This transmutation of the idea gives the starting-
point for the development which culminated in the
Fourth gospel, by showing that the stress upon the
inward and present aspect began not with the early
church but with Jesus Himself. As Von Dobschütz has
happily expressed it, 'in the teaching of Jesus there
is a strong line of what I would call transmuted
eschatology. I mean eschatology transmuted in the
sense that what was spoken of in Jewish eschatology
as to come in the last days is taken here as already
at hand in the lifetime of Jesus; transmuted at the
same time in the other sense that what was expected
as an external change is taken inwardly: not all
people seeing it, but Jesus' disciples becoming aware
of it.' ¹ The reasons for this transmutation lie in
Jesus' consciousness of God as the Father and of
His own Sonship. Both of these determine the
conception of the new realm or reign of God which
He came to inaugurate, and it is to the study of their
meaning that we must now pass.

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