I sued to have the whole series and I traded it in for lawn furniture. He is dead like the rest of us will be soon enough but made his way toOrthodoxy.

An excellent and commanding work on the development of doctrines within early catholicism from 100-600. The book is rather advanced and presupposes a healthy knowledge of theological concepts and the Greek language. Nevertheless, Pelikan provides a balanced perspective of the challenges that faced the early Christians in their formulations of their beliefs. A great resource. ( )

I'll be honest when I say that I didn't read the whole book and I understood little of what I did read. Some of it was very intruiging, but it is one of those books where you need a dictionary next to you the entire time. ( )

This excellent book has done what I didn't think was possible -- interesting me in Christian doctrinal and theological history. Before reading this, I didn't like the fact that I didn't know much about the intellectual history of the church, but I'd never found anything on the subject that I could get through without either getting lost or bored. This first volume of a five-volume series is a great introduction to the subject for intelligent readers; Pelikan doesn't shy away from using technical terms, but he doesn't assume prior knowledge on the reader's part in doing so.

The best general histories leave you thumbing through the bibliography searching for more depth on the whole range of issues covered; Pelikan's The Christian Tradition has had that effect on me in spades. I studied the secular intellectual history of this period in some depth in high school, but I had never taken much of an interest in church history until Sue and her parents got me three volumes of Pelikan for Christmas. Just the first volume has gotten me very excited.

What's striking about reading the history of doctrine in this period is that many of the heretical notions floating around these days, in both fundamentalist and radical liberal circles, have already been dealt with. There's something unheimlich about skimming a Jerry Falwell column then turning to Pelikan, only to find a denunciation of Falwell's bad theology coming from the mouth of Gregory of Nyssa or St. Augustine. Perhaps if a good grounding in ecclesiastical history were a prerequisite for doing biblical exegesis we'd see less junk theology and more searching for the via media Augustine sees as the path hewing closest to orthodoxy. ( )