帕利坎與他的《教義發展史》

Pelikan and his Dogmatic Development

陳佐人(Stephen T. Chan)

《道風：漢語神學學刊》 8期 (1998/01) Pp. 303-325+342-344

並列摘要

＂Tradition is the living faith or the dead: traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.＂ Pelikan's favorite quote reveals the creative tension between history and development which underlies his ambitious project of a history of Christian doctrine. Christian doctrine, to Pelikan, is ＂what the church believes, reaches, and confesses.＂ It is thoroughly historical for it is ＂traditioned＂ through historical periods and agents. But doctrinal history is neither static nor stagnant because it is a fervent and dynamic process which continues to develop and transform itself through the age. Pelikan's idea of history and development is formulated along and again t hi two predecessors: John Henry Newman (1801-1890) and Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930). In arguing against Harnack's judgment that Christian doctrines were completed within the period of major ecumenical councils, Pelikan explicates a continuity of doctrinal tradition, beginning from the patristic and medieval periods (Vol. 1-3), through the Reformation (Vol. 4) up to the modern times (Vol. 5). Secondly, in arguing along with Newman, Pelikan describes Christian tradition as a history of development o f doctrine. It is no t a mechanical process but organic growth of a living tradition that continues to transform itself in various stages of Geistesgeschichte. In this organic growth o f Christian tradition, the history of doctrine finally converge s with the history of theology and eventually become the all-encompassing Geistegechichte. Pelikan has not re solved all the problematics of his thesis but his contribution as a post-Harnackian hi story of Christian doctrine is surely indisputable. As the most ecumenical and up- to-date history of Christian doctrine, the Chinese translation of the first and subsequent volumes of Pelikan's, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development o f the Doctrine challenges the on-going project of Sino-Christian theology to engage itself in three tasks: to tradition the tradition, to retrieve the tradition, and to transform the tradition. The first task of Sino-Christian theology is to tradition the tradition. It is only full respect and recognition of Christian tradition that guarantees and constitutes the Christian identity of any form of Christian theology. Secondly, Sino-Christian theology ha to retrieve the tradition: Roman Catholic, Protestant, and eastern Orthodox, so that it can become a genuine ＂Christian＂ theology. Thirdly, Sino-Christian theology has to engage itself in the transformation of tradition so that it can live up to the ideal of doctrinal change as envisioned by Newman: ＂To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.＂ Accordingly, Sino-Christian theology is neither indigenization nor contextualization but a genuine development of Christian doctrine as an intellectual discourse in contemporary China.