This penultimate volume in Pelikan's acclaimed history of Christian doctine - winner with Volume 3 of the medieval Academy's prestigious Haskins Medal - encompasses the Reformation and the developments that led to it.

"Only in America, and in this case from a Lutheran scholar, could we expect an examination so lacking in parti pris, a survey so perceptive, so free?and, one must say, the result of so much immense labor, so rewardingly presented." -John M. Todd, New York Times Book Review

"Never wasting a word or losing a plot line, Pelikan builds on an array of sources that few in our era have the linguistic skill, genius or ambition to master." -Martin E. Marty, America

"The use of both primary materials and secondary sources is impressive, and yet it is not too formidable for the intelligent layman." -William S. Barker, Eternity