The last two decades witnessed a boom of eschatology in theological discussions. It emerged mainly from the impact of Jürgen Moltmann's theology of hope. But a recovery of the eschatological concern in systematic theology has been due for some time, since Johannes Weiss' successful thesis of 1892 that Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God was not primarily a program for moral or social action, but had its roots in Jewish apocalypticism and envisaged a cosmic catastrophe that would occur when God in the imminent future would replace this present world by the new creation of his own kingdom without any human ado. Three decades later, in 1922, Karl Barth wrote in the second edition of his commentary on Romans: “A Christianity that does not thoroughly and without remainder consist of eschatology, would be thoroughly and totally devoid of Christ.” Strong words. And yet it proved difficult to reappropriate to modern theology the new exegetical insight concerning the basic importance of eschatology within the framework of Jesus' message and teaching. There was too deep a chasm separating the evolutionary outlook of the modern mind from the otherworldliness of apocalyptic expectations that focused on the imminent and catastrophic end of the present world. Thus it was no accident that Barth and Bultmann recovered the apocalyptic urgency of Jesus' message at the price of stripping it of its temporal prospect of a final future of this world. In 1964, Jürgen Moltmann aptly criticized such a detemporalization of eschatology for removing its very core. But the restoration of the apocalyptic outlook towards future fulfillment in Moltmann's own work turned out to focus more on certain political consequences, which he and his followers derived from the eschatological hope, than on the transcendent content of the biblical hope itself. Concerning the basis of eschatological faith in Moltmann's work, John Hick could pass the somewhat harsh verdict: “that basis is in practice relegated to the periphery of his thought and reduced to a mere uncritical use of biblical mythology” to the effect that “all the problems facing Christian eschatology in the twentieth century are systematically ignored.”

A remarkable phenomenon in African Christianity occurred between about 1912 and 1930 when, mostly out of the ferment of indigenous reaction to Western Christian missions, local “prophets” emerged and founded African Independent Churches. “Independency” is the term employed to characterize this phenomenon which came to embrace both the charismatic prophet figures and the separatist churches they or their followers created. Over six thousand such movements were identified throughout Africa in 1968, with the situation still in considerable flux. By the end of the twentieth century it is estimated that some 350 million Africans will have converted to one form or another of the various types of Christian practice now active on the continent.

Martin Luther's revolutionary insight concerning the location of the event of justification in the “bottom of the heart” contained, as is well known, some ancillary results toward the displacing of external activities—”works”—from a central position in the quest for salvation. One effect of his theology was a radical redistribution of weight in his anthropological understanding, a shifting of focus away from a person's active participation in liturgy and the sacraments, asceticism and good works, and toward the event of justification in the “consciousness,” “depths of the heart,” or “the inmost heart.” Moreover, a new understanding of the psychological situation in which the Gospel can operate involved Luther in new methods for preparing and reinforcing the justification event. This article will examine Luther's description of the psychological situation in which justification occurs; his revised anthropology, especially as it affected his view of the human body; his identification of the ear as the direct access to the “bottom of the heart”; and, finally, the consequences of Luther's anthropology for the understanding of asceticism, death, and the sacraments.

In several passages in the Hebrew Bible, we find similar phrases used to describe the punishment the authors hope the deity will mete out to those who are their enemies. In Psalm 3, the psalmist's situation is described in this way:

In its present position within the literary structure of the Book of Judges, Judg 1:1–2:5 stands as an introduction to those events purported to have transpired following the death of Joshua (1:1a). When it is read within the context of the deuteronomistic history as a whole, however, it is apparent that such cannot be the case, since most of the narrated events in Judg 1:3–36 have already been reported in Joshua 14–19. Thus, the present introduction to the Book of Judges appears to be a secondary and somewhat awkward redactional gloss to the deuteronomic account of the era of the Judges in the period after the initial entry into the land recounted in Joshua 2–12. The separation of Judg 1:1–2:5 is based on the investigations of the literary compilation of the predeuteronomic stories of the “deliverers” and the recognition that Judg 2:6–3:6 serves as the original deuteronomic introduction to this period of Israel's history. But despite the assertions of its secondary literary nature and its numerous parallels with Joshua 14–19, Judg 1:1–36 is generally seen as a collection of miscellaneous fragments of varying dates and varying reliability which presents a partial description of the initial occupation of the land. Judg 1:1–36 stands in distinct contrast to the pan-Israelite view presented in Joshua 2–12 and is thus of historical importance for a reconstruction of the period of the settlement. In general, modern scholarship has separated the introductory section of the Book of Judges from the body of the work it serves to inaugurate in its canonical form and has insisted that this introduction has no immediate or contextual connections with the stories that follow it.

Thirty years ago Siegfried Herrmann published an article wherein he suggested that the account of Solomon's dream in 1 Kgs 3:4–15 (cf. 2 Chr 1:3–13) belonged to the same literary genre as the Egyptian Königsnovelle—propagandistic stories of the king's inauguration, his building projects, and other accomplishments. In particular, Herrmann maintained that Solomon's dream ought to be compared with the dream of Tuth-mose IV, in which the Egyptian prince received divine promise of kingship.

From ancient times it has been averred that the Gnostics derived their basic ideas from the Greek philosophers, especially Pythagoras and Plato. For example, Irenaeus (Adv. haer. 2.14) argued that the Valentinian Gnostics borrowed their doctrines of the pleroma and kenoma from Democritus and Plato. Hippolytus (Ref. 1.11), more systematically, tried to show that the founders of the Gnostic heresies borrowed most of their ideas from Greek philosophy and religion. The Valentinian brand of gnosis, Hippolytus (Ref. 6.21–29) argues, is derived from the philosophy of Pythagoras and Plato. Tertullian (Praesc. 7) claimed that all of the heresies were based on Greek philosophy. Valentinus is stated specifically to be “of the school of Plato.” Plotinus (Enn. 2.9.6), the reputed founder of Neoplatonism, claimed in a famous tract that his doctrinal opponents, whom he did not identify but who were obviously Gnostics, based their doctrines on a misunderstanding of Plato. Porphyry's Life of Plotinus 16 provides us with more information on the Gnostic opponents of Plotinus, and refers to them as αἱρετικοὶ ἐκ τῆς παλαιᾶς ϕιλοσοϕίας (“sectarians from the ancient philosophy,” i.e., Platonism).

Form criticism has enjoyed great success in providing tangible insights into the social life and liturgical practices of Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity, but until now there has not been forthcoming a clear idea of what Jewish and Christian preaching was like before the middle of the second century CE Scholars are generally agreed that we have little, if any, direct evidence of sermons from this period. The sermons in Acts would seem to be excellent sources, but as Alexander Mac-Donald has pointed out, these are almost all missionary sermons or speeches to outsiders, and are therefore of little use in determining the nature of sermons addressed to coreligionists in the synagogue or church. Morton Smith attempted to isolate sermons in the synoptic gospels, but there he admits that the passages adduced—largely collections of sayings—may not constitute the actual form of oral preaching, but instead reflect a consistent pattern of literary sermon reports. As for Jewish sermons, the midrashic collections were edited later than the period in question, and it is generally unwise to extrapolate backward from these texts. Recent attempts to compare rabbinic homiletical forms with NT texts have been strongly criticized.

In the triumph of Christianity after Constantine's victory at the Milvian Bridge, no group has been more assiduously studied than the senatorial aristocracy of the fourth and fifth centuries, the clarissimi and their families, whose initial reluctance to abandon paganism is as clear as their ultimate accommodation to the new religion. An important indication of their Christianization is the number of them who were willing to forego traditional political careers for ecclesiastical office. Ambrose comes immediately to mind as an example of such a senator from the fourth century, and Sidonius Apollinaris from the fifth. With precipitous speed Ambrose resigned the governorship of Aemilia-Liguria to become bishop of Milan, and Sidonius accepted ordination to the see of Clermont in the year after he had been urban prefect at Rome. Because of these senators and some others like them, students of Late Antiquity have been willing to identify many fourth-century bishops as members of the senatorial aristocracy who seemingly chose between two competing forms of vita activa, the Empire and the Church. The issue is not trivial, especially if one believes with Arnaldo Momigliano that “when the choice is offered, when you can choose between being a bishop and being a consul, you are no longer an ancient man, you are a medieval one.” I think that there were few if any such medieval men among the clarissimi of the fourth century. I propose to argue here that when the identification of fourth-century bishops with imperial senators is cross-examined, it seldom carries conviction, and that the episcopal lists of the fourth century contain surprisingly few names from senatorial families.

I invite your attention this morning to a problem in Church History that has thus far been most inadequately addressed by scholars. It is the development of ecclesiastical bureaucracies by Protestant denominations in this country. These bureaucracies are major realities of institutional religion in our day, which our M.Div. students will be dealing with all through their professional careers. Yet as a field for historical investigation, this is an almost entirely neglected subject. Our students may argue at length over theological issues like the doctrine of God; or will study with surprising enthusiasm the christological controversies of the ancient church; or will debate the role of the church in current social issues. In courses in Applied Theology they will talk at length about the local church as community, and the role of the minister as he or she interacts with lay members in the pews. But extraparochial structures are seldom looked at with any care. Their behavior may be criticized when ministerial settlement does not proceed rapidly enough, but the rationale for their existence is not examined. To state it in theological terms, theological analysis has paid little attention to a doctrine of the church that seems to have anything much to say about these institutions, how they came into being and why they have taken the shape and form that they have.

My text from The Author's Apology suggests two reasons for the extraordinary popularity that The Pilgrim's Progress enjoyed for more than two centuries. First, despite its adherence to a rather harsh doctrine of double predestination, which divides the world into the saved and the damned, it is essentially a work of reconciliation, demonstrating the fundamental compatibility of ancient paradigms (“Gospelstrains”) and modern experience (“Novelty”). Second, it invites, even necessitates, the active engagement of its readers, who will enlist their knowledge of the Bible to recognize the “sound and honest Gospel-strains” beneath or behind or within what seems a novel. But that Bunyan felt somewhat ambivalent about this achievement is indicated here, I think, by his choice of the word “seems” to characterize the surface of his book. This ambivalence derives from the author's position midway between the hermeneutical procedures of his chief precursor, Martin Luther, and those of the radical Protestants with whom he had come in contact from the time that he experienced his conversion.

Every student of Christianity learns how the Protestant Reformation wrested the bible from the clutches of priests and monks. Luther's insistence on scripture's preeminent authority, the spate of vernacular translations, and the invention of movable type all combined to draw literate laypeople to the biblical texts. Once the clerical monoply was broken, Christianity entered a new phase of its history.

In times of national crisis, do scholars react more nobly than the man on the street? And, in particular, what about religious academiciansmen revered for their spiritual as well as intellectual insight? In time of war, are they able to rise au-dessus de la melée and maintain a dispassionate judgment, or do they descend into the marketplace and parrot the platitudes of the popular press.

When on any occasion his father engaged in an argument with somebody … [Johannes Climacus] was all ears. … His father always allowed his opponent to state his whole case, and then would ask him very carefully whether he had anything more to say before he began his reply. … The father's rejoinder would follow, and lo! in a trice everything would be changed. How this happened remained a riddle to J. C. But his soul was delighted by such a drama. The opponent would speak again, and J. C. would be still more attentive, so that he should miss nothing. … [T]he father … would then perorate, and J. C. could almost hear his heart beat, so impatiently did he await what should happen.

The Western Messenger (1835–41) has often been given honorable mention in American literary history and has some reputation as one of the best-written magazines to appear in the early American West. Many scholars who are at all familiar with the Messenger associate it primarily with American Transcendentalism and often mention it as a precursor of the Dial. Indeed, it did defend the right of Ralph Waldo Emerson and several others to express the “New Views,” and a few articles which did so were excerpted by Perry Miller for his authoritative anthology The Transcendentalists. However, the material appearing in its five full years of monthly publication cannot so easily be reduced to a single theme. The magazine's original intention was to serve as an organ of Unitarian missionizing, and several of its most supportive writers, wary of the claims of Transcendentalism, continued to contribute articles that emphasized the scriptural basis for a Unitarian interpretation of Christianity. This persistent identification with traditional Unitarianism, alongside support for an open-minded examination of the ideas being put forward by Emerson, William Henry Furness, George Ripley, and Bronson Alcott, illustrates how Transcendentalist thought could be incorporated into a Unitarian forum without the recrimination associated with Andrews Norton's attack on Emerson's Divinity School Address. The denomination, even in its fledgling Western development, was far more diverse and dynamic than has usually been appreciated.

On a foggy evening in the spring of 1906, nine days before the San Francisco earthquake, several black saints gathered in a small house in Los Angeles to seek the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Before the night was over, a frightened child ran from the house to tell a neighbor that the people inside were singing and shouting in strange languages.Several days later the group moved to an abandoned warehouse on Azusa Street in a run-down section of the city. Soon they were discovered by a Los Angeles Times reporter. The “night is made hideous … by the howlings of the worshippers,” he wrote. “The devotees of the weird doctrine practice the most fanatical rites, preach the wildest theories and work themselves into a state of mad excitement.”

During 1933 and 1934 the German Protestant church produced a “high tide” of confessions and ecclesiastical pronouncements. Among these the well-known Barmen Declaration is of prime importance. The first of these confessions, the Confession of Altona of January 1933, however, is hardly known at all, and no English translation has ever been published.