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 Pelikans 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 Pelikans 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...

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...

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...