Author Description

The history of theology presented in this four-volume study is meant to be a history of the whole of Catholic Christian theology, from which the Second Vatican Council has served as both a point of arrival and a point of departure. The authors provide a history of theology that covers the twenty centuries of theological thought beginning with biblical revelation. They focus on the word "theology" and its accepted meaning and offer a careful history that shows what "theology" meant in successive periods. In Volume I, Father Studer offers a detailed study of how theology "was done" in the socio-cultural scene of the Christian community in the Constantinian and Theodosian eras (known as the age of "the Church of the Empire" or the "Imperial Church"). Volume III examines the history of theology and the basic innovations in theological thought during the Renaissance era. It explores the councils, people, movements, pedagogy, and theological methods of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.