Jaroslav Pelikan concludes volume 5 of The Christian Tradition with the same words with which he begins volume 1: Credo unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam. Covering the period in church history from 1700 to roughly the middle of the 20th century, Pelikan highlights the familiar faces (Harnack, Newman, Schleiermacher, et al.) and the somewhat less familiar (Rauschenbusch, Reimarus, and Zinzendorf, among many others). As I've stated in other reviews of previous volumes, I reiterate: now after 1500 pages and five volumes, the biggest surprise is perhaps how much remains unsaid! For that, Pelikan provides an unparalleled bibliography for further research.

The breadth of Pelikan's learning is extraordinary. Chapter 6 it titled "The Sobornost of the Body of Christ." One may think of chapter titles as metaphors or generalizations devoted to common themes, but I admit that there was nothing about "sobornost" that resonated with any of my education to date, Christian or otherwise. Shame on me, it would seem. The following is typical Pelikan:

"A sign of [Eastern Orthodoxy's] increasing influence was the adoption, as almost a technical term, of the Russian word "sobornost" by Western theologians of many linguistic and denominational traditions. The term "sobornaja" had been -- if not, as Aleksej Chomjakov claimed, already in the usage of Cyril and Methodius, "the apostles to the Slavs," then at least as early as the eleventh century -- the Old Church Slavonic rendering of "catholic" in the Nicene Creed; use of the word "sobor" for the church councils to which Eastern Orthodoxy assigned authority in the church helped to make the term a way of distinguishing Eastern ecclesiology from both the "papal monarchy" of Roman Catholicism and the "sola Scriptura" of Protestantism. "Sobornost" in this sense entered the vocabulary and the thought world of the West just as, for reasons that lay in the political and cultural upheavals of the modern era, Western Christianity, whether Roman Catholic or Anglican or Protestant, was, throughout the twentieth century, rediscovering the Christian East, whether Slavic or Greek or Near Eastern, within much of which the nineteenth century had been a period of such intense ecclesiological renewal" (287-288).

Now you know.

If there is a criticism of Pelikan, it is this simultaneous density and prolixity that is characteristic of much of his writing. It does not make for easy reading. But it is rewarding. Maugham said "to write simply is as difficult as to be good": while that may be true, it must also then be true that there is more than one measure of goodness.

Credo unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam eccelsiam: "I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church." These familiar words from the Nicene creed, echoed in the Apostle's Creed, are appropriate bookends for Pelikan's thoughts on the subject. But after 1500 pages, he's not done: I can now read his Credo, which is devoted to explicating the history of these creeds. ( )

This is the fifth and final installment in Pelikan's magisterial series on the history of Christian doctrine.

This volume as all previous volumes is well-researched and masterfully written. The author clearly has a broad understanding of the issues which he discusses.

Unfortunately the last volume is a bit disappointing. Pelikan does well with the topics he chooses to discuss-- matters of unity over the past century, issues of belief in God, the value of tradition, and so on and so forth, but in so doing almost entirely abandons discussion of many of the previous lines of thought that were put forth in previous volumes. Furthermore, American doctrinal developments are passed over in almost complete silence.

It is recognized that the amount of ground to cover over the past 300 years is vast, yet in the end, I was hoping for more about what was already discussed. Regardless, still an excellent work that is worthy of consideration. ( )