Van Ruler's understanding of the kingdom of God is in accord with the Biblical-Reformed understanding of it - which is in essence the salvation history approach outlined above. The other approaches, as outlined above, are guided by ideological presuppositions and fail to do justice to the text of the gospels,2.9 neglecting either the dynamic presence of the kingdom or its future consummation.
In order to do justice to the biblical proclamation the kingdom must be seen as a present reality as well as a future one.
However, in order to prevent being guided by ideological presuppositions, Van Ruler talks of the kingdom only in the terms in which it has been revealed in Scripture. This rules out much speculation - it has not yet been revealed to us what the kingdom of glory is and what we will then be (1 John 3:2).
The kingdom of God is also not an ideal to be strived for or realized by man on earth. The sparseness in the New Testament of all attributive and predicative definitions of the kingdom places a border against all immanent misconceptions of the concept and prevents the kingdom of God from being used as a manageable ideal in this world.2.10 At this point Van Ruler comes forward with a definition of the kingdom, namely that the kingdom of God is in essence soteriological and eschatological.2.11 This definition respects the imminence as well as the transcendence of the kingdom. In order to understand Van Ruler's definition of the kingdom we must first consider the transcendence of the kingdom.2.12