My New Years Wish
My one wish for this year is one I have had for many years…that people would take the time to study the history of our faith.
So my question is this…what would it take to get you interested in the study?
What resources do you find most helpful?
Audio courses or lists of books?
What can I do to get you started?
Link love…
Might have gotten more response if I’d opened comments….
$$$$$$, not everyone could afford a bunch of books, glad I got the Bible tho
Also, who’s version of History? The statues of those Men in their robes kinda reminds me of why I don’t like Institutional Religion where men get prideful due to their education and start separating themselves from the brethren with their fancy robes and such. The Apostles were fishermen and tax collectors, humble men even Pual considered his earhtly accomplishment dung. The So called fathers of the faith seemed to take a lot of Pride in titles and earhtly things.
SolRod,
Why do you look at the robes of the clergy differently than you look at a police officer in uniform or a doctor in a white lab coat? Uniforms are there so you can identify the person.
How about our military? Why are they so prideful and separate themselves from the common man they are suppose to be protecting.
Uniforms are actually a sign of being humble … you don’t get to choose what you want to wear, skinny jeans and a $200 Tommy Bahamas shirt, but a plain white alb.
Solomon,
Where did your Bible come from?
What processes went into shaping it?
How did your pet doctrines develop?
It is not those who study that are prideful, it’s those who believe they are capable in themselves to know all things…
As a cradle Lutheran converted Baptist and now renewal charismatic I have to study history just to prove that I am not the first crazy man to walk this path.
I should be more interested, but suspect that much of the history is written from a certain perspective…how to choose what to read?
The real way to study history is to study original sources. That saves you from secondary prejudices and interpretations. The classical way to study is the purest. Read the principles players of a matter and then go to the secondary sources.
But a good historian throws you deeply into the current of an era and causes you to taste the pressures of the times. Most things that we find unthinkable require immersion in context. A proper immersion makes prejudice seem reasonable and even makes us see oppressors as simple partisans. Until you can see monsters as ordinary people you cannot ‘get’ history.
I’m already interested in the history of Christianity. The main resource I’d like to have would be access to a university’s online library.
Hey, Mark: Where’s the beef? One would think that contrition would have an apology in it some where?
Clarification: The previous comment is owed to many different authors and is not intended to reflect any original thought by this one currently posting. 🙂
DavidH,
Here is a good online resource that has a lot of books scanned in from a lot of different universities.
https://archive.org/details/texts
You might find some interesting things there.
Here is another good resource.
https://openlibrary.org/
Derek, Thanks.
Thanks, Baby D!
I’ve been neck deep in studying church history for years and good historians are a different breed of cat.
The best ones work very hard to avoid bias because they are more devoted to their craft than their denominational leanings.
Michael what do you think of A History of Christianity [Paul Johnson]?
I haven’t read it in years, but from what i recall and some scrawled notes I made it’s not a volume I’d recommend.
The Story of Christianity Vol I&II by Justo Gonzalez is a good work on church history…. and cheap on kindle.
Two volumes I did enjoy A History of Christianity, Volume 1 &2. I bit try but very well researched.
Have been enjoying the Apocrypha, OT Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Apostolic Fathers of late, primary sources to watch the development of the first century theological milieu. Then I plan to read afresh through a clean unmarked Bible, following along with an audio version of it.
Justo Gonzalez has an excellent History of the Church in one volume. He has written other books as well(History of Christian Thought is very good).
Kenneth Scott Latourette wrote a very good 2 volume set of the History of the Church as well.
If you want to go to original source material, start with the Apostolic Fathers. You can usually pick up the Penguin paperback book of these for cheap.
Then read Eusebius History of the Church.That would take you up to @ 350AD.
If you can find it, I would also recommend Athanasius On the Incarnation linked here, or you find the book for cheap -: http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm
For audio, I would highly recommend looking into RTS on iTunes for Frank James’s series on Church History. He is an excellent teacher.
And don’t overlook books that may not specifically address Church History as well. I picked up an first edition of this book and it contains a wealth of information, some of it pertinant to the Faith: http://www.amazon.com/As-The-Romans-Did-Sourcebook/dp/019508974X
It was also a good, but a bit dry of a read.
Several years ago, doing undergrad work, I had several good online sources for Church History. I could only fin a couple, but these are really good. First, a summary of church history, then a ton of links:
http://www.ritchies.net/churchhi.htm
http://www.ritchies.net/links.htm
I also find that when people say “Church History” they are generally referring to the Early Fathers. Some of the more fascinating historical studies to me, that are often overlooked, are the Radical Reformation, the birth of Pentecostalism in the early 1900’s, and the Conservative Resurgence period of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Whatever Papias recommends, that’s what we ought to read.
I jsut looked at my own collection of Church history books and had to laugh. I seem to have stopped reading once a book reaches the Reformation. Volumes 2 of Latourette and Gonzalez have not even been cracked. For the one-volume church history books I see that the pages of the 2nd half have never been ruffled. The last 2 volumes of Jaroslav Pelikan are still in the original shrink wrap!
I guess that explains why you know so little about the Reformation. 😉
Yes MLD, I knew you would say that!
Fact of the matter is that I spent almost my entire adult life among the children of the Reformation and they were not wasted years, either. But during those years I neglected the history of the first 1000 years or so of Church history and now I am making up for lost time.
Actually, Baptist and CC churches are not children of the Reformation – they are more the children of Charles Finney and perhaps some influence from the 2nd Great Awakening.
MLD, see? That goes to show how little I know about the Reformation.
While Finney’s style has certainly been adopted by revivalists of all stripe, and the 2nd Great Awakening saw much growth in the Baptist and Methodist denominations, it would be impossible to say that Baptists are children of either.
My first ancestor to come to america was George Hamrick in 1731. He left Germany under persecution because he was a Baptist. That was around 80 years before 2GA, and he wasn’t alone.
Maybe MLD should read some more church history? 🙂
Weren’t the Baptists a longstanding tradition that predated the reformation?
Josh, I think your tradition goes way, way back.
My own relatives who have been Baptists for centuries came to North Carolina from England in the 1600’s. I don’t know what they were when they first got here but they have been Baptists for as long as any of them remember.
A couple hundred years pre-reformation that I am sure of, G. Tough to say before that.
Josh, I don’t know…. if you read the Wikepedia article on Baptist origins (I know, I know) it seems to suggest otherwise.
I mean, I don’t care if it turns out that the Baptists pre-date the Reformation but I am interested in historical accuracy.
G may be thinking of the Waldensians – not related to Bill Walden…that I know of… 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldensians
Thanks Xenia!
Because there is that whack-a-doodle version of Baptist origins that claims all the non-RC groups in history (Cathars, Montanists, etc) were actually crypto-Baptists. (The “Trail of Blood” theory of Baptist origins which I assume you, like 99 percent of Baptists, reject.) But there are degrees of this theory, a tendency to latch onto any group of “re-baptizers and RC-resisters” and call them Baptists. Which may be the truth of the matter, for all I know.
I don’t get it, even if Baptist pre date the Reformation – they still are not children of the Reformation.
The Reformation came about for very particular reasons. Just because one is not RCC does not mean that they hold Reformation theology.
My daughter, the editor, requires me to cite 2 non-wikipedia sources for anything in a family discussion. Calls it “journalistic integrity” 😉
It was my fault for labeling all Protestants (also a disputed term) as Children of the Reformation. In Ortholandia, there are three groups: The One True Church (that’s us), the Papists, and The Children of the Reformation.
Fascinating to check history. It’s a window into what survived or what was preserved.
“History goes to the victors”
~ an uncredited source
MLD is in error.
The Anabaptists were as much a part of the Reformation as Lutherans or the Reformed.
The central doctrine of the autonomy of the local church was breathed in that time.
“Anything in quotes, from the Internet, especially in italics, is subject to scrutiny.”
~Abraham Lincoln, Unpublished Works, Vol IV
When I am talking about roots, I do mean Ana-baptists, and many groups that I would greatly disagree with theologically, but they contributed to the foundations of what we believe today.
The Waldensians certainly contributed to Baptist thought, particularly in this area. There is a town an hour from here, settled by the Waldensians fleeing from persecution.
http://www.visitvaldese.com/attractions/trail_of_faith.html
Southern Baptists are interesting in that their are two particular streams which converged in the 1800’s to create the SBC. The Sandy Creek tradition, from the Anabaptists, and the Charleston tradition from the Reformers.
“Back to work.”
~g’s boss
“I don’t get it, even if Baptist pre date the Reformation – they still are not children of the Reformation.”
That wasn’t the question. You said Baptists were children of 2GA. My point was that they could not be, being centuries older.
I do not think that anabaptists are baptists. They all may re-baptize, but i do not think the 2 groups are one.
The two groups are not one, but Anabaptists were certainly a precursor to the Baptists.
That being said, regular old baptists predated 2GA by at least a couple hundred years.
Anabaptist – not baptists – at the very best are step children of the reformation. they were the very radical end of the reformation and pissed off everyone who came before them.
They were like your teen aged kids drunken friends who showed up at the end of the party and caused the police to be called. 🙂
MLD,
You’re wrong. 🙂
I think the Schleitheim Confession laid much of the ground for Baptistic movements.
Again, the primary doctrine of the autonomy of the local church was a response to state religion which persecuted them for their baptistic beliefs.
How can Anabaptists be step-children of something they predated? Of course, they were persecuted by everyone, Rome and the Reformers alike.
Michael,
“Again, the primary doctrine of the autonomy of the local church was a response to state religion which persecuted them for their baptistic beliefs.”
I beg to differ – the autonomy of the local church was not a point of the reformation – at least not the Lutheran reformation which preceded all the reformed and more radical reformations (which were just tag alongs to the real thing.) 😉
MLD,
That is a really simplistic and only partially true depiction of the anabaptists.
Yes, there were some wackos, but they also developed beyond that.
Having just studied Luther and the Peasant revolt, I would speak in more humility if I were you…all of our fathers did some really awful stuff.
Josh, let me clear up my original statement in reply to Xenia. Baptist and CC churches are not reformational churches.
They may have their roots before or after – but their roots are not in the reformation.
MLD,
The Lutheran reformation only stands alone in the mind of Lutherans…the anabaptists and Reformed were part of that whole period as well.
You look at Luther’s role in the peasant revolt with today’s eyes (which no reputable historian would do). You must look at it with 16th century reformation eyes and realize that had Luther supported the peasants it would have brought down the whole reformation.
Sometimes you have to choose your devil.
I think any religious group that believes in the Five Solas (and the Baptists and CC surely do) are in some way Children of the Reformation.
That is partially true, as I have shown above, but there is definitely a baptist stream directly descended from the Reformation. Oddly, my gggg-grandfather was from that stream out of Germany. He was what was called a hard-shelled baptist, and was definitely a product of the reformation.
Calvary Chapel probably is mostly rooted in Azusa street, 1905, right?
“I think any religious group that believes in the Five Solas (and the Baptists and CC surely do)”
That is true. There is no way you can look at a modern baptist church and not see signs of the reformation.
MLD,
You assume too much.
While you are correct that without the political support of the rulers the Reformation would have collapsed, it is fair to ask the questions about Luthers biblical defense of slaughtering 50,000 peasants and his vociferous endorsement of the rulers doing so.
Could he have mitigated or mediated the carnage?
Good historians ask questions…
“his vociferous endorsement of the rulers doing so.” is a loaded statement
I don’t know if ‘your’ historians brought out the point that Luther worked endlessly trying to persuade the peasant leaders to take another course – that was his role mitigating and mediating.
“Against the Murdering, Thieving Hordes of Peasants”
That’s pretty vociferous…
Are you saying some were not?
Let me ask this – we will bring it to modern days. If a 300,000 person militia of black panthers, common folks at that but with revolt in their hearts today wanted to overthrow the Oregon government would you support them?
The peasant revolt was not Luther’s doing, he was not a party to it. The peasants felt emboldened by Luther’s reformation – they thought they had a freedom they did not have.
MLD,
That analogy is so far off as to be laughable.
If you can defend that, I’m not really interested in going on with the discussion.
On another topic pertaining to Church history…
The past year I have been interested in Medieval Christianity in the West as compared to Orthodoxy in the East. I’ve been reading original sources, mostly written by female mystics (Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and others) to try to figure out when Western Christianity became so different in culture and practice from Eastern Christianity. Somewhere, somehow, Catholicism got all caught up in venerating the physical body of the crucified Christ and you have quite horrible mystical “revelations” of anchorites (female) wanting to climb into the wounds of Christ and drinking blood from His side and so on.
I have an idea (not original to me for sure) that since the Roman Church insisted on Latin, and since Medieval European women (usually) could not read, they resorted to developing a lively imagination about the Lord. They knew He loved them and they were supposed to love Him so they made up rather maudlin romances about Him. In the East, the Scriptures were in the vernacular and more women were literate so they didn’t need to resort to their own fevered imaginations to understand what a proper loving relationship with the Savior looked like.
(In my experience with CC women’s ministries there was also the tendency to talk about crawling into Jesus’ lap and so on. What’s up with that?)
In the early Middle Ages Western and Eastern Christianity were very similar. In fact, early western Catholicism bears a closer resemblance to Orthodoxy than it does to modern Catholicism.
Well anyway, this is what I have been working on the past year. I have to come up with a thesis topic to complete my studies at the SF Institute and this may be the topic I pursue.
Anybody got any ideas?
But that is what Luther faced. Thomas Munster rallying the peasants against the nobles. Luther was not a part of this mess – anymore than you are in my example of the Oregon overthrow … but because of your prominent position as the Phoenix Preacher, i am now asking you to take a stand.
Which side are you choosing. Remember, if you choose the black panthers then you are supporting unlawful mass revolt against the common order. If you denounce the black panther revolt, you are authorizing full use of the Oregon National Guard with tanks and rockets. I would say that the Phoenix Preacher is now in a no win situation and will be judged by history.
Remember, right before this Luther had been locked up in Wartburg the past 3 yrs – he didn’t need this non sense.
Xenia,
Are you primarily concered with women during the Medieval period, or the period in general?
Cause I’m thinking the differences between East and West are as far apart as …… East and West 😉
“(In my experience with CC women’s ministries there was also the tendency to talk about crawling into Jesus’ lap and so on. What’s up with that?)”
I am forever grateful that my wife had no interest in joining the CC women’s groups and that I never pushed her.
Xenia,
I would only expose great ignorance if I tried. 🙂
MLD,
It was far more complex than you posit… and making it into poor old Marty and the evil peasants simply isn’t accurate.
Papias, well, Celtic Christianity in the British Isles (esp. Ireland) seems very similar to Eastern Orthodoxy, being based on monasticism, etc. and early correspondence between later Anglo-Saxon bishops and the Pope seem very Orthodox in tone. Then we start getting all this “worship of the wounds of Christ” devotional material. So there’s that.
I think the development of the doctrine of Purgatory had a very negative impact on the RCC because it turned everything into a system of bribes.
Papal supremacy also figures in but to be honest, in the East the Patriarch of Constantinople was greatly revered, even though not considered infallible or supreme.
Later on (past Med. times) the Renaissance had an impact on the Christian West but not so much on the East. Same with the Enlightenment.
I think my paper will be an attempt to demonstrate how all these things worked together to produce two such very different Churches that have a common origin.
I still have a year and quite a few conversations with my adviser before I have to narrow it down to something manageable. At this stage I am just reading a lot of interesting stuff and going “hmmm…..”
I think (if I may think out loud here, thank you all for listening!) that I am trying to put my finger on the point in time, possibly limited to the British Isles, where the culture (as viewed through letters, revelations, sermons, etc.) sound Orthodox and when they begin to sound distinctly Catholic and what caused the shift.
Michael,
“and making it into poor old Marty and the evil peasants simply isn’t accurate.”
Now you are making me wonder if you really read anything other than a comic book on the topic or if you have read anything i said.
I made the point that Luther tried to work with both sides. It was not Luther against the peasants. Luther was stuck in a spot he should not have been. He chastised the nobles for not keeping the peace and for mistreating the peasants AND … as I said earlier, he tried to work with the peasants on using a different tactic.
But Luther did not have the option you do, he could not opt out, and as you have admitted, the reformation would have been defeated completely and we would be speaking Latin today in our church services today.
Xenia,
Ah.
I have always been interested in Celtic forms of the faith. My favorite prof in university did his thesis on Irish monastics, so some of that rubbed off on me. With that in mind, ever considered the role of women in Celtic Christianity?
Ever read Bede and does he mention any female groups?
Now I have to go find some Anonymous 4 music…. 😉
Xenia,
Does Russian Orthodoxy sound any different than Syrian Orthodoxy?
Ugh, horrible verb/ subject agreement in #75.
Most of the Germans I know are from a Catholic background. I imagine most Germans today are secularists, but among believers, what % are RC and what % are Lutheran?
MLD, same Liturgy, only different language. And falafels at coffee hour instead of pirog.
Papias, I have read Bede and he mentions convents w/ nuns. St. Bede is the source of some of the letters between Ango-Saxon bishops and the Pope that I referenced earlier. They sound very Orthodox.
In fact, Papias, I would put St. Bede in the “sounds Orthodox” column.
MLD,
The latest study I’m dong is from the chair of history at Stanford. You, as usual, resort to insults.
Comparing the peasants to the Black Panthers is ludicrous, Luther’s paper was awful and resulted in more deaths and I’m done now.
Then replace the peasants with low wage workers, I think that MLD makes sense.
We judge history from our own time and what we think should have happened usually flavored by modern sensibilities that had no meaning to people back then and would not have worked then anyways.
We tend to ignore the political and social realities of the time they lived in which is often more complex than people want to make it.
No scenario that MLD presents will sit well because it will never be “analagous” in our minds because…..wait for it….this time is not that time.
And Michael, you brought up the Peasant’s Revolt and told MLD to chill.
Defend yourself.
Replace “peasants” with Michael Servetus and replace Luther with Calvin….
Xenia, have you thought about doing your thesis on the English nunneries? Cause that sounds interesting.
Bede never lived more than a few miles from where he was born(so the story goes), so his intellect astounds me in that respect.
I remember my prof telling me about the Irish monks going to France/Germany and causing so.much trouble that those priests wrote to the Pope to protest. He laughed and laughed….and he was an ex Priest himself.
“SolRod,
Why do you look at the robes of the clergy differently than you look at a police officer in uniform or a doctor in a white lab coat? Uniforms are there so you can identify the person.
How about our military? Why are they so prideful and separate themselves from the common man they are suppose to be protecting.
Uniforms are actually a sign of being humble … you don’t get to choose what you want to wear, skinny jeans and a $200 Tommy Bahamas shirt, but a plain white alb.”
MLD,
I don’t wear skinny jeans but I do wear tight jeans, can’t stand the baggy look
Thanks Derek, I was just going to change my modern day example to all Walmart workers. 300,000 of them to over throw the oppressive Oregon government.
I am still waiting for Michael to take sides.The point is that Luther did not kill a single peasant.
Michael – how much blame did your Stanford guy place at the feet of Thomas Muntzer – the guy who actually did get the peasants to revolt?
A lot of things that went on back then look weird to those of us who live in a Constitutional Republic.
We don’t have a grasp of what it is to live under the myriad of different types of government that have existed throughout time and tend to look down our nose on people from those times for making some decision that probably was cut and dried for the times they lived in.
We live in a place that looks almost like nothing that has existed or actually some places that still exist today. I know, I have had to interact with a culture that seems ultimately very barbaric to my western sensibilities, but probably makes sense to those who live in it.
Wow, almost wish I hadn’t looked Munster up, found a sermon of his online.
That guy was a work.
Muntzer took Luther’s idea of Sola scriptura to heart without the ameliorating effect of an established church (be it the Lutherans or the Calvinists) to temper it.
THIS is why, Sol Rod, the institutional church is important!
Lets start at the top…of this thread.
MLD made a ridiculous and inaccurate statement about the Anabaptists.
I countered that all of our doctrinal forefathers did some things that we are less than proud of and used Luther and the peasant revolt as an example.
I could have used his garbage about the Jews or his sanctifying of Phillips bigamy, but as I’ve been studying the one lately, it’s the one I chose.
I certainly wasn’t defending the lunatic Munster or simplifying a very complex situation, nor was I launching into a discussion of the peasants revolt in fullness.
The point was this…we all should walk in historical humility as none of us have clean hands.
Luther, Calvin and the rest of the Reformers were giants…but they were also flawed giants and men of their time.
Xenia,
I think what Muntzer did was take what Luther said spiritually and applied it in the temporal realm … and led the peasants astray.
Luther early in the reformation spoke that no one could rule over the christian – speaking spiritually – sort of the CC phrase “God has no grandchildren”
Muntzer took it to the peasants and applied it to them as christians in the world – not a good mix.
It had nothing to do with any of the solas.
MLD, you are probably right. I don’t much about this episode in history.
“MLD made a ridiculous and inaccurate statement about the Anabaptists.”
If you are talking about my comment that the Anabaptist weren’t part of the Reformation, I still stand by that. I think you will always find them aligned with what was called the radical reformation – which was a different reformation and an entity that had different goals.
The Anabaptists were as much against the Lutherans and Reformed as they were the RCC. You cannot align the 2 together. If you read the Lutheran Confessions, especially the Formula of Concord, you will see where the Lutheran reformers stood against the anabaptists.
My statements were true and didn’t warrant the tossing of dirt.
I have Anabaptist on both sides of my family tree. GGF’s. Mennonites on my Dad’s side and Amish on my mother’s. Actually have a picture somewhere of a group of the male Mennonites, on the back everyone’s name is Issac, Ezekiel, Hezekiah, etc..
They sure were smiling a lot for such an old picture.
I haven’t studied in depth on this, but from what little I know, it has never seemed that what he did was all that bad on that front.
Like I said, modern lenses do not make for good looks at history in my eyes and we often sell our forefathers down the river in an attempt to fit them into “modern” social and political constructs that simply do not fit the times they actually lived in.
Hey, I ain’t mad at anyone and it was my ancestors being called the red-headed step child. 😉
“Anabaptist – not baptists – at the very best are step children of the reformation. they were the very radical end of the reformation and pissed off everyone who came before them.
They were like your teen aged kids drunken friends who showed up at the end of the party and caused the police to be called. :-)”
That…is neither accurate nor fair and looks like dirt to me.
The reality is that had Luther and the Reformed listened to the Anabaptist teachings on the separation of church and state a great many of the sins of both would have been avoided.
“That…is neither accurate nor fair and looks like dirt to me.”
Hey, but it is funny. 😉
Look, Calvin even wrote severely against the Anabaptist. i doubt that he is going to be calling them Reformation brothers neither.
The anabaptist were the first anti authoritarian ‘just me and my Bible’ folks around. there is nothing reformational there.
MLD,
You are contentious for sport.
The Reformation was about breaking from the errors and abuses of Roman Catholicism and returning to the Bible as the primary authority for doctrine and practice.
The Anabaptists were part of that…and part of what God was doing in that time.
Watch the movie the “Radicals”
Anabaptists are still taking that teaching and running with it farther than I believe it was ever meant to go though.
They, for a large part, separate themselves a bit too much.
Not as true as it used to be for the Mennonites, but the Amish and the Hutterites still mainly go for that whole separation thing.
Learned about this man tonight from my friend who happens to be his great grandson.
He was a fascinating man.
Wondering if anyone here has ever heard of him. Maybe Xenia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Voronaev