Credo
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Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition
Jaroslav Pelikan
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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.
Jaroslav Pelikan is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and the first John W. Kluge Scholar at the Library of Congress. During his distinguished career he has received dozens of honors and awards, including 42 honorary degrees. He is the author of nearly forty books and the editor of scores of others.
"The sweep of the material presented is truly magnificent. Jaroslav Pelikan’s companion volume, Credo, elevates the project from a work of reference, immensely valuable in itself, to an original contribution on the themes, forms and functions of Christian confessions of faith.”—Geoffrey Wainwright, Cushman Professor of Christian Theology, Duke University
“Creeds and Confessions of Faith supercedes Philip Schaff’s great multi-volume collection of creeds first published in 1870. There is no doubt that this new capacious assemblage will be the standard resource for the next century and an indispensable tool for serious theological research. The companion volume, Credo, proves once again—if proof were needed—why Jaroslav Pelikan, learned, passionate, and literate, is the premier historical theologian of our time.”—Lawrence S. Cunningham, John A. O’Brien Professor of Theology, The University of Notre Dame
"As might be expected, this is a wholly magisterial survey of an immense quantity of disparate material. I can think of no other work that remotely approaches what this sets out to do, and I have no doubt at all that it will become one of the indispensable works of reference for any theological scholar."—Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
"Jaroslav Pelikan has written a work which is likely to become a—perhaps the—major resource on the development of Christian creeds and confessions for both scholars and ecumenists alike."—The Right Reverend Geoffrey Rowell, Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe
“Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss’s Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, with Professor Pelikan’s Credo, far exceeds our expectations. The exhaustive collection of texts with erudite commentaries replaces all works of its kind. These are books to be used.”—Thomas Hopko, Dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary
“A scholar and teacher of the creeds and their significance for nearly 50 years, Pelikan is devoted to the creedal tradition, as evidenced in this work’s thoroughness and erudition. An expansive and fascinating array of topics is covered under four broad headings (‘Definition’, ‘Genesis,’ ‘Authority,’ ‘History’), and every conceivable perspective and line of discussion appears to be examined. The volume can be consulted as a comprehensive reference text or dived into at any number of points. . . . Essential.”—Choice
"A defense not only of the volumes it introduces . . . but also of [Pelikan’s] whole remarkable career, dedicated as it has been to the study of what Christians down the centuries have believed, taught and confessed. He writes, as always, with magisterial command of all possible sources in all known languages and a gift for the occasional elegant epigram derived in part, I suspect, from a lifetime of reading Edward Gibbon for fun."—William C. Placher, Christian Century
“[Pelikan’s] outstanding scholarship puts in perspective the development of the many creeds and confessions that followed the Nicene Creed of 325 or the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381.”—Michael Orsi, FCS Quarterly
“A substantive study of the role of creeds, statements of faith, confessions, and other related material over the whole history of Christianity. . . . A work of keen insight, great learning, and ecumenical generosity, written out of deep devotion to the ‘one holy catholic and apostolic Church’ confessed in the Nicene Creed. . . . Pelikan has designed a particularly useful index to creeds and confessions that will endear him to serious students of the history of Christian thought.”—Robert Louis Wilken, First Things
"A remarkable resource. . . . [A] magnificent work."—Iain S. Maclean, Lutheran Quarterly
“Both Pelikan and Yale University Press have done the Christian world an immense favor in the release of this fine volume. . . . Pelikan, a masterful historian of theology, places the creeds and confessions within their historical milieu and shows them as important indexes of the thinking of various ages of human thought. This work is . . . unquestionably complete. The weaving of the creedal with the historical is unique to Pelikan and is a gift to the church in understanding its faith history.”—Jeffrey A. Mackey, The Living Church
“One cannot speak too highly of the mass of information and precise discussion Pelikan provides here. All students of creeds and confessions will find Credo an indispensable resource. The work is an achievement unlikely to be surpassed.”—Donald K. McKim, Theological Studies
“Pelikan’s study introduces the readers into the history of the creeds and their ever-mounting elaboration. . . . [Pelikan’s] book is learned, indeed massively so, yet because of the lucidity of its prose it is accessible to the general reader.”—Luke Timothy Johnson, Washington Post Book World
Publication Date: December 12, 2005
