Pelikan, Jaroslav

▪ 2006

      The 2004 John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences was awarded to Yale University historian Jaroslav Pelikan, who shared the $1 million prize with French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (Ricoeur, Paul ), who died in May 2005. The award, the second to be given, recognized work in the humanities and social sciences for which Nobel Prizes were not given.

      Pelikan was widely recognized as one of the foremost historians of the Christian church. Among his major achievements were Luther's Works (1955–71), a 22-volume translation of the works of Martin Luther, the five-volume The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (1971–89), and Credo: Historical and Theological Introduction to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition (1994). One of the principal themes of his work was the role of Eastern Orthodoxy in church history, and in 1998 he converted from Lutheranism to Orthodoxy.

      His other writings included From Luther to Kierkegaard (1950), Fools for Christ (1955), Jesus Through the Centuries (1985), Bach Among the Theologians (1986); The Idea of the University (1992), The Bible and the Constitution (1994), Faust the Theologian (1995), Mary Through the Centuries (1996), and the article “Jesus” for the Encyclopædia Britannica.

      In 1983 the National Endowment for the Humanities invited Pelikan to deliver the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities (“The Vindication of Tradition”), and in 1992–93 he went to Scotland to give the Gifford Lectures in natural theology, which were published under the title Christianity and Classical Culture (1993). He was founding chairman (1980–83; 1988–94) of the Council of Scholars at the Library of Congress and president (1994–97) of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1994 Pres. Bill Clinton appointed him to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. In 2001–02 he was a visiting scholar at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress; thereafter he became scholarly director of the Institutions of Democracy Project of the Annenberg Foundation.

      Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Jr., was born on Dec. 17, 1923, in Akron, Ohio. His Slovak-born father was a Lutheran minister, as was his paternal grandfather. In 1942 Pelikan graduated from Concordia College, Fort Wayne, Ind., after which he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Concordia Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Mo., and a Ph.D. (1946) from the University of Chicago. He taught at Valparaiso (Ind.) University and Concordia Theological Seminary from 1949 to 1953 and at the University of Chicago Divinity School from 1953 to 1962. In 1962 Pelikan joined the Yale University faculty as Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History. In 1972 he was appointed Sterling Professor of History, a chair he held until his retirement in 1996. He also served (1973–78) as dean of the graduate school.

Martin L. White

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