A Brief History of Christianity

Preface x

1 The Responsibility to Remember: An Introduction to the Historiography of Christianity 1

Tradition and Confession 4

2 The Law of Praying is the Law of Believing 6

The Roman Empire and its Political Achievements 10

Hellenization and its Cultural Achievements 10

Development of the Biblical Canon 12

3 Sibling Rivalry: Heresy, Orthodoxy, and Ecumenical Councils 17

The Structure of Tradition: Confession and Doctrine 18

Doctrine as a Key to Christian Memory and Identity 19

Heresy 21

Jesus’ Relationship to God: The Doctrine of the Trinity 22

From the Council of Nicaea to the Council of Constantinople 26

Jesus and Humankind: Christology 28

4 The Heavenly City: The Augustinian Synthesis of Biblical Religion and Hellenism 35

Augustine’s Path to Conversion 40

Augustine’s Theological Contributions 41

Augustine and Donatism 44

The Pelagian Controversy 47

5 The Development of Medieval Christendom 51

Monasticism to Mission 52

The Emergence of the Papacy 54

Papacy and Empire 59

The Gregorian Reform 61

The Investiture Conflict 66

The Crusades 68

6 Faith in Search of Understanding: Anselm, Abelard, and the Beginnings of Scholasticism 71

Universities and Scholasticism 73

Contributions of Early Scholastic Theology 79

7 The Medieval Church 84

The Cultural and Theological Development of the Sacraments 84

The Rise of the Mendicant Orders 89

The Rise and Decline of Papal Authority 95

The Decline of the Papacy 97

Conciliarism 99

8 The Reformations of the Sixteenth Century 104

Context 105

The Reformation in Germany 108

The Reformation in Switzerland 112

The Reformation in France 116

The Reformation in England 117

Scandinavia and Eastern Europe 120

Early Modern Catholicism 121

The Reformations’ Aftermath 122

9 Pietism and the Enlightenment 125

The Enlightenment 135

The Catholic Church and the Enlightenment 141

10 Challenge and Response: The Church in the Nineteenth Century 143

The Churches and the French Revolution 144

From the French Revolution to the Congress of Vienna 145

Church Reform in Germany: The Prussian Union and its Consequences 146

Inner Mission and the Social Question 147

The Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century 152

Pope Pius IX and Vatican I 153

From Kulturkampf to the Anti-Modernist Oath 154

Nineteenth-Century Theology 155

The Awakening 157

Theological Currents 158

Liberal Theology 160

11 The Christian Churches since World War I 163

New Formulations in Protestant Theology 164

The Churches during National Socialism 167

Developments in the Catholic Church after World War I 171

The Ecumenical Movement 173

Back to the Future: Christianity in Global Context 179

Appendix: Periodization 181

Glossary 189

Further Reading 195

Index 204