g-ladd-presence-of-the-future

140 THE PRESENCE OF THE FUTUREanalysis of the entire passage will be undertaken in the next chapter.Here we need only notice that our Lord speaks unequivocally of apresent coming of the Kingdom. The older meaning of the Greekverb (phthano), "to come first, to precede," is found in I Thessalonians4:15. At the Parousia of Christ, the living will not "getahead" of those who have died and reach the presence of Christbefore their sleeping fellows; both the dead and the living will betaken up together to be with the Lord. Some exegetes have attemptedto apply this meaning of "precede" to Matthew 12:28 by arguingthat the verb means imminence to the point of contact withoutproviding participation in the ensuing experience. The word is thustaken to be almost synonymous with eggiken and means that theKingdom has "drawn near," even to the very point of contact; butthe experience which draws near is still in the future. Matthew 12:28 might be translated, "the Kingdom of God has just reached yoU."45This interpretation has been used to support modified ConsistentEschatology. Dibelius interprets this saying to mean that the Kingdomis so near that its powers are already at work, but the Kingdomitself remains future. What is manifested is the proximity of theKingdom. "God is already beginning to transform the curse of thispresent existence, which appears in sickness and other dark fatalities,into blessing.":"Several facts are to be noted about this interpretation. First, wemust repeat that if the works of Jesus are signs of the nearness ofthe Kingdom and not of its actual presence, we cannot avoid thetheological problem which casts Jesus' entire message and missionunder a cloud. If the powers which Jesus thought were at work inand through him were based upon an illusory sense of the nearnessof the Kingdom of God, then those very powers themselves must45 Cf. K. Clark, JBL, LIX (1940), pp. 367-383. Clark is concerned to refuteDodd's interpretation that eggiken means "has come."46 M. Dibelius, Jesus (1949), pp. 78 f. Similarly R. Bultmann, Theology of theNew Testament (1951), I, p. 7; B. T. D. Smith, The Parables of the SynopticGospels (1937), pp. 78, 93; R. H. Fuller, Mission, pp. 25 If.; W. Michaelis, DasEvangelium nach Matthaus (1949) II, pp. 26 E.; C. Guignebert, Tesus (1935),p. 338; C. T. Craig, IB, VII, p. 148.