Interpreting Christian History The Challenge of the Churches' Past [Paperback]

• An exploration of the theological lessons to be learnt from the difficult history of the Christian churches over the past 2,000 years
  
• Opens with an introductory essay on the whole of Church history, making the book suitable for lay readers as well as students
  
• Combines historical, historiographical and theological analysis
  
• Reunites the disciplines of theology and Church history
  
• Concludes that we can only ever perceive a facet of Christianity given our historical and cultural conditioning
  
• Written by a distinguished Church historian.

Introduction.

Diversities of Belief, Practice, and Priorities.

History and Diversity.

Steering Between Two Extremes.

The Compass and Structure of the Book.

History and Theory.

1 The Unfolding of Christian History: a Sketch.

Christianity: a Jewish Heresy Spreads Across the Eastern Empire.

Greek and Latin, East and West.

Persecution, Legal Establishment, Empowerment, and Retreat.

The Eastern Church, the Spread of Islam, and Expansion Northwards.

The Western Church of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.

Disputes over Control, and the Rise of a Continental Church.

The High Medieval Synthesis.

Later Middle Ages: the Era of Fragmentation.

Challenges and Ruptures: Renaissance and Reformation.

The Age of Competing Orthodoxies.

Challenges to Orthodoxy: Reason, EnlightenmlóH