An authoritative yet succinct history, written to appeal to a
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"There is much to praise here. Lindberg manages to explore many key events, issues, people and developments in a very concise manner. The text is very strong on theology and institutions with helpful historical context. I particularly appreciated the attention to Roman Catholicism as well as Protestantism in the modern period. The book is brief, but the history of Christianity is vividly portrayed here in all of its drama and complexity." Jeff Tyler, Hope College
"This is a wonderful book: accessible, concise, clearly written, and thoroughly absorbing. Lindberg has chosen to present the Christian tradition through the history of its principal ideas, but these ideas are grounded in the flesh-and-blood reality of persons, their struggles for faith and for power, and the social and political worlds they inhabited. Reflecting the author’s erudition and wit, this cogent distillation of a complex past will serve beginners as an ideal introduction and old hands as a thought-provoking synthesis." Christopher Elwood, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
Table of Contents
Preface x
1 The Responsibility to Remember: An Introduction to the Historiography of Christianity 1
Tradition and Confession 4
2 The Law of Praying is the Law of Believing 6
The Roman Empire and its Political Achievements 10
Hellenization and its Cultural Achievements 10
Development of the Biblical Canon 12
3 Sibling Rivalry: Heresy, Orthodoxy, and Ecumenical Councils 17
The Structure of Tradition: Confession and Doctrine 18
Doctrine as a Key to Christian Memory and Identity 19
Heresy 21
Jesus’ Relationship to God: The Doctrine of the Trinity 22
From the Council of Nicaea to the Council of Constantinople 26
Jesus and Humankind: Christology 28
4 The Heavenly City: The Augustinian Synthesis of Biblical Religion and Hellenism 35
Augustine’s Path to Conversion 40
Augustine’s Theological Contributions 41
Augustine and Donatism 44
The Pelagian Controversy 47
5 The Development of Medieval Christendom 51
Monasticism to Mission 52
The Emergence of the Papacy 54
Papacy and Empire 59
The Gregorian Reform 61
The Investiture Conflict 66
The Crusades 68
6 Faith in Search of Understanding: Anselm, Abelard, and the Beginnings of Scholasticism 71
Universities and Scholasticism 73
Contributions of Early Scholastic Theology 79
7 The Medieval Church 84
The Cultural and Theological Development of the Sacraments 84
The Rise of the Mendicant Orders 89
The Rise and Decline of Papal Authority 95
The Decline of the Papacy 97
Conciliarism 99
8 The Reformations of the Sixteenth Century 104
Context 105
The Reformation in Germany 108
The Reformation in Switzerland 112
The Reformation in France 116
The Reformation in England 117
Scandinavia and Eastern Europe 120
Early Modern Catholicism 121
The Reformations’ Aftermath 122
9 Pietism and the Enlightenment 125
The Enlightenment 135
The Catholic Church and the Enlightenment 141
10 Challenge and Response: The Church in the Nineteenth Century 143
The Churches and the French Revolution 144
From the French Revolution to the Congress of Vienna 145
Church Reform in Germany: The Prussian Union and its Consequences 146
Inner Mission and the Social Question 147
The Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century 152
Pope Pius IX and Vatican I 153
From Kulturkampf to the Anti-Modernist Oath 154
Nineteenth-Century Theology 155
The Awakening 157
Theological Currents 158
Liberal Theology 160
11 The Christian Churches since World War I 163
New Formulations in Protestant Theology 164
The Churches during National Socialism 167
Developments in the Catholic Church after World War I 171
The Ecumenical Movement 173
Back to the Future: Christianity in Global Context 179
Appendix: Periodization 181
Glossary 189
Further Reading 195
Index 204
