out of their sight, back to the Ancient of Days, and therefore, He entrusted this kingdom, which is an everlasting dominion, to the saints of the Most High—just as the prophet Daniel had announced so many centuries before (see Daniel 7:13-27).

In the first Pentecostal sermon in Acts 2:32, Peter explains the resurrection of Jesus not merely as a bodily resuscitation but as the royal enthronement of the Son of David in the heavenly Jerusalem: “`…This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out that which you see and hear…. Let all the house of Israel [not simply Judah] know assuredly that God has made Him both Lord and Christ this Jesus whom you crucified: Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘What shall we do brethren?'” Repent and be circumcised? No. Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized….”

Toward the Eucharist

The form of proclamation moves from the old to the new, as we move from circumcision to baptism, from Passover to Eucharist, from the seventh-day Sabbath to the day of the resurrection—the eighth day, the first day of the new creation. “For the promise is to you,” Peter says, “and to your children and to all that are far off” (Acts 2:39). These are precisely the other lost sheep of the house of Israel scattered among the Gentiles, descended from the ten tribes of the northern kingdom. They were dispersed after the fall of that kingdom and so completely assimilated among the Gentiles as to be lost to history—but not to God.

As Richard Horsley, Sean Freyne, and others have demonstrated, it would be historically anachronistic to identify all first-century Israelites as Jews. While all Jews are Israelites, not all Israelites are Jews, because to be a Jew meant that you were descended from the tribe of Judah. While there were many Jews living in Galilee during the first century, many of the Galilean Israelites were descendants of the northern tribes, of Zebulun and Naphtali, for example, and not Judah. The Greek word for Jew, Iudaios, literally denotes a Judean, one belonging to the tribe or territory of Judah in the South. The twelve tribes were disunited since 930 B.C., and the possibility of reunification practically disappeared after the Assyrian conquest and deportation of the northern tribes of Israel.

After Christ’s ascension, “God began to restore the kingdom” (Acts 1:6) through the apostles, especially a man named Saul. God changes his name to Paul to signify his mission as the apostle to the Gentiles.

Ananias was called to baptize Paul. Jesus tells him, “Go, Ananias, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel [emphasis added]” (Acts 9:15). Significantly, Jesus did not say “the sons of Judah” but rather “the sons of Israel,” who were scattered among the Gentiles and ruled by their kings. This was confirmed at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, when James declared that the Church of the baptized (not circumcised) constituted the rebuilt “house of David” (see Acts 15:13-17; Amos 9:11-12; James 1:1; Revelation 7:3-9 and 21:12-14).

In fulfillment of this, in Acts 26:6-7, Paul stands on trial before a Gentile king. In this Gentile audience, Paul addresses Herod Agrippa II: “I stand here on trial for hope in the promise of God to which our twelve tribes hope to attain and for this hope I am accused by the Jews.” Paul was not forsaking his people, he was just including those Israelites who had been exiled to the nations—not just the Jews of Judah (they do not exhaust Israel) but the lost sheep scattered among the Gentiles.

In the last chapter of Acts, Paul has been under house arrest. His constant theme, as he met with the Jewish leaders, was: “It is because of the hope of Israel that I am bound” (Acts 28:20). He expounded the matter to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince these Jewish leaders about Jesus. Using the law and the prophets, Paul explained that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles. They, in turn, listened and came to hear the Gospel under Paul’s tutelage while he was under house arrest.

Paul spent two years in Rome preaching the kingdom of God. Indeed, he begins his Letter to the Romans, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle; set apart for the Gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets, the Gospel concerning His Son who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by His resurrection from the dead…. [emphasis added].” Paul, like Peter, understood Jesus’ resurrection as more than a resuscitation; it was a royal enthronement in the heavenly Jerusalem, the true Zion. This is why he says in Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith: to the Jews, first, and also to the Greeks.” By the Greeks, he refers to those who speak Greek—the Gentile world of Paul.

The Gospel is meant for the Jews first and then the Greek- speaking Gentiles. Later, this leads Paul to ask rhetorically, in Romans 11:1, “Has God rejected His people?” On the surface, it might have appeared that way to Paul’s fellow Jews. Perhaps the Gentiles have replaced the Jews? Paul says no: “I myself am an Israelite.” He does not say that he was a Jew, though he was. He specifically adds that he is a member of the tribe of Benjamin, that little tribe that had to stay with Judah because Judah controlled its city of Jerusalem. He broadens the context to identify himself as a member of the twelve tribes, one of the Israelite people. For Paul, the “mystery” of the Church is composed of the “faithful remnant” of Israelites and the Gentiles, together in Christ, the Son of David.

Like Elijah

This may explain why Paul compares himself to Elijah, who pled with God about Israel (see Romans 11:2-5). Elijah was not sent to the southern kingdom of Judah but rather the northern kingdom of Israel. There Elijah said, “I alone am left,” but God replied, “No you are not. Seven thousand others have not bent their knee to Baal.” This refers to the 7,000 northern tribesmen in Israel whom God had preserved as a remnant. Paul cites this to explain why he goes to the Gentiles and why God sent Paul there: it is neither because God has rejected His people nor asked Paul to reject his people but because God has broadened the mind of Saul to recognize, in Paul, how broad and pan-Israelite the divine restoration must be. (See Isaiah 11:10-13 and 49:6; Jeremiah 16:14, 23:5-6, and 31:31-33; and Ezechiel 37:15-28.)

Paul adds in Romans 11:11, “But through Israel’s trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles and I want you to understand this mystery, brethren.” A hardening has come on the northern kingdom of Israel, which is what Hosea announced as the cause for the ten northern tribes being scattered among the Gentiles (see Romans 9:22-26). This hardening has come on a part of Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in so that “all Israel will be saved” (see Romans 11:12-26). Paul is proclaiming the Gospel among the Gentiles because it is the only way all of Israel will hear and believe—all Israel in the sense of all twelve tribes, not just Judah and Benjamin. Having been scattered among the Gentiles, the Gospel must go to Israelites wherever they are, and the apostle of the Gentiles will speak to Gentiles, kings, and the sons of Israel. This insight is important if we are to restore an authentic biblical Catholic ecclesiology.

Vatican II Ecclesiology

Certain biblical scholars resist the Magisterium’s teaching that the Catholic Church is the kingdom of God that Christ promised. They contend, as Fr. Loisy put it so well, that Jesus came promising the kingdom, but all He left us was the Church. They are looking for the kingdom in all the wrong places, and they are looking for the wrong kind of kingdom.

Jesus promised us a kingdom within His own generation, and we have to believe that He made good on that promise. We have to discover the kingdom that He established, not where we might think it is easy to find but where it is in its supernatural reality, where only the eyes of faith can lead us.

Right after Vatican II, theologian Henri de Lubac expressed concern about emerging trends in ecclesiology. He quoted St. Augustine, for whom “The present Church is the kingdom of God.” This, for de Lubac, represented “the deepest logic” of the Christian faith. Indeed, he warns, “If one were to abandon it, countless abuses in thought and deed would be the result.”

Relying heavily on de Lubac, Cardinal Schönborn writes in From Death to Life, in a section on the kingdom of God and the heavenly-earthly Church, “In my view, some of the directions taken by ecclesiology that have emerged since the Council justify the anxiety of Cardinal de Lubac.”

Schönborn goes on to say: “One can often read the statement that the Council taught that the Church is [only] the sacrament of the kingdom.” He cites one theologian who goes so far as to say, “She is not yet the kingdom in its fullness and its definitive realization.” He adds this sharply critical comment: “But if the author of these lines had looked more closely, he could have seen that the council nowhere calls the Church `the sacrament of the kingdom:”

Who is the theologian Schönborn is criticizing? Well, he does not leave us guessing, for in the footnote he tells us: “I myself perpetrated these sentences…in a lecture on ‘The Ecclesiological Significance of Vatican II,’” Humbly, he adds, “This text, which I hereby withdraw, was also published in L’Osservatore Romano.”

The constitution Lumen Gentium, Vatican II’s official dogmatic teaching on the Church, is clear on this point. It states in Number 3, “To carry out the will of the Father Christ inaugurated the kingdom of heaven on earth and revealed to us his mystery; by his obedience he brought about our redemption. The Church—that is, the kingdom of Christ—already present in mystery, grows visibly through the power of God in the world.” Thus Schonbom concludes: “The Church is the kingdom, and the Council does not permit us to say that she is merely its sacrament.” He echoes Charles Cardinal Journet, who said, “The kingdom is already on earth because the Church is already in heaven.”

Way of Faith

The way of faith is the only way out of this error. The way of faith is the only penetration into history. For the way of faith gives us the spiritual vision into the metaphysical reality of the Eucharistic Christ and His Real Presence at the heart of the Church. We are the body of Christ because we receive the body of Christ. Mystici corporis (the mystical body) is first Jesus in His Eucharistic reality, and then it extends to us because of our communion with the Eucharistic Lord. It is impossible to understand the Church in her mystery apart from faith, and it is impossible to understand Jesus’ fulfillment of the kingdom promises of His Father, the prophets, and His own words, if one fails to take into account the fact that this kingdom has been transported from its earthly prototype of David’s kingdom in Zion to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of our God.

For us to quicken our senses to perceive the true nature of the Church, we must never forget what so many have already forgotten: the communion and fellowship that unites us as pilgrim members of the Church with the angels and saints who surround the throne of the Lamb in the heavenly Jerusalem. That is the theme of the climax of Lumen Gentium, Chapter 7.

This corresponds to the vision of the Church given to us by the Fathers of the Church, the Doctors of the Church, and the saints—and the vision that was given to John in the Book of Revelation. There, we see the Lamb’s Supper as our participation in the eternal worship of heaven, where the angels and saints crowd about the throne. Jesus Christ promised us a kingdom. He kept His promise. When His Father raised Him from the dead, He established through His own resurrected body, which is the Eucharist, His mystical body, which is His kingdom. He said, “The kingdom is near.” And so it is—it is as near as our local parish. For where the king is present, there is the kingdom. And where the Eucharist is, there is the King.

Author

  • Scott Hahn

    Scott Hahn (born 1957) is a contemporary author, theologian, a Presbyterian convert to Catholicism and Catholic apologist. His works include Rome Sweet Home and The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth. His lectures have been featured in multiple audio distributions through Lighthouse Catholic Media. He currently teaches at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

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