Nelson Derek Reginald - Readings in the History of Christian Theology

2015 Wabash College, Executor of the Estate of William C. Placher, and Derek R. Nelson

First edition was published in 1988 by The Westminster Press.

Revised edition

Published by Westminster John Knox Press

Louisville, Kentucky

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Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible are copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by permission.

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Book design by Sharon Adams

Cover design by Allison Taylor

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Readings in the history of Christian theology.Revised edition / William C. Placher and Derek R. Nelson, editors.

2 volumes cm

Includes index.

Contents: volume 1. From its beginnings to the eve of the reformation

ISBN 978-0-664-23933-6 (v. 1 : acid-free paper) ISBN 0-664-23933-1
(v. 1 : acid-free paper) 1. TheologyHistory. I. Placher, William C.
(William Carl), 19482008, editor. II. Nelson, Derek R., editor.

BR118.R43 2015

230dc23

2015002766

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

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Contents

It is a pleasure to help bring this valuable resource up-to-date and into the hands of a new generation of people learning about the history of Christian theology. William Placher was an expert at inviting readers and especially students into a conversation that had deep roots and an expansive future. The variety of voices included in these volumes of primary texts keeps the conversation going. This new edition sees the addition of many new texts, especially those from the voices of women and others who have been marginalized from the theological tradition. I hope that they can be fully incorporated into our teaching of theology and make us more aware of contemporary voices that are silenced.

I am grateful to Westminster John Knox Press and Wabash College for inviting me to assist in this second edition of Bills books. I revised and fully updated his earlier A History of Christian Theology (Westminster John Knox Press, 1983; 2nd ed., 2013), and that text has found a home in many classrooms, churches, and discussion groups. The sooner folks can read the great texts of the Christian theological tradition for themselves, however, the better.

My thanks go out to many people who have contributed to this project. Wabash College and especially its dean, Scott Feller, and my departmental colleagues have made this an exciting and rewarding context for teaching, learning, and research. Beverly Cunningham was an incredibly helpful resource in organizing a complicated project, and I am glad to thank her here for her help and good cheer. The staff at Westminster John Knox, especially Executive Editor Bob Ratcliff and Michele Blum, were supportive, understanding, and helpful in dealing with the myriad problems of copyright law, permissions requests, formatting, and so many other things. My wife, Kelly, and our daughter, Madeleine, provided welcome respite for a weary professor, and I cannot thank them enough for all that they do and are.

D.R.N.
October 31, 2014

In 1983 The Westminster Press published a book I had written called A History of Christian Theology. The books reviewers have been kind, and sales have been good. I have been particularly pleased by the teachers and students who have thanked me for the help it gave them in teaching and learning theologys history.

That earlier book, however, had an obvious limitation: it presented its story primarily in my words, with my interpretations. As soon as possible, students of any kind of history should be reading primary texts for themselves and reaching their own interpretations. But that isnt always easy. One of the themes of my earlier book was that Christian theology has always been a pluralistic affair, but with the escalating price of books, it is difficult to put together an affordable collection of readings that captures that diversity. I hope these two volumes will help.

To cast modesty aside, I think I have succeeded beyond my expectations. I had expected to put together a book of readings that would need to function as a supplement to a narrative historymy own or someone elses. That certainly remains one possible use. But, rather to my surprise, I found it possible to put together excerpts that, with brief introductions, form a roughly coherent narrative and stand on their own as a history of Christian theology. Keeping in mind that they might be used independently, I have repeated some material from my earlier book in introductions and suggestions for further reading.

These volumes share some of the features of my earlier book: an ecumenical perspective, a commitment to representing the traditions diversity, a focus on the history of ideas rather than institutional history. I have tried to choose selections long enough to give a sense of the writers style and to make it clear that theology does not consist simply of unsupported assertions but involves arguments. I have sought to keep my own introductions and notes to a minimum, to make room for as much of the primary texts as possible. Occasionally I have substituted U.S. spellings for British. Teachers are sometimes tempted to leave out things that have become, for them, overly familiarbut even the most familiar texts are often new to a student. Therefore, while I hope that even those expert in the field will find a few unfamiliar passages here, I have tried not to leave out the obvious ones.

No anthology is ever really satisfactory. If I were more learned or more imaginative, I am sure this one would be better. We keep learning more about the past, and we keep asking new questions of it as new issues arise in the present. So history keeps going out of date. In compiling this anthology, I was particularly conscious that new insights in feminist scholarship raise questions about both the selection and the translation of texts. I wish I had been able to take them more into account.

I am grateful to James Heaney, a committed and courageous editor who encouraged and supported my earlier book, and to Cynthia Thompson, my helpful editor for these volumes. The Lilly Library of Wabash College and the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago and their staffs helped me at many points. My emeritus colleague John Charles answered questions over coffee about everything from medieval history to Greek grammar. I am also grateful to James McCord and the Center of Theological Inquiry for providing me with a wonderful home away from home for a year during which the final stages of this project were completed. My colleagues, students, and friends at Wabash continue to be a community that nurtures me in many ways. Wabash faculty development funds and money from the Eric Dean Fund helped support my research. I am above all grateful to my two research assistants: for over a year, David Schulz did everything from typing to tracking down publishers, and David Kirtley provided invaluable assistance in the projects final stages. Without them, I am not sure either I or the book would have made it.