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  • Faith in Formulae: A Collection of Early-Christian Creeds and Creed-related Texts translated by Wolfram Kinzig
  • Joel Kalvesmaki
Faith in Formulae: A Collection of Early-Christian Creeds and Creed-related Texts. Edited, annotated, and translated by Wolfram Kinzig. 4 vols. [Oxford Early Christian Texts.] (New York: Oxford university Press. 2017. Pp. xxiv, 552, 420, 464, 509. $675.00. ISBN 978–0-1982–6941-0 [set]; 978–0-19–9609024 [vol. 1]; 978–0-19–960903-1 [vol. 2]; 978–0-19–875841-9 [vol. 3]; 978–019-875842–6 [vol. 4].)

Wolfram Kinzig's Faith in Formulae is an essential acquisition for any research library with holdings in early or medieval Christianity. It supersedes August Hahn's Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der Alten Kirche (1842; 2nd ed. 1877; 3rd ed. 1897) and Philip Schaff's second volume of Creeds of Christendom with a History and Critical Notes (1877), which have shaped the scholarship of the last century and a half. Kinzig's book most naturally follows in Hahn's footsteps, and so is quite different from Valerie R. Hotchkiss and Jaroslav Pelikan's Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition (2003), which covered the entire Christian tradition, and, being not so focused on philology, printed only the most important creeds and confessions prior to AD 814 (Charlemagne's death).

That date provides Kinzig his chronological terminus. His chief interests are the ancient texts that preserve formulae of faith (e.g., "I believe in one God…") or attest to the reception of those formulae. For the hundreds of texts chosen, Kinzig provides, if available, the original Greek or Latin from the best recent edition, followed by an English translation. Sources that survive only in other languages, e.g., Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, are not given in those languages, but a reference to the best edition is provided, along with a modern translation (and perhaps a Greek retroversion). When the editions do not adequately subdivide a text, he has done so, to make citation easier. Quotations are marked by italics or underlining. At the end of each text is a summation that includes the writing's date and provenance; bibliography for noteworthy editions, translations, and studies; and brief notes.

Those source texts—some of which are obscure but important—are grouped into 863 sections, by author, event, or work, generally arranged chronologically (according to current scholarly consensus on dating). Some sections are quite short (one brief text), but others are quite long. For example, §135, on the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), has not only the creed itself (plus bibliography pointing readers to the thirty-two Greek witnesses), but (among others) seventy-two Latin translations and transliterations.

After providing key Old Testament and New Testament passages, Kinzig groups those sections of texts in eight chapters. Two of them—symbolum and its meanings, early baptismal interrogations—provide contextual background to the longest three—second-third-century formulae, eastern texts (fourth to ninth-century), and western texts (fourth to eighth-century). Another three chapters—canon law (fourth to eighth-century), the creed in liturgical and daily life, the creed in the [End Page 140] Carolingian reform—collect sources that are direct witnesses both to the confessions themselves and to their reception. In some cases, a textual cluster belongs to more than one chapter, in which case cross-references are provided.

Kinzig's writing is clear and graceful, and engaged with scholarly questions about authorship and dating. His translations, and those of Christopher M. Hays, are sound and unstilted. In many cases, they started with the older Ante-Nicene Fathers and the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers translations, but only as a beginning; all English translations have been thoroughly corrected, revised, and updated.

There is no subject index, so one cannot easily find important discussions (e.g., on the filioque at vol. 1, p. 15 and n. 71), or identify sources that have topical overlap (e.g., §4a and §6a, which quote a similar pagan formula of initiation). And there is not a concordance of important Greek and Latin terms. But the other indexes—Scripture, ancient and medieval works, manuscripts and other scripta— are immensely helpful, as is the lengthy...

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