The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700), Christian Tradition #2

The second volume of Professor Pelikan's monumental work of The Christian Tradition is the most comprehensive historical treatment of Eastern Christian thought from 600 to 1700 written in recent years. This volume covers the great Christological controversies of the seventh century, the debate on icons in the 8th and 9th, attitudes to Jews, to Muslims, to the dualistic heresies of the high Middle Ages, to the post-Reformation churchs of Western Europe. The line that separated Eastern Christendom from Western on the medieval map is similar to the "iron curtain" of recent times. Linguistic barriers, political divisions, and liturgical differences combine to isolate the two cultures from each other. Pelikan explains the divisions between Eastern and Western Christendom and identifies and describes the development of the distinctive forms taken by Christian doctrine in its Greek, Syriac and early Slavic tradition. The table of contents includes:

1. The Authority of the Fathers
   The Changeless Truth of Salvation
   The Norms of Traditional Doctrine
   The Councils and Their Achievements
   Knowing the Unknowable
2. Union and Division in Christ
   Duality of Hypostates
   One Incarnate Nature of God the Logos
   Actions and Wills in Unison
   Christ the Universal Man
3. Images of the Invisible
   Images Graven and Ungraven
   Images as Idols
   Images as Icons
   The Melody of Theology
4. The Challenge of the Latin Church
   The Orthodoxy of Old Rome
   The Foundation of Apostolic Polity
   The Theological Origins of the Schism
   The Filioque
5. The Vindication of Trinitarian Monotheism
   Trinity and Shema
   Evil and the God of Love
   The One God--And His Prophets
   The God of the Philosophers
6. The Last Flowering of Byzantine Orthodoxy
   The Mystic as New Theologian
   The Final Break with Western Doctrine
   The Definition of Eastern Particularity
   The Heir Apparent