Charles Ryrie’s 1953 book, The Basis of the Premillennial Faith, is a defense of the system of theology which seeks to interpret all of God’s word according to its literal meaning1 and expects the OT promises to Israel to be fulfilled in the coming millennial kingdom of Christ. While the book as a whole is a fine defense of the premillennial view, it does have a couple of arguments, popular among some premillennialists, which I find peculiar.
First, in his discussion of the Davidic covenant and especially the New Testament’s teaching on the kingdom, Ryrie attempts to distinguish the terms kingdom of heaven and kingdom of God. He admits on p.98 that the relationship between these two terms is “not absolutely vital to the argument.” In other words, this is an area in which even premillennialists may disagree. For Ryrie, this is a feature of the system, not a bug. He says that if we believe that the very words of Scripture are God-breathed, then even the use of different terms such as these are significant.
Anyone who says there is a substantive difference between kingdom of heaven and kingdom of God must demonstrate this rather than assume it to be so.
I am sympathetic to this argument by Ryrie, because the words of Scripture are important, and even Jesus made an argument based on the tense of an implied verb in the Hebrew Old Testament (Matthew 22:32; cf. Exodus 3:6). But anyone who says there is a substantive difference between kingdom of heaven and kingdom of God must demonstrate this rather than assume it to be so.
What evidence does Ryrie offer that the terms are distinct? He notes that the phrase kingdom of heaven is used only in the Gospel of Matthew (more than 30x), while kingdom of God is used throughout the NT (more than 70x). But what does this prove? Matthew also uses kingdom of God several times, which weakens the argument that Matthew emphasized one kingdom and the other Gospel writers, another.
Ryrie claims that the citizens of the kingdom of heaven are those who have merely made a religious profession, while the kingdom of God is populated by those who have been born again. He appears to base this on John 3:3, but if Matthew alone uses the phrase kingdom of heaven, then it is hard to imagine why John’s use of kingdom of God would be definitive. Are we to think that John never spoke of those who merely professed to know God? Even a casual reading of his Gospel shows this is not so.
It is also difficult to see how every use of kingdom of heaven in Matthew fits Ryrie’s claim. For example, when Jesus says that the poor in spirit and those persecuted for his name’s sake will inherit the kingdom of heaven, surely this promise includes more than just a professed religion. He even specifies in Matt. 7:21 that it is not merely those who profess faith who will enter the kingdom of heaven but those who do God’s will. Surely this implies genuine conversion.
In Matt. 8:11 Jesus says that many will come from all over the earth to recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But in the next verse, he says that the sons of the kingdom will be cast out, presumably because theirs was an empty profession rather than genuine conversion.
Maybe the clearest example in Matthew of kingdom of heaven being used to describe those who are born again is in chapter 18. The disciples were debating who would be greatest in the kingdom, and Jesus said that only those who were converted and become like little children would even enter the kingdom of heaven. It is hard to see how the distinction that Ryrie makes can be consistently maintained.
Additionally, there are numerous parallel passages in the Gospels where the term kingdom of heaven from Matthew is replaced by kingdom of God. For example, John the Baptist preached that the Jews should repent for “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” in Matthew 4:17, while “the kingdom of God is at hand” in Mark 1:15. And in Matthew 13:11 he explained to his disciples that he was teaching in parables because, “to you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.” In Mark 4:11 and Luke 8:10 it is “the mysteries of the kingdom of God.”
Ryrie dismisses these parallel passages, saying, “However, we still must insist that similarity is not equivalence and that the distinctions are not contradicted.” He’s right, of course, but the fact that it is possible for these to merely similar rather than synonymous is not evidence in favor of Ryrie’s position.
It is not entirely clear why Ryrie believed this distinction was necessary, either. He was trying to argue against the amillenial view that the church is the kingdom and therefore Christ is presently reigning and fulfilling the Davidic covenant. But the premillennial view does not rest on this distinction, as he acknowledged previously, and introducing an unnecessary internal dispute gives opponents of premillennialism an excuse to dismiss the system without considering the strong arguments Ryrie makes elsewhere.
There is a similar idiosyncrasy in dealing with the new covenant, which we will examine in the next post.
1By “literal” he does not mean a kind of childish literalism which woodenly interprets metaphors and figures of speech. Instead, he means the plain sense of language according to its grammatical usage in context.