# Church History



## Joseph Scibbe (Jun 30, 2011)

What is a good book(book set) on church history. Looking for something at medium depth and am not afraid of multiple volumes.


----------



## Andres (Jun 30, 2011)

I strongly recommend these two. Both cover church history from the Apostolic age up to the 20th century. You can read my brief reviews at the links provided. 

_The Story of the Church_ by A.M. Renwick 
_The Church in History_ by B.K. Kuiper


----------



## Joseph Scibbe (Jun 30, 2011)

If possible I would like one that goes on a Kindle. How about this one? http://www.amazon.com/Church-History-One-Pre-Reformation-Intellectual/dp/0310205808/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309476377&sr=1-3


----------



## Andres (Jun 30, 2011)

Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity by Mark Noll is another good one and it's on Kindle. I don't know anything about the one you mentioned above.


----------



## JM (Jun 30, 2011)

What I've been reading online over the years:

History of the Waldenses

History of Protestanism

The Papacy: Its History, Dogmas, Genius, and Prospects

this is=> The Church of God -CB and Sylvester Hassell-Contents or buy here, http://www.oldschoolhymnal.com/hassells.html


----------



## seajayrice (Jun 30, 2011)

Can't beat the price of Schaff's church history . HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH*


----------



## Matthew Tringali (Jun 30, 2011)

Not Reformed or anything, but a pretty standard work is The Story of Xnty (2 Volume) by Justo Gonzalez and I see it is available on Kindle. I like this set a lot for pretty plain language pure history book. Very easy to read.


----------



## Joseph Scibbe (Jun 30, 2011)

Matthew Tringali said:


> Not Reformed or anything, but a pretty standard work is The Story of Xnty (2 Volume) by Justo Gonzalez and I see it is available on Kindle. I like this set a lot for pretty plain language pure history book. Very easy to read.



I saw that but saw only 1 volume was available on Kindle.


----------



## Philip (Jun 30, 2011)

_Church History in Plain Language_ by Bruce Shelley is a good overview (though I would supplement it with _The Church of the East_ edited by John Holzmann and _20th Century Theology_ by Stanley Grenz and Roger Olson).


----------



## jawyman (Jun 30, 2011)

This is a very good book as well. I believe you can buy the kindle version of it. Also, if you have Logos, it come with the software, so you may already have it and not know it.

Amazon.com: Introduction to the History of Christianity: First Century to the Present Day- A Worldwide Story- People and Movements, 400 Pictures, Maps, And Diagrams (9780800629359): Tim Dowley: Books


----------



## Joseph Scibbe (Jul 1, 2011)

Andres said:


> I strongly recommend these two. Both cover church history from the Apostolic age up to the 20th century. You can read my brief reviews at the links provided.
> 
> _The Story of the Church_ by A.M. Renwick
> _The Church in History_ by B.K. Kuiper



Aha! I found The Church in History on Kindle and downloaded it last night. I am looking forward to starting it this weekend.


----------



## Reformed Thomist (Jul 1, 2011)

The Early Church by Henry Chadwick

Early Christian Doctrines by J.N.D. Kelly


----------



## dudley (Jul 1, 2011)

Joseph Scibbe said:


> What is a good book(book set) on church history. Looking for something at medium depth and am not afraid of multiple volumes.



When I left the Roman catholic church and decided I would become a Protestant , I read "History of Protestantism"by James A. Wylie The best book on church History I ever read. I became well versed in the Reformation and began to have a true Protestant conversion more so because of that book than any other.

The next book I read was "The Papacy:Its History, Dogmas, Genius, and Prospects" by Rev. J.A. Wylie, LL.D. I left the Roman catholic church because I was disalusioned with the current pope, Joseph Ratzinger. I became convinced as a Protestant that the papacy was an antichrist institution. It was after read this book , I renounced the Pope, the papcy and Roman catholicism as did the Protestant Reformers. I was convinced of the evils of the papacy and knew I had defintely become a Protestant in every way.


----------



## JM (Jul 2, 2011)

Dudley, I linked them above!


----------



## PuritanCovenanter (Jul 2, 2011)

Dr. Roy Blackwood liked Kenneth Latourette's seven volume series. But this is what is more readily available, 

http://www.amazon.com/History-Expansion-Christianity-Volumes-complete/dp/B000KTOS54/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1309580782&sr=8-4

.Amazon.com: kenneth latourette history of christianity


----------



## donk (Jul 3, 2011)

Dudley, 

Thank you for your posts in this and other threads. I have been searching for discussion of "Catholic" on these forums. As a doctoral student at a Catholic institution I have recently witnessed classmates leave the PCA for the Catholic Church and found myself posed questions as to why I am what I am by my Catholic friends and classmates. The whole question of Roman Catholicism has come alive for me as a result. Personally I love Charles Hodge's chapters V and VI of the Introduction to his Systematic Theology in which he lays bare the problems at the heart of the Catholic position. 

I want to thank you and Jason for pointing me in the direction of Wylie, a name my father had mentioned to me in passing when I broached the subject with him. I believe that we have fallen asleep to Roman Catholicism, and many have forgotten why it is they are who they are. Practically speaking I think many like myself have not taken Catholicsm seriously as a position in this day and age. We believed that Catholicism was finished and antiquated. But we ignore Rome's claims and fail to respond to them at our peril. I believe these older writers lived in a day more conscious of its ecclesiastical origins and more sensitive to its classical and Christian inheritance. They took Catholicism seriously because they recognized the weight of the Roman Church's claims and therefore the necessity of answering them. It is with great sadness that I see some bright Reformed men and women turn back to Rome in the name of tradition and church history when the whole time they are putting their faith in a human understanding of tradition and a human understanding of what the "Church" is rather than in the understanding of tradition and of the Church as revealed in God's Word.


----------



## elnwood (Jul 3, 2011)

Matthew Tringali said:


> Not Reformed or anything, but a pretty standard work is The Story of Xnty (2 Volume) by Justo Gonzalez.


 
Gonzalez is a standard Church History seminary text, and is excellent. It's true to its name in that Gonzalez tells history as if it were an unfolding story, and is very readable. It has more of an emphasis on Global Christianity than you will find in other texts. You can get the new edition in two volumes, or get the older edition in one combined edition very inexpensively

The other standard seminary text is Kenneth Latourette's "A History of Christianity." I've not read it, but people have told me that it is pretty dry reading, and also very dated. You can also pick it up very inexpensively.


----------



## Marrow Man (Jul 3, 2011)

These have already been offered, but Noll's _Turning Points_ and Shelly's _Plain Language_ are two very readable volumes (the format of Noll's book and the prose/style of Shelly are both very good). Another good volume (a bit more in-depth) is Williston Walker's _A History of the Christian Church_. I believe a new edition just came into print.


----------



## dudley (Jul 4, 2011)

*The Lie of Roman catholicism!*



donk said:


> Dudley,
> 
> Thank you for your posts in this and other threads. I have been searching for discussion of "Catholic" on these forums. As a doctoral student at a Catholic institution I have recently witnessed classmates leave the PCA for the Catholic Church and found myself posed questions as to why I am what I am by my Catholic friends and classmates. The whole question of Roman Catholicism has come alive for me as a result. Personally I love Charles Hodge's chapters V and VI of the Introduction to his Systematic Theology in which he lays bare the problems at the heart of the Catholic position.
> 
> I want to thank you and Jason for pointing me in the direction of Wylie, a name my father had mentioned to me in passing when I broached the subject with him. I believe that we have fallen asleep to Roman Catholicism, and many have forgotten why it is they are who they are. Practically speaking I think many like myself have not taken Catholicsm seriously as a position in this day and age. We believed that Catholicism was finished and antiquated. But we ignore Rome's claims and fail to respond to them at our peril. I believe these older writers lived in a day more conscious of its ecclesiastical origins and more sensitive to its classical and Christian inheritance. They took Catholicism seriously because they recognized the weight of the Roman Church's claims and therefore the necessity of answering them. It is with great sadness that I see some bright Reformed men and women turn back to Rome in the name of tradition and church history when the whole time they are putting their faith in a human understanding of tradition and a human understanding of what the "Church" is rather than in the understanding of tradition and of the Church as revealed in God's Word.



Donald I am sad to hear that some of your friends are returning to the Romanists and the pope. Roman Catholicism is a clever lie and deceit created by Satan to lure people from the truth of salvation as Christ intended and as handed down to us by the apostles. The devil will make a lie, Roman Catholicism, look like the truth and the truth ,Protestantism, look like a lie. The truth is however the Papist church of the pope is hemorrhaging many millions of members , large numbers in the United States and Western Europe have left Catholicism and renounced the pope and the Romanist church and become Protestant as I have. To be exact 15 million former Roman Catholics in the United States alone are now Protestant like me and many are Reformed Protestants, some of us are PB members. See my posts and let me know if there is any thing I can do to help sway others from defecting to the papist Romanist church and stay in the Reformed Protestant fold. 

Charles Spurgeon
on
Roman Catholicism 
"Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho." Joshua 6:26 
"Since he was cursed who rebuilt Jericho, much more the man who labours to restore Popery among us. In our fathers' days the gigantic walls of Popery fell by the power of their faith, the perseverance of their efforts, and the blast of their gospel trumpets; and now there are some who would rebuild that accursed system upon its old foundations. O Lord, be please to thwart their unrighteous endeavours, and pull down every stone which they build. It should be a serious business with us to be thoroughly purged of every error which may have a tendency to foster the spirit of Popery, and when we have made a clean sweep at home we should seek in every way to oppose its all too rapid spread abroad in the church and in the world. This last can be done in secret by fervent prayer, and in public by decided testimony. ………Reader, what can you do? What will you do?" 
From "Evening By Evening" by Charles Spurgeon
Uhrichsville, Barbour and Company, 1991.

1. The lie of The Mass
2. The lie of the role of Mary
3. The lie of Tradition over Scripture
4. The lie of Veneration (worship) of images
5. The lie of the false Sacraments
6. The lie of Purgatory
7. The lie to Paganism


----------



## donk (Jul 4, 2011)

Thank you Dudley,

You're right that there is a mass exodus of rank and file Catholics to Protestantism. I've known a few who did so who are not particularly theologically minded and have ended up in mainstream evangelicalism. These folks tell me that they simply weren't getting any teaching in the Catholic Church. The rituals no longer appealed to them. Then there are those like yourself who have seriously studied the issues and been led to reject Romanism as being in opposition to the teachings of Scripture.

But the world of conservative Christian academe stands in contrast to this, I would suggest. The young and clever are rejecting the informal worship of their parents' generation (the 60s and 70s) and returning to high church liturgy, incense, cathedrals, tradition, pictures of Christ, vestments, liturgical calendars etc. etc. I think Catholicism is attractive to many who are looking for a return to standards and solemn reverential worship, and who find "the right of private judgment" as historically upheld in the Reformed tradition to be a barrier to having the sort of Church they would wish for.

Converting to Catholicism is a fashion among the well-educated, particularly those like me who have devoted themselves to the study of the classical tradition. Some begin a Baptist, become Reformed, then Anglican, before ending up Greek Orthodox or Roman Catholic. Within the classical Christian school movement there is, in my humble opinion, often a failure to discern where pagan traditions inimical to Biblical Christianity have crept in. In our eagerness to rehabilitate the Medieval period of Church History from being labelled "The Dark Ages" we must not forget to balance that with a proper critique of the darkness that did prevail in that period.


----------



## Philip (Jul 4, 2011)

> Converting to Catholicism is a fashion among the well-educated, particularly those like me who have devoted themselves to the study of the classical tradition. Some begin a Baptist, become Reformed, then Anglican, before ending up Greek Orthodox or Roman Catholic. Within the classical Christian school movement there is, in my humble opinion, often a failure to discern where pagan traditions inimical to Biblical Christianity have crept in. In our eagerness to rehabilitate the Medieval period of Church History from being labelled "The Dark Ages" we must not forget to balance that with a proper critique of the darkness that did prevail in that period.



It may not, though, be an entirely bad thing for Protestants to affirm the true catholicity of our protest. I have long been comfortable with calling myself a reformed catholic. My heroes of the reformation are those, like Calvin, Bucer, and Cranmer, who recognized the catholic nature of the reformation movement and stood with those with whom they may have had minor theological disagreements while emphasizing their common cause for Christ. But even theologically, there is little in Calvin that cannot be found in Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, or Augustine. I think it important for reformed Protestants to be aware of their reformational heritage, but almost as important is that they be aware of their catholic heritage---because it is the Roman Church that has lost sight of the catholic faith, so boldly proclaimed in the creeds.


----------



## dudley (Jul 4, 2011)

P. F. Pugh said:


> > Converting to Catholicism is a fashion among the well-educated, particularly those like me who have devoted themselves to the study of the classical tradition. Some begin a Baptist, become Reformed, then Anglican, before ending up Greek Orthodox or Roman Catholic. Within the classical Christian school movement there is, in my humble opinion, often a failure to discern where pagan traditions inimical to Biblical Christianity have crept in. In our eagerness to rehabilitate the Medieval period of Church History from being labelled "The Dark Ages" we must not forget to balance that with a proper critique of the darkness that did prevail in that period.
> 
> 
> 
> It may not, though, be an entirely bad thing for Protestants to affirm the true catholicity of our protest. I have long been comfortable with calling myself a reformed catholic. My heroes of the reformation are those, like Calvin, Bucer, and Cranmer, who recognized the catholic nature of the reformation movement and stood with those with whom they may have had minor theological disagreements while emphasizing their common cause for Christ. But even theologically, there is little in Calvin that cannot be found in Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, or Augustine. I think it important for reformed Protestants to be aware of their reformational heritage, but almost as important is that they be aware of their catholic heritage---because it is the Roman Church that has lost sight of the catholic faith, so boldly proclaimed in the creeds.



I agree with my brother Philip completely. I left the Roman catholic church because the attempts of the reformers of Vatican II which hopefully would have eventually led Rome back to the true Gospel has been again uprooted and destroyed by the likes of Joseph Ratzinger who is trying to reintroduce the serious heresies and paractices of the pre vatican II church. I left and became a Reformed Protestant because I was returning to the 'catholic' church founded by Christ and the apostles. Those who look for the pagan practices of the Roman church becuase they are educated are being deceived by the devil, who I said in my earlier post 'makes the lie look like a truth and the truth look like a lie! Beware ! also of the papacy..it is a pagan and evil institution.....it is antichrist in its nature that is why I renounced the pope and the papacy when I left the Roman catholic church.


----------



## Joseph Scibbe (Jul 6, 2011)

elnwood said:


> Matthew Tringali said:
> 
> 
> > Not Reformed or anything, but a pretty standard work is The Story of Xnty (2 Volume) by Justo Gonzalez.
> ...



Picked up Vol 1 in paperback this weekend. Been a good thus far.


----------

