Brief History of Christianity

Carter Lindberg is Professor Emeritus of Church History at Boston University. His recent publications include The Pietist Theologians (2004), The Reformation Theologians (2001), The European Reformations Sourcebook (1999), and The European Reformations (1996), all available via Blackwell Publishing.

"There is much to praise here. Lindberg manages to explore many key events, issues, people and developments in a very concise manner. The text is very strong on theology and institutions with helpful historical context. I particularly appreciated the attention to Roman Catholicism as well as Protestantism in the modern period. The book is brief, but the history of Christianity is vividly portrayed here in all of its drama and complexity." Jeff Tyler, Hope College"This is a wonderful book: accessible, concise, clearly written, and thoroughly absorbing. Lindberg has chosen to present the Christian tradition through the history of its principal ideas, but these ideas are grounded in the flesh-and-blood reality of persons, their struggles for faith and for power, and the social and political worlds they inhabited. Reflecting the author’s erudition and wit, this cogent distillation of a complex past will serve beginners as an ideal introduction and old hands as a thought-provoking synthesis." Christopher Elwood, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary

• Preface x1 The Responsibility to Remember: An Introduction to the Historiography of Christianity 1Tradition and Confession 42 The Law of Praying is the Law of Believing 6The Roman Empire and its Political Achievements 10Hellenization and its Cultural Achievements 10Development of the Biblical Canon 123 Sibling Rivalry: Heresy, Orthodoxy, and Ecumenical Councils 17The Structure of Tradition: Confession and Doctrine 18Doctrine as a Key to Christian Memory and Identity 19Heresy 21Jesus’ Relationship to God: The Doctrine of the Trinity 22From the Council of Nicaea to the Council of Constantinople 26Jesus and Humankind: Christology 284 The Heavenly City: The Augustinian Synthesis of Biblical Religion and Hellenism 35Augustine’s Path to Conversion 40Augustine’s Theological Contributions 41Augustine and Donatism 44The Pelagian Controversy 475 The Development of Medieval Christendom 51Monasticism to Mission 52The Emergence of the Papacy 54Papacy and Empire 59The Gregorian Reform 61The Investiture Conflict 66The Crusades 686 Faith in Search of Understanding: Anselm, Abelard, and the Beginnings of Scholasticism 71Universities and Scholasticism 73Contributions of Early Scholastic Theology 797 The Medieval Church 84The Cultural and Theological Development of the Sacraments 84The Rise of the Mendicant Orders 89The Rise and Decline of Papal Authority 95The Decline of the Papacy 97Conciliarism 998 The Reformations of the Sixteenth Century 104Context 105The Reformation in Germany 108The Reformation in Switzerland 112The Reformation in France 116The Reformation in England 117Scandinavia and Eastern Europe 120Early Modern Catholicism 121The Reformations’ Aftermath 1229 Pietism and the Enlightenment 125The Enlightenment 135The Catholic Church and the Enlightenment 14110 Challenge and Response: The Church in the Nineteenth Century 143The Churches and the French Revolution 144From the French Revolution to the Congress of Vienna 145Church Reform in Germany: The Prussian Union and its Consequences 146Inner Mission and the Social Question 147The Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century 152Pope Pius IX and Vatican I 153From Kulturkampf to the Anti-Modernist Oath 154Nineteenth-Century Theology 155The Awakening 157Theological Currents 158Liberal Theology 16011 The Christian Churches since World War I 163New Formulations in Protestant Theology 164The Churches during National Socialism 167Developments in the Catholic Church after World War I 171The Ecumenical Movement 173Back to the Future: Christianity in Global Context 179Appendix: Periodization 181Glossary 189Further Reading 195Index 204