CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY OF CHRISTIANITY
Daniel Patte, General Editor
Editorial Board | Preparing Contextual , Conceptual-Theological and Historical
, and Methodological Entries | Overall List of Entries
The RATIONALE FOR THIS
The goal of the Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity
is to make understandable the
complexity of present-day Christianity by clarifying the contextual character
of Christian theological views, practices and movements through history and
cultures.
Intended for for students and scholars,
clergy and laity, believers and agnostics--in short, anyone who needs a full
and accurate picture of the world’s largest organized religion, the CDC
will be an A to Z dictionary in one volume (similar to the Cambridge
Dictionary of Philosophy; more than 900 pp., 2 col., 875,000 words). Besides “methodological entries” that
explain the critical approaches it uses, the CDC offers two types of entries:
The CDC’s contextual entries
present concise and up-to-date overviews of the status of Christianity as a
contextual reality that includes all the believers and communities that
identify themselves as Christians throughout the world today—1.178 billion in
Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania, 661 million in Western Europe and
North-America and 158 million in Orthodox Eastern Europe and the Middle East
(statistics from Barrett, Kurian, and Johnson's World Christian Encyclopedia.
2nd Ed., 2001). Dealing with
Christianity in each context (nation
or region), these entries present:
·
Statistics about the place of Christianity and
its denominations in this society;
·
A sketch of the main periods of the history of
Christianity and its denominations and identification of significant figures
and events;
·
A systematic overview of the distinctive,
contextually-marked features of Christianity and its denominations,
including: ritual practices; communal
practices; bases for beliefs and actions (scriptures, creeds, as well as
religious experiences and events); practices in society (praxis); interactions
with other religions and ideologies.
·
Central theological and ethical issues.
This
presentation illumines the shape and contours of present-day Christianity, even
as it documents its great diversity that needs to be made understandable.
The CDC’s conceptual-theological and historical entries make
understandable this complex contextual reality of present-day Christianity by
underscoring that through history one finds several
understandings of:
·
Each theological concept;
·
Each ritual or communal practice;
·
Each social practice (praxis);
·
What are the authoritative bases for beliefs and
actions;
·
What are particularly significant events or
religious experiences; and
·
What are appropriate interactions with other
religions and ideologies.
Several
clearly distinguishable understandings of each of the main features of
Christianity are presented as they are found at various stages of the history
of each Christian movement (church or denomination) and as they are exemplified
by the views and the lives of authoritative figures in particular historical
contexts. In this way, the CDC clarifies
the choices that each group of Christians have implicitly or explicitly made
among several plausible understandings of each of these features in and for a
particular social, cultural, and religious context. Each form of Christianity is the set of
beliefs and practices that certain Christians have interpreted to constitute
following Jesus.
With
these two kinds of information, the users of the CDC will be less perplexed by
the diversity of contemporary Christianity.
They can recognize that each manifestation of Christianity represents a
particular interpretation of what constitutes following Jesus in a particular
context. In each case, believers have
made a choice among several possible understandings of theological concepts and Christian
practices. They have implicitly assessed
the relative value of existing understandings of these concepts and practices,
and at times developed new ones that, they believe, better account for
particular issues, events, or religious experiences in their context. By documenting the range of understandings of
theological concepts and practices, the CDC gives to its users the possibility
to recognize the range of these choices and their contextual and religious
character.