If the first post confronted us with the simplicity of the kingdom’s announcement, this second post forces us to grapple with the uncomfortable consequences of that simplicity. The announcement’s form is so plain and undeveloped that every modern theory which redefines the kingdom must eventually answer for it. And as many have discovered in the two centuries before us, those answers do not merely fail, but they also open the door for critics to walk straight into the sanctuary and accuse the Bible itself of error.

The issue is not abstract, it’s a question of whether Christ, His apostles, and His forerunner preached a kingdom that meant one thing to their hearers, yet secretly intended another. If so, modern interpreters may imagine they are defending Scripture—but in doing so they unintentionally grant rationalistic critics the very leverage they need to declare the New Testament confused, contradictory, or worse.

This collision between modern theology and unbelieving criticism is one of the great ironies George N. H. Peters exposes. Attempts to “protect” Scripture by spiritualizing prophecy end up undermining its credibility far more severely than straightforward literal interpretation ever could.

The Dilemma Modern Church-Kingdom Theories Cannot Escape

Every interpreter must face what Peters calls the “simple announcement” problem: John the Baptist, Jesus, the Twelve, and the Seventy all preached one message—“the kingdom is at hand”—with no explanation, no redefinition, and no correction of supposed “Jewish errors.”

If the kingdom Jesus preached was spiritualized, heavenly, ecclesiastical, or inward, then why was it proclaimed as though every hearer already knew exactly what it meant?

Modern theories, whether amillennial or postmillennial, stumble here. They must either:

  • downplay the announcement,
  • reinterpret its meaning, or
  • explain why God allowed the Jews (and the disciples!) to operate under “mistaken” expectations.

And the moment they do, the rationalistic critics—Renan, von Ammon, Schérer, and others—step in and say: Exactly. If the kingdom does not mean what the Jews thought it meant, then Jesus and the apostles were themselves confused, inconsistent, or deceptive.

This is the tragic irony Peters exposes. Many modern theologians unwittingly arm the critics with ammunition by abandoning the plain sense of Scripture. These theories and other criticisms of the NT from secular writers are discussed in detail in later propositions such as 4 & 19.

Renan and the Rise of Rationalistic Criticism

Peters notes that critics such as Ernest Renan seized immediately on the spiritualizing tendencies within the Church. Once interpreters began redefining the kingdom to avoid a literal fulfillment, Renan drew the only conclusion he believed consistent:

“The prophecies referring to the Kingdom of God, as now interpreted by the large majority of Christians, afford the strongest leverage employed by unbelievers against Christianity. Some unbelievers even go to the length of denouncing the Saviour and the apostles as being ‘deceivers,’ ‘Indian jugglers,’ etc., who endeavored, without success, to appropriate the predictions to themselves. Others inform us that the prophecies inflamed the imagination of Jesus, and that under their influence His ministry started, but that He discarded much as unable to be realized in the condition of things then existing.”
—Prop. 17, Obs. 4

Notice the force of Renan’s reasoning: If the Old Testament kingdom prophecies did not come to pass literally, and if Jesus did not establish such a kingdom, then failed to fulfill them or quietly abandoned them.

If one accepts modern non-literal views of the kingdom, this line of reasoning becomes disturbingly persuasive—especially to someone already on the fence about Christianity, or to a Jewish reader today who has long concluded that Jesus could not be the Messiah precisely because He did not establish the very kingdom the prophets described.

Why Critics Gain Ground When the Church Abandons Literal Interpretation

Peters is blunt: once theologians discard the plain sense of prophecy and replace it with “spiritual” reinterpretations, they create the very conditions in which unbelief thrives.

He writes:

“The manner of meeting such objections is humiliating to the Word and Reason; for it discards the plain grammatical sense as unreliable, and, to save the credit of the Word, insists upon interpreting all such prophecies by adding to them, under the claim of spiritual, a sense which is not contained in the language, but suits the religious system adopted. Unbelief is not slow in seizing the advantage thus given, gleefully pointing out how this introduced change makes the ancient faith an ignorant one, the early Church occupying a false position, and the Bible a book to which man adds any sense, under the plea of spiritual, that may be deemed necessary for its defence.”
—Prop. 17, Obs. 4

In other words:

If you claim the kingdom was never meant in the plain sense Israel understood it, then critics will say the prophets, the Jews, John, Jesus, and the disciples all shared the same mistake.

At that point, the critic no longer attacks the edges of Christian doctrine—he attacks the integrity of Christ Himself.

Von Ammon, Schérer, and the Charge of a “Fatal Discrepancy”

Two thinkers Peters highlights—Christoph Friedrich von Ammon and Edmond Schérer—press the accusations even further.

Von Ammon argues that if the kingdom as preached by Jesus is redefined by later theology, then the New Testament reveals nothing more than a set of Jewish misconceptions dressed up in Christian language:

“Von Ammon (Bib. Theol.), and after him many others, throw doubt on the credibility of the Scriptures on the ground that the New Testament in the very outset indicates that John the Baptist, Jesus, and the disciples were susceptible to the errors and prejudices of their Jewish forerunners and hearers, and that consequently, instead of there being one great design relating to the future as attributed to them, we have, in view of the subsequent change in the meaning of the Kingdom… only detached, isolated positions, lacking cohesion and unity.”
—Prop. 19, Obs. 2

Schérer agrees, insisting that the NT is compromised because it reflects outdated Messianic expectations that do not align with “external facts.”

Peters continues in Proposition 21:

“Thus e.g. Morgan (Moral Philosopher) finds… decided indications that portions of the New Testament contain a deposit of Jewish Messianic ideas… The Swiss Rationalists… declare on this ground that Jesus Christ is not the Messiah foretold by the Prophets and preached by the Apostles, simply because He did not establish the Kingdom as plainly predicted… They… insist that a fatal discrepancy exists which is not removed by the Christ and the spiritual Kingdom created by theologians.”
—Prop. 21, Obs. 3

Here is the hinge point of the controversy:

If the modern Church is correct in redefining the kingdom, then the critics are correct in accusing Scripture of error.

This is precisely the leverage they exploit. And unless modern theories can demonstrate that the kingdom prophecies and Israel’s restoration were always meant to be spiritualized or transferred to the Church (a claim thoroughly contradicted by the text and overwhelmingly disproven by the historical and grammatical evidence), then the ground remains tilted in the critics’ favor.

Reinterpretation Leads to Accusation

Modern interpreters may claim they are “honoring Christ” by interpreting the kingdom spiritually. But Peters argues the opposite. By introducing new meanings foreign to the prophetic Scriptures, they unintentionally make Jesus appear to have promised what He never intended to deliver.

This leads critics to three devastating accusations:

  1. Jesus and the apostles were mistaken.
  2. Jesus deceived the people by adopting Jewish expectations He never planned to fulfill.
  3. Jesus changed His plan when He saw it failing.

Renan explicitly accuses Christ of this last point:

“Jesus… finding His own hopes and expectations unrealized by the unbelief of the Jews, changed His plan and a new meaning was introduced.”

Once again, the logic only works if the modern theories are correct. If Christ preached a spiritual kingdom, then the Jews’ expectations were wrong—and that is exactly the ground critics stand on.

A Door the Critics Could Never Have Opened on Their Own

Peters argues that rationalism gained its greatest victories not from its own brilliance, but from the theological concessions made by Christians who rejected the simple, literal meaning of prophetic Scripture.

This is his lament:

“Theologians have too readily spiritualized the prophecies to make them applicable to Christ, and to the Church at present. This… provides even more ammunition to the unbeliever now that the Messiah and the Kingdom have taken on characteristics entirely different than that which was prophesied… This as well creates a disconnect between the OT & NT, breaking the force of unity which is so vital to the defense of inspiration.”

When the Church redefines the kingdom, the critics pounce—not because the Bible is weak, but because theological reinterpretation made it appear weak.

Why Literal Interpretation Alone Preserves the Unity of Scripture

Peters concludes that there is only one approach that both guards the integrity of Scripture and aligns with its internal harmony:

“Amid the diverse and antagonistic theories, the only one that rescues the Word from unjust suspicions, that preserves the integrity of the New Testament from entangling concessions and alliances, that honors the faith and intelligent piety of ancient believers, is that which affirms that the truth itself was contained in the derivation of this phraseology, in the hopes excited by it, and in the subsequent adoption of it.”
—Prop. 23, Intro

In other words, the only position that does not empower the critics is the one that affirms exactly what John, Jesus, and the disciples proclaimed:

The kingdom they announced is the kingdom the prophets described.

Where This Leaves Us

Post 1 raised the historical and linguistic problem: the announcement presupposed a well-known, literal expectation of the kingdom.

Post 2 exposes the theological and apologetic crisis: when modern interpreters abandon that expectation, they unintentionally side with the critics who attack the New Testament.

And so the stage is set for Post 3:

What was this kingdom the Jews, the disciples, and the early Church expected? How did they define it? Why did Jesus never correct their understanding?

The next post unfolds the positive theological core: the meaning of “kingdom” in the vocabulary of Israel, the prophets, and the earliest believers—and why that meaning matters for every page of the New Testament.