Good book about the history of Christianity

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Just wondering if anyone can recommend a good book of the Histroy of the Church, from past to present day.

Thanks,
 
try Triumph:the power and the glory of the catholic church by h.w. crocker III. the synopsis on the back says, for more than two millennia, Catholicism has shaped global history on a scale unequaled by any other institution. triumph tells the exciting colorful story of the church from the early days of St. Peter to the twilight years of John Paul II, full of inspiring pageantry, spirited polemic, and griping tales of its greatest men and women.

it’s a pretty good book.🙂
 
Kaily said:
Just wondering if anyone can recommend a good book of the Histroy of the Church, from past to present day.

Thanks,
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By far the best is “The History of The Church” by Eusebius of Caeseria. This was written while the persecutions were still going on.
Another great historical book is “Faith of the Early Fathers” by Jergins. It contains the history of the Church and many of the writings of the Early Christians from the biginnig continuing down through the ages.
 
Paul Johnson’s A History of Christianity
amazon.com/History-Christ…9973458&sr=1-8
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I am a fan of Paul Johnson, but I am not a fan of his History of Christianity. In fact, I could not get past the sections on the first 200 years. He subscribes greatly to the notion that there was a large number of competing - and equally important - “Christianities” in the early Church. While there was definitely diversity in beliefs of the people who claimed to be following Jesus, Johnson’s claim is more based on ideology than on historical fact.

I have wished for years that there was a great one-volume history of the Church. There are a few good ones (and some really bad ones), but none that don’t have significant flaws.
 
Ignatius said:
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Kaily:
Just wondering if anyone can recommend a good book of the Histroy of the Church, from past to present day.
Click to expand...
By far the best is “The History of The Church” by Eusebius of Caeseria. This was written while the persecutions were still going on.
Another great historical book is “Faith of the Early Fathers” by Jergins. It contains the history of the Church and many of the writings of the Early Christians from the biginnig continuing down through the ages.
Click to expand...
Another great resource on Church History is closer than you might think. Look here: oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Curricula:_Church_History
 
A great detailed book would be A Concise History of the Catholic Church by Thomas Bokenkotter. It explains in great detail the history of the Catholic church all of the way up to today (although I haven’t finished reading it yet). When I was considering to become either Catholic or Orthodox and wanted to read about both churches and especially the East-West schism, I read an Orthodox book, The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware that helped me gain an Orthodox perspective. The East-West schism definitely and obviously was from an Orthodox point-of-view all though somewhat close down the line in being about the facts. When looking for a competing book about the history of Catholicism, my choice was between Triumph and A Concise History of the Catholic Church. I flipped right to the sections about the East-West schism and A Concise History of the Catholic Church was more detailed, way less one-sided, and more factual. It’s a great detailed book about Catholicism and I now plan on becoming Catholic.
 
FCEGM said:
For a multi-volume study there is Dr. Warren Carroll’s history of Christendom:

amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Warren%20H.%20Carroll&page=1
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I second this 👍 Although if you are looking for a quick read this is not it. It is long, extensive and thorough.

One of my History professors in college tried to tell me that Carroll was not an academic source and that I could not use him for one of my papers I was writing. I told the Professor that it was odd. Not because Carroll received his Ph.D in History from** Columbia** but because this comment came from a professor that allowed wikipedia to be used as a reference in papers. :eek:

I guess being an academic source does not mean what it used to 🤷

God bless
 
Ignatius said:
By far the best is “The History of The Church” by Eusebius of Caeseria. This was written while the persecutions were still going on.
Another great historical book is “Faith of the Early Fathers” by Jergins. It contains the history of the Church and many of the writings of the Early Christians from the biginnig continuing down through the ages.
Click to expand...
Ditto. “The History of the Church” by Eusebius of Caeseria is an excellent book, of course the Bible is the best, but “The History of the Church” gives a lot of insights into the early Church. There is also a collection of books: the anti-Nicene, the Nicene and the Post Nicene Fathers, which are a collection of writings from the early Church fathers.
 
A great detailed book would be A Concise History of the Catholic Church by Thomas Bokenkotter. It explains in great detail the history of the Catholic church all of the way up to today (although I haven’t finished reading it yet).
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I personally would not recommend that book; Bokenkotter has a tendency to insert his own agenda into his telling of history, especially in the sections on modern times. The book definitely gets worse as it goes along, and by the end it is terrible. Here is my own review of it:

Review of A Concise History of the Catholic Church
 
searn77 said:
A great detailed book would be A Concise History of the Catholic Church by Thomas Bokenkotter. It explains in great detail the history of the Catholic church all of the way up to today (although I haven’t finished reading it yet).
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I’d second this. I’m also reading Bokenkotters Concise History. While not written from a strictly pro-Catholic perspective, it treats everything fairly.
 
eric_sammons said:
I am a fan of Paul Johnson, but I am not a fan of his History of Christianity. In fact, I could not get past the sections on the first 200 years. He subscribes greatly to the notion that there was a large number of competing - and equally important - “Christianities” in the early Church. While there was definitely diversity in beliefs of the people who claimed to be following Jesus, Johnson’s claim is more based on ideology than on historical fact.

I have wished for years that there was a great one-volume history of the Church. There are a few good ones (and some really bad ones), but none that don’t have significant flaws.
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Hmm. I was just about to jump in and second the recommendation of Paul Johnson’s book, which I’m currently reading for the second time after about 15 years.

I realize that book is more than 30 years old now, a long time for researchers to come up with a different version. So, can you point us to some good books that argue convincingly that early Christianity wasn’t like that?

TIA. ASD​

Traditional Latin Mass: Translation and Grammar
 
ASD,

One good book is one I’m reading right now: “Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity” by Larry W. Hurtado. It traces the surprisingly early devotion shown to Jesus in the early Church.

Here are a few others from my book shelf:

“The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition”, which is Volume I of The Christian Tradition series by Jaroslav Pelikan.

“Christ in Christian Tradition”, Volume 1 by Aloys Grillmeier.

“The Spirituality of the New Testament and the Fathers” by Louis Bouyer.

Again, I’m not saying that there was not a certain diversity of belief by those who claimed to follow Christ in the 1st and 2nd century. Just from reading Paul’s letters and 1 & 2 John you can see that. What I am disputing is that all these movements were equally strong and equally descended from the apostles, which is what Johnson seems to be arguing in his book (at least, that is how I remember it).
 
eric_sammons said:
Again, I’m not saying that there was not a certain diversity of belief by those who claimed to follow Christ in the 1st and 2nd century. Just from reading Paul’s letters and 1 & 2 John you can see that. What I am disputing is that all these movements were equally strong and equally descended from the apostles, which is what Johnson seems to be arguing in his book (at least, that is how I remember it).
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Thanks for useful list.

As I continued to read last night, a thought came to me about why PJ has taken such an extreme line about early Christianity. I think there’s a subtext that goes something like this:

1a. The stripping of Catholic altars in reformation England was done in large part to recover an imagined early Christianity.
1b. A similar process in the 1960s and 1970s was justified in part by a similarly romantic conception of the early Church.
2. But, both groups who attacked Catholic tradition in the name of imagined Christian antiquity were completely wrong about the early Church.​

  1. Therefore, the altar strippers were wrong.

ASD​

Traditional Latin Mass: Translation and Grammar
 
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