Jaroslav Pelikan notes that “it would be a mistake to concentrate on” doctrine as propositions presented as finished articulations.
It distorts our reading of dogmatic documents to concentrate on texts like Biblical commentaries and definitive statements of doctrine
so completely as to ignore the relation of the theology of the church to the Jewish thought out of which it came and to the pagan thought which is sought to convert.
The contents and formulations of doctrine did not develop in a vacuum. They are the products of disputes and Streitschriften. Texts which in their origins were retorts are sometimes mistakenly treated as if they were presentations for students.
To understand confessional documents, we must consider them in their context as volleys in an intellectual conflict.
