Books in the Jaroslav Pelikan Reprint series

Endorsements:""This is the ultimate bedside book. Replete with sinuous, compact discussions of first and last things--sin, faith, grace, and John Henry Newman--it reflects Jaroslav Pelikan''s lifelong commitment to what he calls ''the great new fact of Christianity'' . . . This book works like a tuning fork for the mind. With it, the harmony of Pelikan''s thought and life has itself become part of the great Christian tradition.""--Christian Science Monitor""This is a rewarding and exciting book from beginning to end. It shows the reflection of a master of his work, where the work continually reveals the author''s enjoyment, both exemplifying and satisfying Horatio''s utile dulci. Packed with knowledge and insight, it informs, stimulates, and delights. It also corrects, or at least reproves, some vulgar errors . . . A valuable book.""--Roland M. Frye""I found Pelikan''s thinking fascinating, elegant, informative, scholarly, and deeply personal and attractive . . . There is always some insight to gain. [Pelikan''s book] provides a course in nearly the whole of Christian faith and history--in terms of just one person''s journey.""--Robert B. Coote, Pacific Theological Review""Jaroslav Pelikan ranged so widely in his exploration of historic Christian traditions, and his work probed so deeply, that it is a real boon to see Wipf and Stock bringing some of his books back into print. They were excellent reading when they first appeared; they remain excellent reading today.""--Mark A. Noll, McAnaney Professor of History, University of Notre Dame

Description:This remarkable account by an award-winning historian details the responses to the fall of Rome by the church fathers, who set the pattern for interpreting this momentous event for all succeeding centuries.""To speak about the decline and fall of the Roman empire as ''the social triumph of the ancient church'' is to look at the events associated with that ''memorable revolution'' . . . through the eyes of the victors,"" writes the author. ""The thoroughness of the victors has often seen to it that there remains no other way for us to view those events. Not only are we--for this period as for so many others throughout most of human history--denied access to the mind of the common people as they watched this history in the making, such that we are forced to depend on the documents provided by various of the elites of the fourth and fifth centuries; but among the documents of those elites, only some have been permitted to survive.""Jerome, Christian humanist and translator of the Bible into Latin, represents an apocalyptic view of the crisis. Eusebius, court theologian and founder of church history, saw the fall of Rome as the sign of a new order, the ""Christian Empire."" And Augustine, fountainhead of much of Western thought during the millennium that followed, used it as the basis for his City of God.The unifying theme in this historical panorama is the final revisionist view of the fall by its greatest historian, Edward Gibbon. All of these interpretations of the fall of Rome continue to live today and deeply influence our understanding of Western culture.

Description:Change is a universal phenomenon that commands the attention of the historian. For Christian theology, change raises special difficulties. How are we to reconcile the notion of the revelation of an unchanging God, who is abiding truth, with the notion of the pervading mutability of all human affairs? This problem, which is as old as religion, is intensified by the Christian belief in the fullness and finality of the revelation made through Jesus Christ.Professor Pelikan begins his study of historical theology with this basic problem and traces the origins of the difficulties that inevitably follow upon the admission of the possibility of change. His investigations lead him to critically examine the dogmatic solution of Vincent of Lerins, the later dialectical interpretation of Abelard, the approach of Thomas Aquinas, and finally, the nineteenth century''s Adolf von Harnack to propose a working definition of Christian doctrine and of the task of the historical theologian.Pelikan''s work is a perceptive and penetrating study of the interaction of history and theology. Theology must be historical because man is historical. To neglect history, or worse still, to renounce it, is to deny man and theology their common future. Historical Theology is a worthy introduction to a task that must continually seek to weld past, present, and future into a living whole.