Digenis.org

This past Saturday, May 13, 2006, one of this century’s greatest Christian intellectuals passed away. Jaroslav Pelikan, who served for many years as Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, wrote more than 30 books, including the 5-volume The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine.

A few Pelikan quotes, in remembrance:

Tradition is the living faith of dead people to which we must add our chapter while we have the gift of life. Traditionalism is the dead faith of living people who fear that if anything changes, the whole enterprise will crumble.

To invoke a Kierkegaardesque figure of speech, the beauty of the language of the Bible can be like a set of dentist’s instruments nearly laid out on a table and hanging on a wall, intriguing in their technological complexity and with their stainless steel highly polished–until they set to work on the job for which they were originally designed. Then all of a sudden my reaction changes from “How shiny and beautiful they all are!” to “Get that damned thing out of my mouth!”

Dr. Pelikan’s life and accomplishments inspire us not to live a mindless Christianity. Rest in peace.