Interpreting Christian history : the challenge of the churches' past
"Expert historians are not always as good at self-reflecting on their craft at practicing that craft. Euan Cameron, however, is an exemption as shown by his careful assessment of what the historians of this and previous generations have both taken for granted and spelled out explicitly in writing the history of Christianity. As one might expect from a distinguished student of the sixteenth century, Interpreting Christian History is particularly good on what the rise of Protestantism meant for understanding the Christian past. Mark Noll, Wheaton College"--Back cover
xii, 292 pages ; 24 cm
9780631215226, 9780631215233, 9781405145411, 0631215220, 0631215239, 1405145412
57286148
The unfolding of Christian history : a sketch
Christianity : a Jewish heresy spreads across the Eastern Empire
Greek and Latin, east and west
Persecution, legal establishment, empowerment and retreat
The Eastern church, the spread of Islam, and expansion northwards
The Western church of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages
Disputes over control, and the rise of a continental church
The high medieval synthesis
Later Middle Ages : the era of fragmentation
Challenges and ruptures : Renaissance and Reformation
The age of competing orthodoxies
Challenges to orthodoxy : reason, enlightenment and revolution
The era of Romanticism and its implications
The multiple crises of the twentieth century
Reflecting on the process of historical development
Constantly shifting emphases in Christian history
Means to Holiness Become Ultimate Goals
Asceticism : giving things up for God
Expecting miracles
Martyrdom
Sacrament and sacrifice : the Eucharistic church
The company of heaven : the communion of saints
Purity of doctrine and instruction : the school of faith
The Christian community and its membership
Reflections on shifting priorities
Church historians' responses to change and diversity
The early church : Eusebius of Caesarea
Early medieval church history : Bede
The high middle ages : a monastic chronicle
Renaissance historiography : rhetoric and scepticism
The Reformation and the rise of a sense of history
The rise of reformed schools of church history
Confessional histories in the age of orthodoxy
Writing Christian history in the shadow of the Enlightenment
Toward "modern" histories of Christianity
Postmodern and liberation-oriented approaches to Christian history
Summary and conclusions
Some theologians reflect on the historical problem
The historical background to historical-critical theology
The challenge of Ludwig Feuerbach to modernizing theology
German liberal Protestant theology of the ineteenth and twentieth centuries
Responses to liberalism in the 20th century
Thomism, mysticism and neo-liberalism : some Roman Catholic responses
Cultural diversity, liberation, postliberalism and postmodernity
Drawing the threads together