Reddit reviews The Early Church (The Penguin History of the Church) (v. 1)
We found 16 Reddit comments about The Early Church (The Penguin History of the Church) (v. 1). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Penguin
Just jumping in and reading the Fathers will seem far more daunting than reading the Bible cover to cover. There's an absolutely vast corpus and the geographical and temporal range in which these works were written is huge.
My suggestion is to start with an introduction:
Chadwick, Henry. The Early Church
Duchesne, Louis. Early History of the Christian Church
Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 1
Then, once you've got enough background on an author (such as Irenaeus), check out a work by them (in Irenaeus' case, Against Heresies is a masterpiece). Or read a book specifically on that author. There's tons of stuff on Augustine, very little on Aphrahat. But ad fontes should be your standard. It's always best to read the Fathers themselves, but it can be really confusing to do so without any guidance.
I do this for a living, so if you want more specific recommendations or advice or guidance in reading an author, PM me.
Augustine's Confessions is pretty good, and relatively short.
The Early Church by Henry Chadwick is decent, shortish and pretty readable.
These are some of the better books I've accumulated in school:
If you only read one book on the subject it should be Robert Grant's Augustus to Constantine. It's a tremendous piece of scholarship, in-depth without being overwhelming or boring, and Grant does an excellent job of situating the rise of Christianity against the background of the larger Roman Empire.
Other suggestions:
Henry Chadwick's The Early Church is a classic survey, but it's a bit dated now. Still a very accessible introduction, cheaper and shorter than the Grant.
Peter Brown is, in my opinion, one of the greatest historians who's ever lived and he has written extensively on Late Antique Christianity. For this specific topic, I'd suggest The World of Late Antiquity or The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity. The advantage of Brown is that he's also a fantastic writer.
Another interesting source is Robert Louis Wilken's *Christians as the Romans Saw Them. While it won't give you a full survey of Christianity's rise, it provides the perspective of pagan thinkers reacting to the strange, barbarous, troubling religion that is Christianity. This one is more of a supplement to the other listed works, but I think it helps really understand Christianity against the religio-cultural background of the Roman Empire.
Finally, the great primary source on the subject is Eusebius's *History of the Church. Obviously Eusebius, the 4th century bishop, doesn't match up to modern standards of historical accuracy, but you still get a comprehensive picture of the rise of Christianity that's pretty darn fun to read. Read with a critical eye, it's a terrific source. Also, it's available for free online. (also Eusebius basically invented documentary history, so that's kinda neat)
If you want more recommendations, or want more specific suggestions, I'd be glad to help out. My strongest recommendation are the Grant and the Brown.
Generally histories:
Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years
Chadwick - The Early Church
Retrieving Nicaea
Specific Important Authors
Apostolic Fathers
Origen Note: Not everything he said is orthodox, but he was an extremely important figure.
Desert Fathers
Athanasius - On the Incarnation
Basil - On the Holy Spirit
Gregory of Nazianzus
John Chrysostom
Augustine - Confessions
Rule of St. Benedict
Gregory the Great
Maximus the Confessor
John Damascus
Did you mean Henry Chadwick? If that's the case, I second that one. I picked up the book on Amazon a few years back, and it was informative and very readable.
Sure. The first thing I did was read the primary sources and pretty much in chronological order. I began with the Apostolic Fathers (Michael Holmes has this edition with Greek and English). I then read some 2nd century stuff, especially Irenaeus. Cyprian, Tertullian, etc, were all important. The fourth century took me forever to read through. I probably stayed in the 4th century for a year.
For secondary literature, I'd recommend, in no particular order:
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition
J.N.D. Kelley, Early Christian Doctrines
Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (Chadwick is my doctoral grandfather, so to speak)
Adrian Fortescue, The Early Papacy: To the Synod of Chalcedon
Benedicta Ward's translation of The Sayings of the Desert Fathers
Less to do with Church history, but filling in some intellectual gaps:
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Called to Communion
Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (This may shock people that I recommend it, but I do like the nouvelle théologie every now and again)
I also welcome /u/koine_lingua to offer some of his own recommendations to give some balance if he'd like.
I read the History of Christian Theology: An Introduction as a college freshman.
Also:
Henry Chadwick's History of the Early Church
Owen Chadwick's The Reformation
https://www.amazon.ca/Early-Church-Emergent-Christianity-Revised/dp/0140231994
Rediscovering the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church by Michael Haykin
The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God by Robert Louis Wilken
The Early Church (The Penguin History of the Church) by Henry Chadwick
Early Christian Doctrines by J.N.D. Kelly
And of course, works such as On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius, and The Confessions by St. Augustine
It's hard to just jump into reading the Fathers unaided. I would suggest reading some introductions to Patristic thought while reading the Fathers alongside. For introductions, check out, in no particular order:
Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. I: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600)
Wilken, Robert Louis. The Spirit of Early Christian Thought
Chadwick, Henry. The Early Church
O'Keefe, John and R.R. Reno. Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible
As to which of the Fathers you should read:
Irenaeus, Against Heresies
Origen, On First Principles
Tertullian, Against Praxeas
Augustine, On Christian Doctrine
_, Confessions
___, On the Trinity
, Homilies on 1 John
Ephrem, Hymns (Check out McVey's translation)
Basil of Caesarea, Epistles 210 and 214
, On the Holy Spirit
Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word
Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History
The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity
Egeria's travel diary (the Peregrinatio Egeriae)
The Early Church by Henry Chadwick is a great brief intro to the first ~1000 years of Christianity.
Mostly just Church history. To start, I recommend The Early Church by Henry Chadwick and The Orthodox Church by Bishop Kalistos (Timothy) Ware.
The Penguin/Pelican History of the Church series has been a pretty standard text for a while, though they're a bit dated now. I found them very useful, although they cover such large swathes of history that they can only cover each topic very briefly. The Reformation Book covers the whole Munich thing in like one page - a topic that Dan Carlin covers in a four and a half hour podcast.
These books will give you the standard classical view of church history, and they won't give you the latest in controversial research. But they're also quite good at giving a neutral point of view.
This is book one of the series.
Off the top of my head, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Also,
How the Irish Saved Civilization is a great read, though not about Rome.
If you're into church history, The Early Church by Chadwick and The Reformation by Macchulloch are well-written and interesting
I'd recommend a couple of books as starters. The most basic is The Early Church by Henry Chadwick. That gives a solid, broad overview of almost the exact time period you have in mind.
From there, you can expand your reading a bit. Jaroslav Pelikan is one of the central contemporary authorities on Christian history, and his five volume magnum opus The Christian Tradition is probably as hefty a reference as any layperson will need. Elaine Pagels' studies extrapolating on the evidence afforded by the gospels is also fascinating stuff. I'd recommend starting with The Origin of Satan. Another is Rebecca's Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World by Alan Segal. The temporal scope of that one is much narrower, and it pays equal (if not more) attention to the origins of Rabbinic Judaism, but it's a strong source for understanding the initial import of Christianity.