Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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88 of 90 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Part One in an Important and Monumental Series, January 27, 2003
This book is probably, page for page, the most scholarly and readable of all the history of doctrine books about the early Church (although Kelley's "Early Christian Doctrines" comes close). Pelikan's style is concise, but also detailed, in that on every page he provides references for just about every important thing he says. Pelikan has a take on doctrine that is shared by most scholars and clergy, which is that doctrine developed, and that what the apostles believed was less defined and cloudier than what the later Church believed. In other words, from studying the Bible and the early writers, we see that their formulations and emphases often differed from later generations. For instance, the doctrine of original sin is rarely spoken of before Augustine, and early creeds were less clear about the Son's full equality with the Father, even though they called the Son "God." For those unfamiliar with Christian history, to see important doctrines develop might be troubling, although as many Christians already know, the development and clarification of a doctrine does not make it less true. Pelikan covers all of the major figures and controversies, looking at orthodox and heretic arguments. He explains why orthodox doctrine prevailed, geographically, politically, and philosophically. The major chapters are, 1. Preparatio Evangelica, 2. Outside the Mainstream. 3. Faith of the Catholic Church, 4. Mystery of the Trinity, 5. Person of the God-Man, 6. Nature and Grace, and 7. Orthodox Consensus. Each is then broken down to several sub-chapters. Do not expect a Biblical defense of the Trinity or any other doctrine from this book. Pelikan clearly explains that catholic belief came after a long and hard consideration of biblical concepts, with many dissenters who interpreted the Bible differently. The chapter on the Trinity for instance focuses on the varying ways of interpreting the relationship of Jesus to the Father. This includes heretic doctrines of Modalism, and Adoptianism, as well as proto-orthodox Logos-Theology, and the Nicene Trinity. While he explains the views of those outside the catholic mainstream, even often arguing on their behalf, he (and most scholars outside of a few in the 1800s) does not believe that the heretical groups throughout history agreed on doctrine and practice (they did not) and formed an underground church.
Overall, this is a fine book that I use as a reference quite often. His whole series, of which this is the first, is very useful. Another reviewer below, Alan Wong, provides the ISBN numbers of the other books. For anyone wanting to dig deeper in his or her study of Christian doctrine and history, I would suggest this book. It is not for beginners though. He often uses Greek and Latin terms, as well as other "churchy" terms that are probably unfamiliar to most people. Chadwick's "The Early Church" and Reader's Digest's "After Jesus," which is co-edited by Pelikan, are the best places to start. However, after those have intrigued you, move on to Pelikan and you won't be disappointed.
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29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a 'must have' reference work ..., November 2, 2000
The general academic consensus on Pelikan's magisterial and encyclopedic work is that it has become the Harnack of the 20th century. The comparision to Harnack's _History of Dogma_ is not a denigration of either of these two works. It simply states the monumental importance of this work.Pelikan writes in a readable and engaging style. He has clearly grasped all the subtleties in the development of the "Christian Tradition" (his oft-quoted phrase is that tradition is the living faith of the dead but traditionalism is the dead faith of the living), but yet he can summarize the essence of a position in one sentence. The real meat of this set is the references in the margin, where one can go directly to the sources. Anyone studying theology must have this on their bookshelf. As a public service, here are the ISBN numbers so that one can purchase the entire set ... ISBN v1 0226653714 v2 0226653730 v3 0226653757 v4 0226653773 v5 0226653803
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A monument of scholarship, September 27, 2006
Volume 1 of Dr. Pelikan's 5 volume magnum opus is a breathtaking panorama of the development of Christian doctrine over the course of its first 6 centuries. Dr. Pelikan tells us what the infant Church taught, and the fascinating process by which it came to those conclusions, introducing us to the specific arguments of the various positions regarding issues like the relationship of the Old Covenant to the New, the Trinity, the nature of Christ, the question of Christian authority, predestination, grace, salvation, etc. This book is a sumptuous feast for the theologically-oriented mind and an intellectual achievement for the ages.
Two words in the book's subtitle should be emphasized to clarify the book's purpose; firstly, that this is a study of Christian_doctrine_, not a history of Christianity per se. The mention of dates and years is rare, and indeed, this book seems to operate in a world outside of time, where spiritual ideas are debated by disembodied theologians unmoored from any earthly context. As a history-buff, that lack of chronological perspective sometimes grates, but I came to accept that this is a historical study of ideas, not events, and the book is made stronger by its single-minded focus on that area. Secondly, the starting point of this book that has to be accepted is that the basics of Christian doctrine have come down to us by a_process_of revelation, development, evolution, and scholarly dialectics, not from the self-exegesis of Scripture Alone. Pelikan himself once sarcastically asked what human being could sit in a room with the New Testament and come up with the idea of the Trinity without the benefit of Tradition. That kind of thinking is no obstacle to those sectors of Christianity which believe that the Holy Spirit works through properly appointed authority (Eph 4:11-14) to ensure that Christ's one Church will never err in doctrine, but it might be a stumbling block to those Christians (particularly religiously anarchic Americans) who think that the whole of Christian doctrine, history and devotion is, and was intended to be, contained in and clearly spelled out in the pages of the New Testament, which fell from the sky on Good Friday 33 A.D. leather-bound, annotated and translated into the King James Version, ready-made to be individually interpreted anew by every generation of average Joe-Christians. As a previous reviewer said, this book is an antidote for ahistorical Christians.
Unlike his predecessor Harnack, Pelikan doesn't take the historical development of doctrine as a justification for religious relativism. Pelikan always approached his subject from the perspective of a believer, and even though he wrote this book as a Lutheran and later converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, I-as a Catholic- find no cause for any accusation of sectarian bias in his work. This is a work of impartial scholarship through and through, on a subject which is ripe for the insertion of denominational proclivities. My criticisms are minor: as far as I can recall, this book barely touched on the questions of Biblical canon and pre- 5th century Roman claims of primacy, two subjects I would describe as "doctrinal" but of which Dr. Pelikan apparently disagreed. In his section on infant baptism, he apparently neglected the testimony of St. Polycarp (died ca 155-167- a self-described "Christian for 86 years") as an additional buttress to the tradition. And there are stray sentences which could have been rendered with less theological opacity. But these are minor. This is the standard reference work for any serious student of Christianity, and will likely remain so for many decades to come.
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