Kingdom of God vs Kingdom of Heaven (With Chart!)

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

The terms "Kingdom of God" and "Kingdom of Heaven" are central to the teachings of Jesus, yet they have sparked debates among scholars, regarding whether they refer to the same concept or represent distinct ideas. How can we explain the Kingdom of God vs. Kingdom of Heaven concepts? Similarly, curious individuals wonder whether it’s true that the Bible says the wicked don’t inherit the Kingdom of God or that no adulterer will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

In this article, I’ll examine the meanings and implications of these two phrases, beginning with the foundational understanding of the Kingdom of God. I’ll then look at arguments about whether or not the two phrases are synonymous or reflect different theological ideas.

What Does the Kingdom of God Mean?

Bart Ehrman points out that the first written reference we have to Jesus’ preaching in Mark, our oldest Gospel, is about the Kingdom of God, where Jesus says

But Jesus did not invent the notion of the Kingdom of God. In Pure Kingdom: Jesus' Vision of God, for example, Bruce Chilton writes that God is portrayed as a king throughout the Hebrew Bible:

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1 Chronicles 29:11
Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.

Psalm 45:6
Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness.

Isaiah 33:22
The Lord is our king;
he will save us.

Like all kings, God must have a kingdom. However, it isn’t until the book of Daniel — written in the 2nd century BCE —  that the Kingdom of God began to signify the end of the current world and the start of a new one.

In The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception, John J. Collins notes that Daniel’s author composed the book as a reaction to the persecution of Jews in the 2nd century by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a Greek king. Therefore, as Amy-Jill Levine notes in the New Oxford Annotated Bible, the overarching theme of Daniel is “God’s control over history.” God would be the just king that Israel deserved. This reign of God is what Jesus indicated by the phrase Kingdom of God.

One common view in Jesus’ time and place was that God was on the verge of dramatically restoring a Davidic Kingdom in Israel. The arrival of this Kingdom of God would prove that the God of Israel had finally taken control. The wicked had been in control long enough and it was time for God to rule the world.

This Kingdom, by the way, was to be on earth, not in heaven. God would be intervening in the earthly affairs of human beings and establishing a kingdom of justice here. This is why, in the Lord’s Prayer, it says “Thy Kingdom come.” In other words, the prayer asks for God’s kingdom to be established here as soon as possible.

One reason to believe that the phrase Kingdom of God rather than Kingdom of Heaven goes back to Jesus is that Paul, who wrote our earliest Christian writings, used the phrase as well. In 1 Corinthians 6:9, he writes “Don’t you know that the wicked will not inherit God’s kingdom?”

Having established the meaning of the Kingdom of God, we can continue our Kingdom of God vs. Kingdom of Heaven discussion by exploring the second term, which only the Gospel of Matthew mentions? Is it the same as the Kingdom of God or different?

Most scholars believe the two to be synonymous, but if so, why would Matthew use different wording? For this reason, some scholars believe there is a significant difference between Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven references.

In the rest of this article, I’ll first talk about the reasons most scholars believe the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven are simply two phrases for the same idea. Then I’ll examine some who believe the two were intentionally differentiated and why.

The Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven as Identical

The first argument for the two Kingdoms having the same meaning comes from the parallels between Matthew and the other two Synoptic Gospels, Mark and Luke. Scholars have known for a long time that Mark was our earliest written Gospel, and that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. For this reason, many of the stories and sayings in Mark are echoed verbatim in Matthew and Luke, although some are modified.

If we look at parallel sayings between Matthew, Mark, and Luke, then, we see that many of the sayings about the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew are exactly the same as those from Mark and Luke that use the Kingdom of God. For example, look at these verses, both of which record Jesus’ words at the beginning of his ministry:

Not only is the context the same — Jesus has just emerged from temptation and is starting his ministry — but the actual words are the same except for God/Heaven. There are other examples, as well. Look at each version of the Parable of the Mustard Seed:

Again, the context is the same and the parables comparing the kingdom to a mustard seed are the same. There are other, similar parallels as well, all showing evidence that Matthew simply used a different phrase to mean the exact same thing. In fact, many scholars simply assume this is the case and hardly mention the difference in wording.

For example, in his textbook A Brief Introduction to the New Testament, Bart Ehrman writes that in Matthew, “the Kingdom of Heaven does not refer to the place people go when they die. Rather it refers to God’s presence on earth, a kingdom that he will bring at the end of this age by overthrowing the forces of evil.” In other words, Ehrman believes the Kingdom of Heaven is simply the Matthean version of the Kingdom of God.

But why would Matthew change the phrase from Mark if the concepts are the same? There are several theories about that.

One says that since Matthew was Jewish — the Gospel of Matthew is widely recognized as the most Jewish Gospel — and his audience was likely composed of many Jewish Christians as well, Matthew used “heaven” instead of “God” to avoid mentioning the name of God, a reverential practice found in later rabbinic Judaism.

One problem with this theory, though, is that the practice of avoiding God’s name was not common when Matthew was writing his Gospel. In fact the Mishnah, a 3rd-century CE collection of Jewish oral traditions, acknowledges that pronouncing and writing the name of God was not forbidden in 1st-century Palestine.

In addition, Matthew actually uses the phrase Kingdom of God four times, something he wouldn’t do if concerned with not using God’s name. He also mentions the word “God” fifty-one times in his Gospel. Clearly, he didn’t feel obligated to avoid it.

If Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven are synonymous, then why would Matthew have changed it? Perhaps the two did have different meanings. Let’s look at scholars who believe this.

Kingdom of God vs. Kingdom of Heaven: Different Places

In his article "Why on Earth Use 'Kingdom of Heaven'?: Matthew's Terminology Revisited", Robert Foster argues that there is a difference between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven. He notes, for example, that Matthew refers to God as “Father in heaven” far more than any of the other Gospels. Foster therefore argues that, for Matthew, the Kingdom of God represents the earthly domain which the Pharisees think is coming, while the phrase Kingdom of Heaven signifies a more spiritual realm, which he believes was Jesus’ true ideal.

Joel Marcus generally agrees with this idea. In his article “The Gates of Hades and the Keys of the Kingdom,” Marcus writes that while it’s possible that Matthew simply used the phrase Kingdom of Heaven to avoid using the divine name, it’s more likely, given the phrases from Matthew 6:10 — “Your Kingdom come/Your will be done/On earth as it is in heaven” — that “the Kingdom of Heaven is the projection of God’s heavenly rule into the earthly sphere.”

Another explanation differentiating the two phrases comes from Jonathan Pennington in his book Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew. Pennington notes that Matthew frequently mentions heaven as the domain of God, and earth as the domain of Satan. For example, when the Pharisees suggest that Jesus casts out demons by Satan’s power in Matthew 12, Jesus answers in verse 28 that “if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.” In other words, if Satan is being banished from the earth, then the heavenly Kingdom must be coming.

Perhaps this explains why Matthew uses the phrase Kingdom of Heaven: he was highlighting the difference between a flawless heaven and a contaminated earth which could only be renewed when the heavenly Kingdom came.

Conclusion

The Kingdom of God was probably the basis of Jesus’ teachings. It was a notion based both on the idea of God as a righteous ruler and the apocalyptic belief that God would soon intervene in history to renew the world. He would create a kingdom in which the just were finally rewarded and the unjust punished. In addition, in this new world, the just would have everything they needed.

Despite this, and despite the fact that most scholars believe that the phrase Kingdom of God goes back to the historical Jesus, the author of Matthew chose mostly to use the phrase Kingdom of Heaven instead, leading to some Kingdom of God vs. Kingdom of Heaven discussions. While many scholars believe that these two are simply interchangeable, others think that Matthew used this phrase intentionally and conceived of it as different from the Kingdom of God.

While it’s impossible to know for certain, Matthew may have used the phrase to signal the duality between a perfect heaven and a corrupt earth. By intervening in history, the heavenly kingdom and earthly kingdom would both become the domain of God, filled with both retributive and distributive justice.