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The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 5: Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (since 1700)

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This fifth volume in Jaroslav Pelikan's monumental work, "The Christian Tradition," was likely the hardest for Pelikan to write. After all, following the breakup of Western Christendom due to the revolution wrought by the Protestant Reformers, Christian theology went in so many fragmented directions, how do you choose which to focus on for this volume, which covers the years after 1700 A.D.?

Pelikan can only paint broad brushstrokes in detailing how Christian theology developed in this time frame. He covers all the major Christian theologians of the time, taking pains to ensure a balanced treatment of Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox theologies. He (arbitrarily, but wisely) ends the volume with coverage of the Second Vatican Council, a major event in the history of the universal Church that occurred in the 1960's. As with the other volumes in this series, Pelikan is painstakingly objective; he is careful to simply relate the facts that lead to various theological developments - not give his opinion about them.

But one does get a sense of sadness when reading this volume. Whereas the first three volumes express the mostly unified vision of the Church (albeit already in two factions - East and West - after the first volume), the fourth volume and especially this fifth and final volume reflect the sad reality of the disunity of Christian theology that has occurred, especially since the 16th century. Pelikan ably attempts to show the commonality between the various confessions, but the fact is that the divisions that began almost 500 years ago have been going down more widely divergent paths over the centuries. Even a brilliant mind like Pelikan's cannot unify what is so splintered.

A minor point: one thing I have especially enjoyed about this series is how they include notes. Instead of putting them at the bottom of the page (where the eye can lose its place on the page), or at the end of the book (very inefficient), the notes are located on the left margin, at the same line in which they are used, with no actual notation number. I wish more scholarly books would do this, as it makes it very easy to refer to the sources, yet still be able to have a "flow" when reading. Again, this is a minor point to be sure, but one I wish more publishers would take into consideration.

Pelikan's "The Christian Tradition" is a remarkable series that describes the manner in which Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox christians have interpreted the teaching of Jesus and the manner in which the doctrines of this "one, holy, catholic and apostolic" faith developed and diverged over twenty centuries. Thus, one learns not only what the various christian churches teach today but how and why these teachings differ. While scholarly, "The Christian Tradition" is clearly written and readable. Highly recommended.

This final volume of Pelikan's massive study of Christian belief has much in common with the first. In that introductory work Christian doctrine unfolds in an alien and at times antagonistic cultural setting, though then the adversaries were for the most part "diverse outsiders" so to speak, Jew and Roman. Volumes two through four tend toward intramural Christian in-house struggle. This work at hand again explores the relationship of Christian belief with outsiders, the key difference being that the outsiders, in many cases, were once insiders. Enlightenment Christianity was beginning to embrace agnosticism.

Pelikan begins his work with Goethe's lament, "I hear the message all right; it is only the Faith that I lack." Goethe was no mean theologian; if anything he was symptomatic of a widespread state of ecclesial exhaustion after several centuries of Reformation wrangling. At roughly the same time Goethe was rending his own soul [1833], two young men attended Holy Thursday services at St. Peter's in Rome. Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Henry Newman left with distinctively different blueprints for the future of foundational theology. How such great minds in the churches embraced the dual factors of exhaustion and modern doubt frame the discussion of doctrinal development into the twentieth century.

Pelikan labors mightily to keep his study from undue influences of modernity [Descartes, Newton, Kant, etc.] but this is not always possible, particularly when the battle ground of dogmatics was shifting away from "shouting louder" to [presumably] more rationally certifiable grounds such as history, which enjoyed a remarkable resurgence under Gibbon and Von Harnack, among others. History proved to be a corrective to a great number of somewhat soft denominational claims, but in some respects historical research only heightened an already prevalent cynicism about churches in general.

History would become a major prop for a nascent ecumenical movement later in the period, but in the short term it raised intriguing questions about the authenticity of ancient texts. John Newman, of course, is the example par excellence of a fruitful return to patristic sources, but it was the scholars who dared look to Scripture texts themselves who proved most revolutionary. The first wave of such study, in the heat of historical optimism, attempted a reconstruction of the historical Jesus, a return to the ultimate source, so to speak, in part an attempt to escape what John Milton once decried as the tyranny of churches [denominations.]

This new scriptural criticism would raise or reopen questions of faith, such as the nature of miracles, and this biblical science would itself have to face the searing scrutiny of other modern sciences, including archaeology, linguistics, comparative religions and even eventually psychology. Not surprisingly, while academics toiled away at post-Enlightenment formulations of faith, nearly all Christian communions experienced a renewed interest in religious experience, be it Methodism or Jansenism. Peliken devotes a major chapter, "The Theology of the Heart," to the devotional search for truth and, perhaps more importantly, verifying subjective experience. Modern thought could take believers only so far, as Peliken observes when he comments that all the historical research in the world does not verify that it is "sacred history." [91] Religious experience is a staple of theological study today, but as both Emerson and Newman observed on that particular Holy Thursday, too much of the wrong kind could be dangerous and even flat wrong. I might add here my own surprise that neither William James nor Rudolf Otto are cited in this context, curious omissions.

Meanwhile the dogmatic scholars plowed ahead, even as they faced pious, denominational, and agnostic head winds. One product of their work was very touchy: if dogma was to be examined historically, implied in the process is change; Pelikan's time line includes Hegel and Marx, among others, both of whom promulgated an almost Old Testament dynamic of history. Whiles Descartes and Kant might find satisfaction in a kind of dualism between the scientific mind and the metaphysics of faith, this does not seem to have been a satisfactory answer for most Christian communions--not in the 1800's, anyway--whose leaders labored, awkwardly at times, to square the circle of faith and reason.

The two extremes of this effort were Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox. Catholicism could not deny the past--its own linguistics of faith was the medieval rationalism of Aquinas. And yet the unfolding of nineteenth century society, outlined well in Chapter 4, "The Christian World View," forced the Church to manage its interpretation of flux and place in the world through the declaration of papal infallibility in 1870. The Orthodox tended toward hegemony of the primitive Church experience as definitive for faith; hence its fierce defense of the precise wording of the Nicene Creed, the line in the sand of its sense of doctrinal development.

Protestantism bounced back from detours of the nineteenth century with the new cosmology of Barth and the existential relevance of Bultmann. Clearly the two men are far apart in methodology, but Protestantism was able to buy at least another century with its radical embrace of "Kingdom of God" theology. The fact that Scripture scholars were leading the way made ecumenical venture more possible. Pelikan's final chapter, "The Sobernost of the Body of Christ," begins with the 1920 Lambeth [Anglican] Conference, which in some respects predates the Roman Catholic Vatican II [1962-65] in its call for Church unity. Despite the author's useful and detailed account of the theological and doctrinal discussions of the need for the witness of one Body of Christ, he overlooks one of the premier causes for reflection, two World Wars and the Holocaust..

It goes without saying that Pelikan's multi-volume study is a classic for the Christian student. It is worth underscoring, however, that the author's focus is the development of Christian doctrine--it is not a history of the Church or a theological overview per se. Many issues shaped Church belief that does not appear here. Within its professed goals, however, this series is a treasure for the ages.

The title of this magisterial work on the history of Christian doctrine, "Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture," gives an accurate description of the main theme of the book. Pelikan does not try to survey modern theologies in all its varieties (such goal is impractical for the size of this volume anyway), but he succeeds in this book to give a continuous and meaningful narrative of the struggle between traditional doctrines and modern thinking.

The book has 6 chapters. Chapter one is an introduction to the crisis in doctrines in all three major Christian traditions: Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant. Chapter two addresses the intellectual challenges brought on by the Enlightenment. Chapter three describes the subjective turn of theology (i.e. the turn to make subjective experience the foundation of the Christian religion). Chapter four lays out the shifting understanding of the meaning of traditional doctrines as the various orthodox (or conservative) parties responds to credibility crisis of the Christian faith. Chapter five focuses on the question of the authority to interpret the faith and justification of orthodoxy at the beginning of the 20th century. Chapter six describes how the self-understanding of the churches emerging in the middle of the 20th century, seeing themselves more as witnesses and servants rather than powerful institutions.

Pelikan's erudition is simply stupendous. He studies many now obscure (but popular in their own times) theological handbooks, in Latin, German, Russian etc., that even most professional historians have neither the ability nor the patience to digest. The result is a moving narrative of the three major traditions in its struggle against the skepticism and rationalism of modern culture.

The book is not as exciting as works that concentrate on creative theologians (for e.g. Helmut Thielick, Modern Faith and Thought). The heroes in Pelikan are not the individuals, but the content of the Christian faith. Names and dates are sparse in the main text, as Pelikan focuses on the transformation of doctrines rather than individual persons or events.

For this reason, it is absolutely important to keep the main theme of each chapter or sections clearly in mind as one read Pelikan. Most of my students (in a graduate seminary) find it difficult to keep the whole picture in mind as Pelikan jumps from one author to another in numerous quotations in the text. This book is not suitable for a novice reading on her own. However, for the experienced reader or as a textbook, Pelikan offers a fascinating meta-narrative of modern doctrines that is fascinating and powerful and unavailable anywhere else. Pelikan is truly a historians' historian.

Pelikan's goal was to surpass Adolph Von Harnack's multi-volume "History of Dogma" ("Dogmengeschichte"). I believe he succeeded. This is a very fine work that details theological developments of the modern era after the Protestant Reformation such as Pietism - a religion of the heart that gave birth to modern day Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism; the shock and impact German Higher Criticism had on traditional Protestantism; and Ecumenism. Pelkian discusses the retrieval of the ancient ecumenical consensus inside the Protestant tradition by such figures as the ecumenical Philip Schaff who called for a "Protestant Catholicism" that held on to the liturgy, sacraments and the doctrines of the ancient church as a way to reinvogorate a stagnating Protestantism. Meanwhile John Henry Newman's theory of doctrinal development affected Roman Catholicism and challenged the static notion of doctrine and timeless truths whose effects rippled down to Vatican II, something Pelikan himself considered the most significant event since the Protestant Reformation.

To appreciate this work fully you might have to read all five volumes to see that Pelikan concludes where he began: the idea of an ancient ecumenical consensus epitomized by Vincent of Lerins' question: "What is catholic? That which has been believed, everywhere, always and by everyone." Vincent's canon serves as a leitmotif for Pelikan in these five volumes as he seeks to discover what doctrines have the stamp of universality, antiquity and consent even amidst doctrines that continue to develop and ramify inside a plurality of traditions themselves inside the three great branches of Christendom. In this sense there is a connection between the first volume and this final installment. Scholars expert in particular fields might find fault with any number of generalizations or omissions, but even five volumes are not enough to detail in full the entire story of the development of Christian doctrine since the time of the Apostolic Fathers. Moreover, Pelikan, though still Lutheran at the time of writing, is respectful of all three branches of Christendom. Footnotes on the side of each page make it easy to check his references and assertions. Overall a fascinating conclusion to the history of Christian doctrine as it approached the 21st century. Besides Harnack's "History of Dogma" it is difficult to find a comparable work that is so broad in scope and so eminently readable.

I can do no better than to quote Richard John Neuhaus, editor-in-chief of First Things: "The century's most comprehensive account of Christian teaching from the second century on." It ranked No. 79 on National Review's list of the 100 most influential books of the 20th century, ahead of classics like The Essays of E.B. White, Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and Kenneth Clark's Civilisation.

When ordering books, accurate description, fair price and on time delivery is everything. The book was delivered as described. The price was certainly reasonable and delivery was earlier than promised.