Reddit reviews The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation
We found 18 Reddit comments about The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
HarperOne
> hard from an intellectual point of view
I'm sorry, I had to snicker when I read this. There is no other organization that has more intellectual underpinnings than the Catholic Church.
If you are having problems reconciling Scripture (exegetically or hermeneutically), you need to start reading academic books, such as those by Brown, Meier, Gonzalez, and Martos, just to name a few.
Helpful for me was Thomism and modern Thomists such as Feser.
> wild discrepancies in the NT
I'm reading The Story of Christianity right now by Justo Gonzalez. He addresses this in particular. It reminded me we need to understand that these discrepancies were not recently figured out. In fact, the discrepancies were discussed and debated all across the church, from Gaul to Egypt. But the strong conviction that the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) were genuine and could be verified trumped any discrepancy. In other words, the church elders included them in some respects because of their differences.
I'm reminded that these men and women, or even the diabolical old men church manipulators-tricksters/saints had every opportunity and plenty of time to change the NT to explicitly suit their purposes. I mean, why not take the differing genealogies and birth accounts and make them match. Revisionist history wasn't uncommon at all. Why leave all those discrepancies when you can edit it up nice and tidy? I'm convinced it's one reason: they had to protect the integrity of the accounts passed down to them.
I know this doesn't necessarily help you in your current situation. I've been where you are often in my life, been a believer for 25 years. Christianity is sometimes a long plodding in the same direction, sometimes it's being so on fire that folks come from miles just to watch you burn.
As far as the OT goes, I'm right there with you. I don't even feign to grasp the multifaceted character of God recounted through those centuries.
Justo Gonzalez has a [two volume history of Christianity] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Story-Christianity-Vol-Reformation/dp/006185588X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372722148&sr=8-1&keywords=Justo+Gonzalez), the first covers up to the reformation. Its a pretty good overview, and covers the councils and other key events well.
I'm not an expert on early Christian worship, but as far as I know, there's no reason to doubt that these liturgies were largely or entirely written in the fourth century. But bear in mind that these guys are from the fourth century. That's early by some standards—it's much earlier than the Reformers—but it's not as though these liturgies came from the apostles.
There was some considerable development in how Christian worship was done in the fourth century after Constantine's conversion. Based on 1 Corinthians and the Didache, it seems that very early worship took place in private homes in the context of meals (i.e., not liturgies like Chrysostom's or Basil's). It's not until the third century that we have any evidence for there being any dedicated church buildings (but even then, it's a converted home), and it's not until the fourth century that we see evidence for worship resembling these liturgies. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't worship like they did in the fourth century. But it also doesn't mean that everyone needs to.
If you're interested in learning more, any good survey of church history will have some discussion of worship. Justo Gonzalez wrote one aimed at laypeople. For more of a focus on liturgy, I understand that The Oxford History of Christian Worship is quite good.
/u/unheeding has made an excellent suggestion. I really like how Macullough weaves in the Israelite history as essential to understanding the Christian history. If I might widen the variety here, however, if by only a little bit:
Justo Gonzalez is fantastic. He has a two volume, recently re-edited series on the history of Christianity called The Story of Christianity. Here's Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
Gonzalez also has a short book that focuses on the history of Christianity through the development of doctrines called A Concise History of Christian Doctrine which, as far as I can gather is a much condensed version of the another three volume set that I've never read. Gonzalez is fun, approachable, and honestly a really good read.
I am also in the middle of Christianity: A Social and Cultural History and it is quite good so far, though I've not gotten into it quite so much as Gonzalez.
I am also in the middle of an Old Testament history book for my Hebrew Bible course called Understanding the Old Testament which has a really exciting philosophy of doing history and I'm really into it. This book has me at least as excited as Gonzalez, but Anderson's approach is a very responsible one which still evokes power and mystery revolving around the development of the Hebrew canon as well as those things that we simply cannot know, even if we can try to take a really good shot at it.
I hope this helps.
Justo Gonzalez's two volume The Story of Christianity is one of the best I've run into. Gonzalez is an excellent scholar of Christianity and furthermore was the youngest person to ever earn a PhD in Historical Theology from Yale when he got his.
Volume I
Volume II
Shirley C. Guthrie's Christian Doctrine, Revised Edition is a fairly accessible, and broad introduction to systematic theology.
As for church history I think Justo L. Gonzalez's The Story of Christianity is a great overview.
Full-throatedly endorse Justo L. González's engaging and readable survey, The Story of Christianity.
Reviews here.
The Story of Christianity by Justo L. Gonzalez (It's a two volume set, link is to the first book).
For when you get tired of heavy theology, take a look at Gonzalez's church history books. They're both thick and look scary, but they're incredibly smooth and light reading.
Here's the first, takes you all the way to the reformation:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/006185588X/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/190-3299584-6991427
It gives a great overview, though mostly centres on the West. The perspective helps you understand a lot of the church, why certain beliefs became so prevalent after the events of the New Testament, and is seen as a legitimate source of info by secular sources (first read the two volumes for an undergrad course). They're a ton of fun
The Story of Christianity by Justo Gonzalez would be a fantastic place to start. Im sure its not perfect, but I have been reading it for the past few weeks and its been great.
Check out The Story of Christianity V1 by Justo L Gonzalez
As far as books, I recommend the following as a general introduction:
And then these if you're interested in the history of theology:
IIRC it was The story of Christianity Vol 1
I know certainly that I learned it in the class wherein this was the primary textbook.
www.thebravereviews.com
The First 3000 Years is definitely a great book to get a good grasp on key events. It's easy reading, but a lot of pages.
Gonzalez's books (there are two) are also considered classics in this field.
>JWs have little in common with the teachings of Arius.
The heresy that Arius was guilty of was teaching that Jesus was a created being, that was subordinate in time to the Father. JWs teach that Jesus was the Archangel Michael, a created being, and are therefore guilty of the same heresy.
>The council of Nicaea brought the false teaching of the trinity doctrine.
The doctrine of the Trinity is easily recognizable in scripture if one reads what is actually written rather than deciding that they know better and just changing it. If you do some reading on the first ecumenical councils, the context in which they occurred, and what they were a response to, I think you'll find that their doctrinal determinations were appropriate and necessary to prevent further heretical teachings. I'd suggest The Story of Christianity Vol 1. The view that JWs and Mormons hold of the creeds and the ecumenical councils don't make any sense historically and only exist to reinforce non-biblical theology.
>Eventually other false teachings such as "Mary the Mother of God" crept into Christianity, none of which our first century brothers and sisters ever did.
Agree that the Marian doctrines are false, which is why I'm not a Catholic. The Reformation was an adequate response to that problem. The fact that later heresies crept into the church does not mean that the early creeds are incorrect. You'd have to actually prove that.
>Willing to change a teaching if found to be improper or unsupported by the scriptures.
Except you've re-written the scriptures to support your position and don't accept other translations as valid. That's not a good faith position, that's stacking the deck.
>Psalm 36 says Jehovah is the source of life. Jesus certainly is the way and the truth and the life. Jesus having been taught by his Father. Jehovah is the God who sent the light (truth) into the world that we might be saved.
Read what you wrote and then read Jesus' statement again. You're having to equivocate to minimize what Jesus actually calls himself in order to fit it into your theology. This is no different than when Mormons qualify God's role to being "just the God of this earth." They have to read their belief back into the text, which is exactly what you're doing here.
>Jesus quotes Psalm 82:6 which in its entirety says... “I have said, ‘You are gods, All of you are sons of the Most High. Yes, Psalm 82 is about the unjust judges of Israel. Is Jesus unjust? No. He is the Son of the "Most High God". Psalm 83:18 tells us that Jehovah (YHWH יהוה) is "The Most High God". Moses said at Deuteronomy 18:15... Jehovah your God will raise up for you from among your brothers a prophet like me. You must listen to him. The Apostle Peter confirms that this prophet was Jesus at Acts 3:22.
This doesn't remotely address my issue with how you mishandled Jesus' application of this scripture. Jesus is calling the Jews who are persecuting him unjust judges. When God is describing the judges as gods in Psalm 82, he's mocking them. Please address the issue rather than drowning it in unrelated tangents.
>The scripture never says that Jehovah "The Most High God" would become flesh.
Sure hints at it though. Emmanuel means "God with us." That a person named Emmanuel would be also be called "Wonderful, Mighty, Counsellor, and everlasting Father is what we colloquially refer to as a clue :)
>God can not die.
The eternal, unchanging, singular substance that is Yahweh? Agreed. The incarnation of that being into human flesh? That's what all of Paul's theology and Jesus' application of the tetragrammaton to himself "Before Abraham was, I AM." is pointing to. I trust them before I trust the Watchtower society.
>He sent his only-begotten son in our behalf. Jesus as an obedient son (Hebrews 5:5)
Hebrews 5 is about the role of the High Priest and the function of that role in atoning for the sins of the people. The argument in this passage is that Jesus, as the Son, is both High Priest forever, negating the need for any other intercessor, and the God to whom reconciliation must be made. He is both the priest entering the tabernacle when God traveled with Israel, and God dwelling in that tabernacle. Or, going back to the name Emmanuel and the notion of atonement being a healing of the rift between Creator and creature, God with us, at last.
>is accomplishing all the work his Father gave him to do (John 4:34).
John 4 is about Jesus establishing the importance of His mission. Building the kingdom, which he explicitly instructs the disciples to do when he tells them immediately after this that He sent them to reap, now, that for which they did not labor, is more important than anything of this world. The context in which he is explaining this is an opportunity to explain the condescension He's subjected himself to in order to bring about the Kingdom.
>John clears this debate with his words at Revelation 19:13 where Jesus is given the title "The Word of God".
How do read that as the assignment of a title? In context we're told that "he has a name that no one knows but himself" and is called instead "The Word of God." That treatment of the Name is identical to how the Israelites treated יְהוָֹה. They wouldn't say YHWH, they would say Adonai as a placeholder. Ask any Hebrew speaker today to read you the Shema, which is the most important prayer in Judaism, and they'll render it as; Shema Israel. Adonai eloheynu , Adonai ehud! "Hear, o Israel. The Lord our God (interestingly, the plural form) the Lord is one!" Even in their most important prayer, the Name is too sacred too utter.
>The personal name of the Almighty God Jehovah (YHWH יהוה) occurs in the scriptures around 7,000 times. As far as I'm concerned, every bible that has removed his name from their pages has 7,000 + mistakes.
See my comment above about the name of God. יהוה is unpronounceable in Biblical Hebrew (no vowels) and is verbalized as Adonai or Ha Shem (the Name) The closest word to these in Koine Greek is κύριος which we render as LORD in deference to the reverent handling of God's name. All those places the NWT is replacing יהוה with Jehovah are a) mocking the relationship between God and Israel, and b) doing nothing more than any other translation is doing with the word LORD, you just have less linguistic justification for it.
>Your version of John 1:1 contradicts itself and verse 2. The Word can not be with God and be God.
That's the point John is making. This is an explicit reference to the Trinity. More importantly, in every document scrap we find of John 1, from either the Alexandrian or Byzantine text types, the rendering is the same. So either you have to argue that John wrote it down wrong, or that it means something that couldn't be understood in the context of 2nd temple Jewish ideas of the nature of God. Given the reaction that the Pharisees have to Jesus when he applies the Tetragrammaton to himself later in John and, given that this is a Gospel, the purpose of which is to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom and the atonement to all mankind, it seems fairly self evident that John chose his words carefully. Especially in light of [John 1:3] where John ascribes the entirety of creation to the Word. Or [John 1:4] where he uses the language you'd referenced in Psalm 36 to attribute to Jesus what David had attributed to God alone. John pretty clearly means to indicate that the Word is YHWH.
>The created Jesus was made both Lord and Christ by God (Acts 2:36)
Lord here is κύριος, the same as every rendering of יהוה in the Septuagint. And Peter is clearly playing with the wording as he cites Psalm 110:1, with the church reacting in horror as they realized that God Himself was crucified. Remember, these were people who had all witnessed the resurrected Christ, so their reaction to this declaration is not to the idea that the Messiah had been crucified, but that the Lord had been. So horrified that all 3000 of them were baptized and repented immediately after the sermon.
You'll notice that for every scripture reference you've used there's a perfectly (I know you'll disagree) valid way to exegete the text without adding anything to it. Every verse, understood in context, does something other than what you think it's doing when you use it as a prooftext. If JW scholarship were done on the basis of what the text actually says, we'd have more common ground, but you simply can't get to the conclusions you reach without wholesale changes to the meaning of words and attributing meaning that can't be read from the text itself.
u/versebot
If you are looking for a good work on the development of the church from its inception to the modern era that is approachable from a lay level, I would recommend Justo Gonzales's two-volume The Story of Christianity.
I used it in my undergrad and found it quite enjoyable.