Christianity and Classical Culture.

The relationship of Christian belief to the classical tradition of Greece and Rome has been the subject of intense scholarly interest since at least the time of Adolf Von Harnack. Scholars of the stature of Arthur Darby Nock and Norris Cochrane studied'this problem in order to clarify this basic issue: Did classical culture somehow cloud the purity of the gospel or was it a vehicle for the clarification of the gospel message?

In his Gifford Lectures, Pelikan again takes up this question (the very title of his book pays tribute to Cochrane's earlier work) in a manner which can only be described as magisterial. Pelikan's book has a very precise focus. He examines in close detail the fourth-century Greek Christian writers known as the Cappadocians with this question in mind: How did these writers, steeped in classical culture, use the "natural theology" of the Greek tradition in their explication of the faith and to what degree did they critique that culture in the light of the gospel?

It is almost impossible, in the limited space of these notes, to do justice to the careful, enlightening, and precise way Pelikan answers his twin questions. His basic thesis is that all of the Cappadocians find Nicene orthodoxy congruent with the presuppositions of classical "natural theology." Indeed, they use much of it as a foundational presupposition and have no hesitations in showing how this theology becomes enriched, corrected, and enlarged by the revelation of God in Christ. Thus, to cite one specific example, classical philology and the classical rules of hermeneutics aided in the interpretation of Scripture, but the metamorphosis of the text into an encounter with the Word of God came only through grace-impelled contemplation using the eyes of faith. More generally, classical culture provided a vocabulary, a metaphysics, a view of nature and humanity, etc., as a matrix for a deeper understanding of revelation.

This book has a number of conspicuous merits. First, Pelikan has that deep learning which makes it possible for him to read the two Gregories, Basil and Macrina, with limpid intelligence against the background of Greek thought. Second, as the acknowledged contemporary master of the history of Christian theology, he can prod the reader forward to see how these fourth-century writers set the agenda for subsequent theological reflection; this is not an antiquarian enterprise. Finally, his basic thesis, stated economically in the subtitle of the book ("The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism") is convincing as he shows just how far and with what care the axial figures of fourth-century Greek theology did and did not use the intellectual culture that was their inheritance. "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Quite a bit but not too much, is the answer.

Finally, let me praise Yale's press for turning out such a handsome and "reader friendly" volume. Employing a setup Pelikan used in his estimable five-volume history of the Christian tradition, the notes run down the left side of the page in a generous margin that leaves plenty of room for doodling. Since Pelikan frequently cites both the primary sources and secondary literature, it is an immense help not to have to look back to those wretched endnotes that so frequently appear even in scholarly books. The volume ends with a glossary of technical terms, a bibliography, and indices of biblical, patristic, and general citations. Well done, well done!

Jacobus de Voragine (?1230-92) entered the Dominicans as a young man and later became archbishop of Genoa. Posterity best remembers him for a vast compilation of the lives of the saints which he wrote around 1260. It was one of the most popular books written in the Middle Ages as the over one thousand surviving manuscripts attest. It was translated into English, with additional material added by the printer-editor William Caxton in the late fifteenth century; there has been no other full translation into English until Ryan completed his task which he started two generations ago.