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.”

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.

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.

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.