Both the Bible and the Constitution have the status of "Great Code," but each of these important texts is controversial as well as enigmatic. They are asked to speak to situations that their authors could not have anticipated on their own. In this book, one of our greatest religious historians brings his vast knowledge of the history of biblical interpretation to bear on the question of constitutional interpretation. Jaroslav Pelikan compares the methods by which the official interpreters of the Bible and the Constitution--the Christian Church and the Supreme Court, respectively--have approached the necessity of interpreting, and reinterpreting, their important texts. In spite of obvious differences, both texts require close, word-by-word exegesis, an awareness of opinions that have gone before, and a willingness to ask new questions of old codes, Pelikan observes. He probes for answers to the question of what makes something authentically "constitutional" or "biblical," and he demonstrates how an understanding of either biblical interpretation or constitutional interpretation can illuminate the other in important ways.

It is equally true that the Reformation was inspired and defined by the Bible and that the Bible was reshaped by the intellectual, political, and cultural forces of the Reformation. In this book, a distinguished scholar-whose contributions to the field of religious studies have won him wide renown-explores this relationship, examining both the role of the Bible in the Reformation and the effect of the Reformation on the text of the Bible, Biblical studies, preaching and exegesis, and European culture in general. Jaroslav Pelikan begins by discussing the philological foundations of the "reformation" of the Biblical text, focusing on the revival of Greek and Hebrew language study and the important contributions to textual criticism by humanist scholars. He then examines the changing patterns of interpretation and communication of the Biblical text, the proliferation of vernacular versions of scripture and their impact on various national cultures, and the impact of the Reformation Bible on art, music, and literature of the period. The book is richly illustrated with examples of early printed editions of Bibles, commentaries, sermons, vernacular translations, and other works with Biblical themes, all of which are identified and discussed. The book serves as the catalog for a major exhibition of early Bibles and Reformation texts that has been organized at Bridwell Library, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, and will also be shown at the Yale Center for British Art, the Houghton Library and the Widener Library at Harvard University, and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University. Copublished with the Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University

In this volume, an internationally renowned historian of Christian doctrine offers a theological reading of Acts. Now in paper.
" A] significant commentary. . . . Pelikan asks big questions: what is sin? what were the earliest creeds? what is the nature of apostleship? He is sensitive to nuances of Greek but not obsessed by them. As such, this book will be helpful to preachers and, to a lesser extent, general readers who are sometimes flummoxed by more specialized and technical biblical commentaries."
--"Publishers Weekly
New series volumes will continue to release in cloth, but as older volumes reprint, they will release in paper."

In this five-volume opus--now available in its entirety in paperback--Pelikan traces the development of Christian doctrine from the first century to the twentieth.
"Pelikan's "The Christian Tradition" [is] a series for which they must have coined words like 'magisterial'."--Martin Marty, "Commonweal"

This penultimate volume in Pelikan's acclaimed history of Christian doctrine--winner with Volume 3 of the Medieval Academy's prestigious Haskins Medal--encompasses the Reformation and the developments that led to it.
"Only in America, and in this case from a Lutheran scholar, could we expect an examination so lacking in parti pris, a survey so perceptive, so free--and, one must say, the result of so much immense labor, so rewardingly presented."--John M. Todd, "New York Times Book Review"
"Never wasting a word or losing a plot line, Pelikan builds on an array of sources that few in our era have the linguistic skill, genius or ambition to master."--Martin E. Marty, "America"
"The use of both primary materials and secondary sources is impressive, and yet it is not too formidable for the intelligent layman."--William S. Barker, "Eternity "

The line that separated Eastern Christendom from Western on the medieval map is similar to the "iron curtain" of recent times. Linguistic barriers, political divisions, and liturgical differences combined to isolate the two cultures from each other. Except for such episodes as the schism between East and West or the Crusades, the development of non-Western Christendom has been largely ignored by church historians. In "The Spirit of Eastern Christendom," Jaroslav Pelikan explains the divisions between Eastern and Western Christendom, and identifies and describes the development of the distinctive forms taken by Christian doctrine in its Greek, Syriac, and early Slavic expression.
"It is a pleasure to salute this masterpiece of exposition. . . . The book flows like a great river, slipping easily past landscapes of the utmost diversity--the great Christological controversies of the seventh century, the debate on icons in the eighth and ninth, attitudes to Jews, to Muslims, to the dualistic heresies of the high Middle Ages, to the post-Reformation churches of Western Europe. . . . His book succeeds in being a study of the Eastern Christian religion as a whole."--Peter Brown and Sabine MacCormack, "New York Review of Books"
"The second volume of Professor Pelikan's monumental work on The Christian Tradition is the most comprehensive historical treatment of Eastern Christian thought from 600 to 1700, written in recent years. . . . Pelikan's reinterpretation is a major scholarly and ecumenical event."--John Meyendorff
"Displays the same mastery of ancient and modern theological literature, the same penetrating analytical clarity and balanced presentation of conflicting contentions, that made its predecessor such an intellectual treat."--"Virgina Quarterly Review
"

Immediately after the Gospels, the New Testament takes up the history of the early Christian Church, describing the works of the twelve disciples, and introducing Paul, the man whose influence on the history of Christianity is beyond calculation. Teacher, preacher, conciliator, diplomat, theologian, rule giver, consoler, and martyr, his life and writings became foundations for Christianity. Paul inspired a vast, serious, and intelligent literature that seeks to recapture his meaning, his thinking, and his purpose.

In his letters to early Christian communities, Paul gave much practical advice about organization and orthodoxy. These treated the early Christian communities as something more than a group of people who believed in the same faith: they were people bound together by a common spirit unknown before. The significance of that common spirit occupied the greatest of Christian theologians from Athanasius and Augustine through Luther and Calvin.

In "The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle" Albert Schweitzer goes against Luther and the Protestant tradition to look at what Paul actually writes in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians: an emphasis upon the personal experience of the believer with the divine. Paul's mysticism was not like the mysticism elsewhere described as a soul being at one with God. In the mysticism he felt and encouraged, there is no loss of self but an enriching of it; no erasure of time or place but a comprehension of how time and place fit within the eternal. Schweitzer writes that Paul's mysticism is especially profound, liberating, and precise. Typical of Schweitzer, he introduces readers to his point of view at once, then describes in detail how he came to it, its scholarly antecedents, what its implications are, what objections have been raised, and why all of this matters. To students of the New Testament, this book opens up Paul by presenting him as offering an entirely new kind of mysticism, necessarily and exclusively Christian.

"There is at least one other point that Albert Schweitzer scores here... The hard-won recognition that divine authority and human freedom ultimately cannot be in conflict must never be taken for granted, and the irony that the thought of Paul has repeatedly been invoked to undo that recognition truly does make this insight one of 'the permanent elements.'"--from the Introduction

In 726 the Byzantine emperor, Leo III, issued an edict that all religious images in the empire were to be destroyed, a directive that was later endorsed by a synod of the Church in 753 under his son, Constantine V. If the policy of Iconoclasm had succeeded, the entire history of Christian art--and of the Christian church, at least in the East--would have been altered.

Iconoclasm was defeated--by Byzantine politics, by popular revolts, by monastic piety, and, most fundamentally of all, by theology, just as it had been theology that the opponents of images had used to justify their actions. Analyzing an intriguing chapter in the history of ideas, the renowned scholar Jaroslav Pelikan shows how a faith that began by attacking the worship of images ended first in permitting and then in commanding it.

Pelikan charts the theological defense of icons during the Iconoclastic controversies of the eighth and ninth centuries, whose high point came in A.D. 787, when the Second Council of Nicaea restored the cult of images in the church. He demonstrates how the dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation eventually provided the basic rationale for images: because the invisible God had become human and therefore personally visible in Jesus Christ, it became permissible to make images of that Image. And because not only the human nature of Christ, but that of his Mother had been transformed by the Incarnation, she, too, could be "iconized," together with all the other saints and angels.

The iconographic "text" of the book is provided by one of the very few surviving icons from the period before Iconoclasm, the Egyptian tapestry Icon of the Virgin now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Other icons serve to illustrate the theological argument, just as the theological argument serves to explain the icons.

In a new foreword, Judith Herrin discusses the enduring importance of the book, provides a brief biography of Pelikan, and discusses how later scholars have built on his work.

A magnificent history of doctrine.--New York Review of Books
In this volume Jaroslav Pelikan continues the splendid work he has done thus far in his projected five-volume history of the development of Christian doctrine, defined as 'what the Church believes, teaches, and confesses on the basis of the word of God.' The entire work will become an indispensable resource not only for the history of doctrine but also for its reformulation today. Copious documentation in the margins and careful indexing add to its immense usefulness.--E. Glenn Hinson, Christian Century
This book is based on a most meticulous examination of medieval authorities and the growth of medieval theology is essentially told in their own words. What is more important, however, then the astounding number of primary sources the author has consulted or his sovereign familiarity with modern studies on his subject, is his ability to discern form and direction in the bewildering growth of medieval Christian doctrine, and, by thoughtful emphasis and selection, to show the pattern of that development in a lucid and persuasive narrative. No one interested in the history of Christianity or theology and no medievalist, whatever the field of specialization, will be able to ignore this magnificent synthesis.--Bernhard W. Scholz, History
The series is obviously the indispensable text for graduate theological study in the development of doctrine, and an important reference for scholars of religious and intellectual history as well. . . . Professor Pelikan's series marks a significant departure, and in him we have at last a master teacher.--Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle, Commonweal

The Virgin Mary has been an inspiration to more people than any other woman who ever lived. For Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims, for artists, musicians, and writers, and for women and men everywhere she has shown many faces and personified a variety of virtues. In this important book, a world-renowned scholar who is the author of numerous books-including the best-selling Jesus Through the Centuries-tells how Mary has been depicted and venerated through the ages. Jaroslav Pelikan examines the biblical portrait of Mary, analyzing both the New and Old Testaments to see how the bits of information provided about her were expanded into a full-blown doctrine. He explores the view of Mary in late antiquity, where the differences between Mary, the mother of Christ, and Eve, the "mother of all living," provided positive and negative symbols of women. He discusses how the Eastern church commemorated Mary and how she was portrayed in the Holy Qur'an of Islam. He explains how the paradox of Mary as Virgin Mother shaped the paradoxical Catholic view of sexuality and how Reformation rejection of the worship of Mary allowed her to be a model of faith for Protestants. He considers also her role in political and social history. He analyzes the place of Mary in literature-from Dante, Spenser, and Milton to Wordsworth, George Eliot, and Goethe-as well as in music and art, and he describes the miraculous apparitions of Mary that have been experienced by the common people. Was Mary human or divine? Should she be revered for her humility or her strength? What is her place in heaven? Whatever our answers to these questions, Mary remains a symbol of hope and solace, a woman, says Pelikan, for all seasons and all reasons.

One of the world's leading scholars offers unique insights into the history and significance of Christian creeds Eminent theologian Jaroslav Pelikan has been translating, editing, and studying the Christian creeds and confessions of faith for sixty years. This book is the historical and theological distillation of that work. In Credo, Pelikan addresses essential questions about the Christian tradition: the origins of creeds; their function; their political role; how they relate to Christian institutions, worship, and service; and how they help to explain the major divisions of the Christian church and of Christian history. Credo standsas an independent reference work devoted to the subject of what creeds and confessions are and what their role in history has been. It is also the first of the four volumes of Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, edited by Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss.

"Reading these books one is brought yet again to hope that our society as a whole will be seriously drawn to a more systematic study of the deeper aspects of man's life..." A.M. Allchin Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works translation by Colm Luibheid forward, notes, and translation collaboration by Paul Rorem preface by Rene Roques introductions by Jaroslav Pelikan, Jean Leclercq, and Karlfried Froehlich "Indeed the inscrutable One is out of the reach of every rational process. Nor can any words come up to the inexpressible Good, this One, this Source of all unity, this supra existent Being. Mind beyond mind, word beyond speech, it is gathered up by no discourse, by no intuition, by no name." Pseudo-Dionysius (5th or 6th century) There are few figures in the history of Western Spirituality who are more enigmatic than the fifth or sixth-century writer known as the Pseudo-Dionysius. The real identity of the person who chose to write under the pseudonym of Dionysius the Areopagite is unknown. Even the exact dates of his writings have never been determined. Moreover the texts themselves, though relatively short, are at points seemingly impenetrable and have mystified readers over the centuries. Yet the influence of this shadowy figure on broad range of mystical writers from the early Middle Ages on is readily discernible. His formulation of a method of negative theology that stresses the impotence of humans' attempt to penetrate the "cloud of unknowing" is famous, as is his meditation on the divine names. Despite his influence, relatively few attempts have been made to translate the entire corpus of his written into English. Here in one volume are collected all of the Pseudo-Dionysius's works. Each has been translated from the Migne edition, with reference to the forthcoming Goettingen critical edition of A.M. Ritter, G. Heil, and B. Suchla. To present these works to the English-speaking public, an outstanding team of six research scholars has been assembled. The lucid translation of Colm Luibheid has been augmented by Paul Rorem's notes and textual collaboration. The reader is presented a rich and varied examination of the main themes of Dionysian spirituality by Rene Roques, an incisive discussion of the original questions of the authenticity and alleged heresies in the Dionysian corpus by Jaroslav Pelikan, a comprehensive tracing Dionysius'sinfluence on medieval authors by Jean Leclercq, and a survey by Karlfried Froehlich of the reception given the corpus by Humanists and sixteenth-century Reformers.

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.

In this erudite and beautifully written book, an eminent scholar meditates on the theological implications of Goethe's Faust. Jaroslav Pelikan reflects on Goethe's statement that he was a pantheist when it came to science, a polytheist in art, and a monotheist in ethics, and he uses it for the first time to analyze Faust's development as a theologian. By so doing, Pelikan enables us to see Goethe's masterpiece in a surprising new light. Pelikan begins by discussing Faust's role as natural scientist or pantheist. He examines Faust's disenchantment with traditional knowledge, considers his interests in geology, oceanography, and optics, and analyzes his perception of nature as a realm inspirited throughout by a single unifying Power. Pelikan next follows Faust on his journeys to the two Walpurgis Nights, where he shows how Faust reveals his delight in the polytheistic extravaganzas of Germanic and especially of Greek mythology. Finally Pelikan describes the operatic finale of the book, where Faust's spirit is drawn upward to salvation by the Eternal Feminine, and he argues that this marks Faust's evolution into moral philosopher and monotheist. Pelikan's analysis thus reveals thematic unities and a dialectical development of Faust's character that have been unnoticed heretofore.

The momentous encounter between Christian thought and Greek philosophy reached a high point in fourth-century Byzantium, and the principal actors were four Greek-speaking Christian thinkers whose collective influence on the Eastern Church was comparable to that of Augustine on Western Latin Christendom. In this erudite and informative book, a distinguished scholar provides the first coherent account of the lives and writings of these so-called Cappadocians (named for a region in what is now eastern Turkey), showing how they managed to be Greek and Christian at the same time. Jaroslav Pelikan describes the four Cappadocians-Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Macrina, sister and teacher of the last two-who were trained in Classical culture, philosophy, and rhetoric but who were also defenders and expositors of Christian orthodoxy. On one issue of faith and life after another-the nature of religious language, the ways of knowing, the existence of God, the universe as cosmos, time, and space, free will and immortality, the nature of the good life, the purpose of the universe-they challenged and debated the validity of the Greek philosophical tradition in interpreting Scripture. Because the way they resolved these issues became the very definition of normative Christian belief, says Pelikan, their system is still a key to our understanding not only of Christianity's diverse religious traditions but also of its intellectual and philosophical traditions. This book is based on the prestigious Gifford Lectures, presented by Jaroslav Pelikan at the University of Aberdeen in 1992 and 1993.

With a new foreword and bibliography by Jaroslav Pelikan Bainton presents the many strands that made up the Reformation in a single, brilliantly coherent account. He discusses the background for Luther's irreparable breach with the Church and its ramifications for 16th Century Europe, giving thorough accounts of the Diet of Worms, the institution of the Holy Commonwealth of Geneva, Henry VIII's break with Rome, and William the Silent's struggle for Dutch independence. "Would that we had more history like this, so well-proportioned in its emphasis, and so pertinent to the understanding of history now in the making." --The Annals of the American Academy

The problem of change has assumed great prominence in much of the current ferment in theology, and many of the issues in question can best be interpreted as relating to the validity and limits of doctrinal development. The questions cannot be faced constructively, however, until the development of doctrine has been clearly charted, a historical as well as a theological assignment. In this unique introductory survey-more modest in scope but more scholarly in method than Cardinal Newman's great programmatic essay of 1845-Mr. Pelikan presents three case histories of the particular doctrines that have crucial points of division among Christians. His cogent analyses of Cyprian on Original Sin, Athanasius on the Virgin Mary, and Hilary on the Holy Spirit demonstrate the interaction between the sacramental life of the Church and the intellectual work of the theologian that consistently marked the development of doctrine by the early Fathers. Thus they clarify some central aspects of the continuing theological and ecumenical debates. Mr. Pelikan, Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale University, is the author of many books and articles, including a forthcoming full-scale history of the development of doctrine.

The great early church and Luther scholar, Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan, in this one of his earliest published works, offers in this volume an analysis of the relationship between philosophical thought and Lutheran theology since the time of the Reformation.