Church History

If you are looking for a very brief overview of church history written by an expert in the field, you could do much worse than Justo Gonzalez's 95-page paperback, Church History: An Essential Guide. Gonzalez is familiar to many, especially via his very readable two-volume The Story of Christianity (1984-85) as well as his three-volume A History of Christian Thought (revised in 1987). I should mention also a helpful reference tool, Essential Theological Terms (2005). Church History: An Essential Guide is helpful for its concise yet complete overview. After having taken various church history courses, the last being about 8-10 years ago, I found this volume beneficial as a refresher to remind me of the big picture. As if 95 pages wasn't a short enough span in which to compress 2000 years of history, Gonzalez actually opens with a 10-page high-level overview of church history, then uses that overview to structure the rest of the volume. Helpful lists of suggested readings follow each chapter. A deficiency is the absence of any maps or charts. I am not recommending this volume as a quick fix for ignorance of church history. It would be helpful, though, as a refresher volume for a busy pastor (or college / seminary professor whose field is not church history) to help cement the big picture of church history in one's mind. I also suspect it would be valuable for a novice -- it's the sort of thing that might be good to assign as preliminary reading for, say, a one- or two- semester course in church history or history of Christian thought.

This review was originally a comment left under Rev. Michael J. Quist's review, but I felt it necessary to include it as a review. (See also Louis A. Decaro Jr's helpful comment which I have included at the end of my review.) First, I just wanted to say that for 95 pages, this little outline packs a punch. Anyone who has read more from the same author is appreciative of the scholarship and scope that goes into his work. As such, the author's ability to provide a framework on the annals of Christian development is extremely valuable in that he gives you the big picture first. Such an introduction to the subject is extremely helpful for those who have a hard time trying to process dates and learning names without first having an answer to the question "Why is this relevant?" Now, on to Rev. Quist's review. Quist is alluding to some invisible, unexplained standard of what should "spark the imagination." As I see it, anyone who isn't using the book for the express purpose of "prepping" him or herself for further research in the first place is, perhaps, guilty of intellectual pretense, i.e., trying to gain a little knowledge with the vested interest of claiming to be an expert on Church History...because, after all, they just read chapter 6 titled "Conquest and Reformation" [which encompasses all of 10 pgs., including a suggested reading list and a lot of unused white space on page 76]--and now they can tell you (in a nutshell) what the Reformation was all about. If one doesn't pick up where this small text leaves off, it isn't the author's fault; it's the reader's for failing to follow up what was the author's clarion clear intention--continuing Church Hist. research using the present text as "an essential guide." (The author states plainly on page 9: "Since this book is no more than an outline, it is suggested that you choose at least one of the surveys [suggested readings] and use it to amplify what is said here. Again, this book should not be used as a substitute for those fuller surveys, but rather as a guide to them.") And as for the claim that the text fails to whet the interest of the reader towards further study, the author of a text like this never has that responsibility; in fact, the author assumes this has been done already. Justo Gonzalez simply meets the interested student and guides him or her through the rudiments of what should be expected along the historical journey. As such, I fully agree with the comment left by Louis A. Decaro Jr. under Rev. Quist's review--which I include now: "With all due respect to Rev. Quist, to fault this book for supposedly failing 'to spark the imagination or to challenge the reader to do further research' is highly subjective and certainly unfair. This is more than a 'decent attempt' by an excellent scholar and prolific contributor to Christian academics and spirituality. Why would anyone presume that a guide and overview has the burden of sparking imagination and challenging readers to do fu

This was a nice, brief (very brief) overview of the history of Christianity. It sparked an interest in history that I never thought I had before, and it laid the groundwork for the history courses that I will have to take at some point. I recommend it for those that don't know much about church history and wish to learn as well as for those that might be taking an intense course in church history.

If you're truly interested in church history, this should not be the only church history book that you read. I don't even think it should be the first church history book you read. But I do think that the more church history you read, the more you will appreciate how the author has distilled the most important events and people in church history over the past 2000 years into a concise book. This book is written by an author whose name I kept coming across as I've been purchasing and reading church history books over the past couple of years, and although I haven't read his two volume church history work, I was glad to see that he'd also written such a small, approachable book. Reading this book gave me a sense of what events and people are generally regarded as the most important ones to focus on, and it gave me a framework to understand all the details that I had come across in all the other books. If you're looking to get a graduate degree in church history, this book will probably be useless to you. But if you're just a person of faith who needs some help sifting through the massive amount of history for a few key historical names and events, this book will give you good points of reference for further reading and study. (By the way, if you're interested in church history details, there are a lot of resources online as well, such as: http://chi.gospelcom.net/centuries/ but, like I said, this book will help give you a framework to understand all the details.)

Summing up the history of the Christian church, which spans 2000 years, in a mere handful of pages is no easy task. Any history is necessarily selective -- even the most detailed of analyses of particular events or the most comprehensive of encyclopedic tomes will by design have to include only part of the story, and exclude a great deal.Justo Gonzalez is a name well known in church history circles; there are few more qualified to make the kinds of selection judgements required for a brief overview of church history, and he does this fairly well. 'Church History: An Essential Guide' is part of a series of Essential Guides put out by Abingdon Press, the object of which is to give key topics and subjects a brief but complete outline for introduction, reference, and refresher uses. In fewer than 100 pages, Gonzalez provides a concise yet useful summary of church history.The first chapter is a summary of the summaries -- in one page for each of nine sections, this is the most basic of outlines of church history. The subsequent nine chapters look at church history according to time period, as follows:- The Ancient Church (the origins to 313)- The Christian Empire (313-476)- The Early Middle Ages (476 - 1054)- The High Point of the Middle Ages (1054 - 1303)- The Late Middle Ages (1303 -1453)- Conquest and Reformation (1453 - 1600)- The Seventeenth and Eighteen Centuries- The Nineteenth Century- The Twentieth Century and the End of ModernitySeveral of the dates signify that serve as chapter division points are key turning points in church history -- 313 was the year of the Edict of Milan (which, ironically, though a major division point for the chapters, is never explicitly explained); 476 is commonly held to be the date of the fall of the western Roman Empire; 1054 is the year of formal division between East and West in Christendom, etc.Each chapter discusses both theological and worship/liturgical practices. After the East/West split, the book is almost exclusively Western in subject material, only occasionally referencing developments in Eastern Orthodoxy (a trend fairly common in church histories generally, although Gonzalez does do a bit more of such referencing than many). Each chapter also has a listing of selected and suggested readings -- given the admitted lack of detail due to space requirements, Gonzalez states that this introduction is meant to inspire readers to seek further information (often from Gonzalez's own well written church histories). There is no index in the book, which is a drawback for those who might want to use this book as a reference tool. However, the book is well-written and concise, so making notes for one's own use in the back pages would not be a bad idea. This is a book designed largely for the busy person in mind -- the reading is simple without being simplistic; there are not too many names and terms to wade through, and the whole of the book could be read in but a few hours, making church history readily