Because Christianity is a religion in history, dogmatic developments occur in concrete cultural and intellectual settings, and respond to the needs or concerns of a particular period or environment. And since revelation is made explicit in this temporal context, the study of the history of Christian doctrine must be recognized as central in any effective pastoral or speculative theological undertaking. The present work, in the Herder History of Dogma series, is a thoroughly researched study of the articulations and explanations the Judaeo-Christian tradition has given to the belief in God's creation of the universe.
After tracing in detail the Hebrew presentation of creation as part of the fact of salvation, the author shows how this salvational emphasis was retained and made explicitly Christological in the early Church, and how it later lost ground to the need of Christian thinkers to deal specifically with Hellenic and Platonic philosophies and cosmologies. The ensuing development in turn led the way to the great Scholastic synthesis of thought on creation and providence. This held majestic sway until the Renaissance and Reformation and the advent of systematic science. Since then, also, it has held formal sway – but far less majestically. Accordingly Creation and Providence closes as much on a note of need as of accomplishment: "The effort of theologians to reach a deeper understanding of the truth of creation by examining both the ancient sources of revelation and the data of modern biblical science and satisfying the requirements of the scientific method only made itself felt within Catholic theology in the twentieth century.”