Good books about Christian history and/or doctrine development

[Hortenzie]

Hi. I’m looking for good books about the above subjects written by Catholic scholars. I just finished “The first thousand years” by Wilken and “Reading the early Church Fathers” by Papandrea. Any other suggestions?

Thanks, Hana.

P.S. I also read two books by M. Coren. I found the info interesting but I didn’t like his writing style. Seemes a bit dogmatic (that is: asserting opinions with arrogance).

 

[Volor]

If you enjoy reading about the Church Fathers, I’d recommend the 3 volume “Faith of the Early Fathers” by William A. Jurgens. I have all three and find them quite good and thorough.

You may or may not like “Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church” by H.W. Crocker III. I do have that as well. Depending on how scholarly you really want to get, it may not do it for you. Another option, more scholarly, might be the History of Christendom series by Warren H. Carroll. I have not read those, but have been curious about them after reading the Amazon reviews!

 

[dmar198]

Hi. I’m looking for good books about the above subjects written by Catholic scholars. I just finished “The first thousand years” by Wilken and “Reading the early Church Fathers” by Papandrea. Any other suggestions?

Thanks, Hana.

P.S. I also read two books by M. Coren. I found the info interesting but I didn’t like his writing style. Seemes a bit dogmatic (that is: asserting opinions with arrogance).

I recommend the Philip Hughes History of the Church. It is a multi-volume work that treats of Church history from the Apostles to the Reformation and is notable for three features: it frequently quotes from original Papal documents, councils, and saints of each period to illustrate what the Church’s mind was on the matters of the time, it stops the narrative every now and then to explain the basis of Catholic doctrines in the literature and events of each period (focusing particularly on items such as papal supremacy, religious liberty, and Catholic social doctrine), and it moves the story forward often by describing the lives and adventures of the saints who were involved in the crucial events of each century. It is also thoroughly Catholic, well researched, and can be found for free on EWTN as a text document. I read it and loved it.

Regarding doctrinal development, perhaps the best Catholic book on that subject is St. John Henry Newman’s book “Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.” It is a classic nineteenth century text that delves deep into history and the Church Fathers to illustrate the continuity and development of Catholic doctrine from the Apostolic era on up, and focuses on issues of contention between Catholics and Protestants. God bless!

 

[Hortenzie]

Volor - thank you for your suggestions. I wrote the books down and I will look for them in our Library and the Bookstores. Thanks again, it is so much easier to look for books that somebody recommended than to try to figure out what to read on my own…

dmar198 - Thank you for your recommendation and the info where to get the book. I already downloaded it and started to read it. I really like that the author gives you the background info and points out the context of what is happening. It makes thing much easier to understand.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

Hi. I’m looking for good books about the above subjects written by Catholic scholars. I just finished “The first thousand years” by Wilken and “Reading the early Church Fathers” by Papandrea. Any other suggestions?

Thanks, Hana.

P.S. I also read two books by M. Coren. I found the info interesting but I didn’t like his writing style. Seemes a bit dogmatic (that is: asserting opinions with arrogance).

In addition to Newman’s Essay on the Development of Doctrine one should read his Sermon 15: The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine in his Oxford University Sermons.

 

[Skeptic92]

Hi. I’m looking for good books about the above subjects written by Catholic scholars. I just finished “The first thousand years” by Wilken and “Reading the early Church Fathers” by Papandrea. Any other suggestions?

Thanks, Hana.

P.S. I also read two books by M. Coren. I found the info interesting but I didn’t like his writing style. Seemes a bit dogmatic (that is: asserting opinions with arrogance).

Since you’re talking Systematics the books are usually highly specialised, in that they look at a single doctrine. For instance I’m currently reading:

Theology of the Priesthood by Jean Galot and ‘The Priesthood of Christ and His Ministers’ Andre Feuillet

The latter of the two is incredibly hard to get a hold of, I had to put in a request with Oxford University to loan their copy through the British Library.

 

[aragonjohn1]

Hi. I’m looking for good books about the above subjects written by Catholic scholars. I just finished “The first thousand years” by Wilken and “Reading the early Church Fathers” by Papandrea. Any other suggestions?

Thanks, Hana.

P.S. I also read two books by M. Coren. I found the info interesting but I didn’t like his writing style. Seemes a bit dogmatic (that is: asserting opinions with arrogance).

a few i recomend;

fathers of the church, early christian history, history of libraries, where we got the bible by henry G Graham, and History of the Catholic Church : for use in seminaries and colleges by THE MOST REV. P. J. RYAN, Archbishop of Philadelphia.

God bless

 

[Hortenzie]

Fr of Jazz, Skeptic92 and aragonjohn1 - thanks all for your suggestions. I wrote it all down and now I’ll spend some time trying to locate the books. Hopefully I’ll find at least some of them.

H.

 

[Contarini]

Hi. I’m looking for good books about the above subjects written by Catholic scholars. I just finished “The first thousand years” by Wilken and “Reading the early Church Fathers” by Papandrea. Any other suggestions?

Thanks, Hana.

P.S. I also read two books by M. Coren. I found the info interesting but I didn’t like his writing style. Seemes a bit dogmatic (that is: asserting opinions with arrogance).

Anything by Wilken is good: his The Spirit of Early Christianity is a great book. Another really good survey is J. N. D. Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrines, which is an excellent source for the development of those doctrines. Bernard McGinn’s multivolume Christian Spirituality is also excellent. Perhaps the most renowned multivolume survey of the development of Christian doctrine as a whole is Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Christian Tradition. Etienne Gilson’s The Christian Philosophy of the Middle Ages is a good counterpart to McGinn.

Of these authors, Kelly is Anglican and Pelikan was Lutheran and later became Orthodox. The others are Catholic.

Edwin

 

[aragonjohn1]

Fr of Jazz, Skeptic92 and aragonjohn1 - thanks all for your suggestions. I wrote it all down and now I’ll spend some time trying to locate the books. Hopefully I’ll find at least some of them.

H.

yes, hopefully …

God bless

 

[Abu]

Hortenzie
You’ve had some good recommendations, and I suggest *How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization *by Dr Thomas E Woods, Jr., Regnery 2005, as well as Thology and Sanity, plus *Society and Sanity *by Frank Sheed, both published by Sheed and Ward.

 

[Hortenzie]

Abu - I read “How the CC built Western civilization” some time ago. I really liked it, many good points that people are not aware of.
The other books I will check out. Thanks a lot.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

One of the best books I have ever read about the history of the Catholic Church is Dominican priest John Vidmar’s “The Catholic Church Through the Ages.” This book takes us right into the Benedict XVI pontificate. His style of writing is lucid beyond compare. He gets the job done of encapsulating huge and complex periods of Catholic history without lapsing into irrelvant and unnecessary details. Vidmar currently teaches theology at Providence College in Rhode Island and has been a priest for 33 years.

I am not John Vidmar!