I am currently in the midst of several pieces on the Kingship of Christ. In conducting a bit of research beyond the “usual sources,” I took another look at Erik Peterson’s 1936 essay, “Christ as Imperator,” which can be found in his Theological Tractates (Stanford Univ. Press 2011), pgs. 143-50. While the social dimension of Christ’s kingship is rightly stressed by traditional Catholics, it should never come at the cost of its eschatological dimension. Here is Peterson:
Then we shall understand how Christ can be praised in hymn as king of the world to come, but how even now majesty and power are ascribed to him in the acclamations of the Church, how the historical and political world-picture of this Aeon, which makes the princeps [the leader] the executor of Tyche [Fortune] is overcome in bloody conflict by the martyrs, how the Eucharistic banquet that the Church celebrates is not only a mysterium but already has something of the eschatological banquet in it, which the Lord will celebrate with his own upon his return (Luke 19:30).
