The Study of Church History

“It is always essential for us to supplement our reading of theology with the reading of church history…
If we do not, we shall be in danger of becoming abstract, theoretical, and academic in our view of truth;
and, failing to relate it to the practicalities of life and daily living, we shall soon be in trouble.”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Can We Learn from History?” Puritans, pp. 215-16

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In his course on the Ancient and Medieval Church at Covenant Theological Seminary, David Calhoun used the textbook The Story of Christianity, Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation by Justo Gonzalez. In his lecture on “The Study of Church History”, he recommended the following texts:

Clarke, Kenneth.  Civilisation: A Personal View.  1969.
An overview of western history with special emphasis on the arts and a humanistic interpretation of what it all means.

McGrath, Alister E.  Christian Theology: An Introduction.  1994.
Historical theology presented ably and as simply as possible.

Moffett, Samuel H.  A History of Christianity in Asia: Beginnings to 1500.  1992.
The first of two masterful volumes covering the neglected story of Asian Christianity, this history traces the spread of Christianity to Persia and India, and then overland to China, where evidence exists of Christian activity dating from the 7th century.

Pelikan, Jaroslav.  The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (5 vols.)
The magnum opus of a great scholar (a Lutheran who recently converted to Eastern Orthodoxy).

Potok, Chaim.  Wanderings: History of the Jews.  1978.
A wonderfully written story of the Jews by an acclaimed novelist.

Schaeffer, Francis A.  How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture.  1976.
Schaeffer’s influential study of the rise and (mainly) the decline of western thought.

Shaw, Mark R.  The Kingdom of God in Africa: A Short History of African Christianity.  1996.
Part 1 covers the church before the emergence of Islam; part 2, the medieval centuries of Islamic domination; part 3, the missions and colonial eras; and part 4, the remarkable story of twentieth-century African Christianity.

Williams, Charles.  The Descent of the Dove.  1939.
Idiosyncratic, brilliant, perplexing, and illuminating history. Eugene H. Peterson wrote in Take and Read, “When I started reading [Charles] Williams [The Descent of the Dove], I was a sectarian, ‘related’ only to a small coterie of people who lived and thought and prayed like me. When I finished, I was part of a congregation centuries deep and continents wide” (p. 1).

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And in the subsequent lecture on “The Growth of the Church,” he recommends:

The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in Transmission of Faith.
One of the most important books of Christian history of the 1990s. By a Scottish mission
historian and missionary.

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In lecture three on The Martyrs, he quotes from and/or recommends the following:

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis

F. F. Bruce, Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to the Conversion of the English

Maier, Paul L. The Flames of Rome: A Documentary Novel