It is a curious feature of the present time that a boom in secular interest in the idea of a life after death seems to be matched by a recession in high level theological interest in that possibility. There is today a wave of popular non-religious concern about death and about a post-mortem existence, expressed in parapsychology, occultism, thanatology, and talk of mediumship, reincarnation, out-of-the-body experiences and the reports of those who have been revived after having been clinically dead. And yet at the same time some of the best Christian thinking today is inclined to deemphasize the idea of the life to come, even to the point of virtually abandoning it as an element in the Christian message. It is true that there is much talk of the future (sometimes with a capital F), and of Christian hope and of the radically eschatological character of the gospel. For example, Jürgen Moltmann has said that “From first to last, and not merely in the epilogue, Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward looking and forward moving. …” But when we read on we find that the hope of which he speaks is, in so far as it has any content, a this-worldly hope and that ‘the life everlasting’ has been reduced to a penumbra of mythic imagery.

What has Paul to do with Quintilian? For a host of scholars this question would answer itself, rhetorically. A stock device, the rhetorical question has long been favored in argument. Even Paul is no exception. “Where is the wise man?” he asks. “Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Cor 1:20). Paul would appear to be dismissing everything his contemporary, Quintilian, stood for. Yet one point remains. As Cicero once wrote of Plato, “it was when making fun of orators that he himself seemed to be the consummate orator.” The following, a rhetorical study of the letter to Philemon, will suggest that Paul too employed basic tactics of persuasion taught and widely practiced in his day.

“Christian Natural Law is the acceptance and reinterpretation according to Christian and ecclesiastical principles of Stoic Natural Law. …” Thus runs Troeltsch's classic and influential formulation of the view that Stoicism forms the “preparation of the gospel” with regard to the law of nature in Christian theology and ethics. Historians of political theory similarly assume that it was the Stoic doctrine of natural law that decisively influenced both the rationalization and universalization of Roman law and medieval political theory.

Josephus dates the publication of his Jewish Antiquities to the 13th year of Domitian's reign and the 56th year of his own life (93/94 C.E.). Because the Autobiography evidently forms an appendix to the Antiquities (see below), many scholars in the 19th and early 20th centuries dated it along with or soon after the Antiquities' publication. A problem with this supposition, however, is that the Autobiography assumes the death of Agrippa II, while the 9th-century ecclesiast Photius apparently places his death in the 3rd year of Trajan (100 C.E.). Thus, with the conflict of testimony, other scholars dated the Autobiography after 100 C.E.

Stories of mortals offending the gods and being punished for their impudence occupy a prominent position in Greek religious tradition. Almost all of the major deities receive some affront, and the manner in which they avenge themselves is a significant, though usually minor, component in defining their nature. In the case of Dionysos, however, the pattern of affront and vengeance occurs too often to be a mere episode in the god's history and instead forms one of the central mythical features by which he is characterized.

The well known passage about the “archives” and the “gospel” in Ignatius’ Letter to the Philadelphians (8.2) is one of the most intriguing glimpses given us of debate in the church early in the second century. Wide agreement about the meaning of the passage seems to have been reached, and the current view may be summarized more or less as follows: Ignatius recalls a conversation that picks up just after he had made a theological point during his visit to Philadelphia (he gives us no direct information on the subject of the discussion). His opponents had replied (according to most commentators) that if they did not find it in the “archives” (that is, the Old Testament), they did not believe it to be in the “gospel.” Ignatius had retorted that Scripture in fact supported him: “It is written” (γέγραπται). But his opponents had answered that his certainty was not well grounded: “That is just the question.” The passage concludes with a statement that may represent not so much what Ignatius said then as what he now regards as an appropriate way of ending such debates. The “archives” (he says) are Jesus Christ; or (as he rephrases it) the “inviolable archives” are Christ's cross, death, resurrection, and the faith that comes through him. If this is what the passage means, it represents a remarkable reliance on the “gospel” and the events of salvation as opposed to the formal authority of the (Old Testament) Scriptures.

To state that the period dominated by events at Canossa was a watershed in the history of ecclesio-political relationships is almost trite. But it is not so commonplace to state that this same period was also a high plateau in the history of liturgical scholarship. For modern students the picture of investiture by ring and staff represents the struggle between Church and State in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, but it should not be overlooked that the tradition of these tangible instruments was a liturgical act also signaling an intensity of concern for the liturgy and its proper performance and interpretation unequaled since the Carolingian age. Thus it comes as a surprise to many students of ecclesio-political theory to find that a majority of the publicists of the age of the Investiture Controversy whose works fill the three fat volumes of the Libelli de lite of the Monumenta Germaniae historica were avid observers of the liturgy. Peter Damian, Humbert of Silva Candida, Bonizo of Sutri, Bernold of Constance, Ranger of Lucca, the Norman Anonymous, Ivo of Chartres, Sigebert of Gembloux, Hildebert of Le Mans, and Honorius “of Autun” all wrote tracts in which aspects of liturgy were described and explained. And while the political ideas of these publicistic worthies have lost their cogency in modern times, their liturgical scholarship still graces the footnotes of many a modern popular exposition of the liturgy.

What do we know about Luther's mother?

According to the biographers, very little. We have “only a very shadowy conception,” Heinrich Boehmer says, in spite of Spalatin's remark that Martin was her “spit and image.” Even Erik Erikson, who is quite ready to offer clinical extrapolations from scant evidence, admits that a “big gap exists here, which only conjecture could fill.”