Interpreting Christian History: The Challenge of the Churches' Past - Hardcover

Cameron, Euan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0631215220 ISBN 13: 9780631215226

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005

Synopsis

This book explores the theological lessons to be learnt from 2000 years of Christian Church history.

• An exploration of the theological lessons to be learnt from the difficult history of the Christian churches over the past 2,000 years
  
• Opens with an introductory essay on the whole of Church history, making the book suitable for lay readers as well as students
  
• Combines historical, historiographical and theological analysis
  
• Reunites the disciplines of theology and Church history
  
• Concludes that we can only ever perceive a facet of Christianity given our historical and cultural conditioning
  
• Written by a distinguished Church historian.

About this title

Book Description

For 2,000 years the Christian churches have developed, disagreed with each other, and divided into separate and often hostile factions. This book, written by a distinguished Church historian, explores the theological lessons to be learnt from this difficult history. The author identifies a recurring historic tendency to identify the Christian life with one or another specific means to holiness, such as ascetic discipline, martyrdom, or the cult of the Eucharist. He examines how historians of Christianity gradually came to terms with the idea that the Church could change, and even lapse into serious error. He also shows how historical perspective has played a key role in many of the most important theologies of the past 100 years. The book concludes that a living Christianity is never absolutely timeless, and that we can only ever perceive a facet of its total revelation, conditioned as we are by our own historical and cultural context.

About the Author

Euan Cameron is Academic Dean and Henry Luce III Professor of Reformation Church History at Union Theological Seminary in New York; and Professor in the Department of Religion of Columbia University. He was previously Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His recent publications include The European Reformation (1991), Early Modern Europe (1999), and Waldenses (Blackwell, 2000).

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0631215220
• ISBN 13: 9780631215226
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 308