Church History

I've been debating acquiring some some of recorded lectures available through the Regent College Bookstore, but given that I'm currently trying to save money I instead did a little searching around on the web to see what else was available.

I figured that I would share with you one of the resources that I've discovered thus far: a set of lectures on Church History. At the moment I've grabbed all of the MP3s corresponding to the apostolic church, the early church, and the period wherein Christianity was officially adopted by the Roman empire.

Comments

Anyone have any other good resources on this topic to mention?

Currently I'm about 60% of the way through Mark Noll's "History of Christianity in the United States and Canada", and have a copy of Henry Chadwick's The Early Church sitting on my bookshelf awaiting reading.

There are several volumes of Phillip Schaff's History of the Christian Church kicking around the house, but from the small sections of one volume that I read, I was not impressed by the author's reasoning.

Inheritance Preserved was a somewhat decent history of the Canadian Reformed Churches, though Rev. VanOene's writing style is a bit frustrating to follow because he jumps around the timeline. I also felt that the amount of detail he went into kept decreasing.

I'll admit that I'm biased against books written by people from the CanRC. I've generally found that there's not enough detachment, and that too often they follow the assume-the-conclusion approach. Good, rigorous proofs, and also the presentation of opposing points of view are things that I often find to be lacking. Rev. VanOene's stance on the Psalms, for example, was one argument of his that I had trouble respecting for such reasons.

I've never actually taken a look at the book, but I'm wondering if he's getting a little too specific if he's only including the CanRC, given that there are a number of churches out there that are considered sister churches. What I'm more looking for is a history of (schools of) thought, as opposed to a history of events. I don't know if I can justify the $90, but something like this seems kind of interesting (hopefully the link works).

I also felt that the amount of detail he went into kept decreasing.

As a general rule in history the closer you get to the present day, the more difficult it is to distinguish what is important, and be able to see trends.

I haven't read any of his other books, but I agree that rigorous proofs are always good (more recent versions of the Book of Praise contain more reference texts in the sidenotes), and it's also nice not only to be aware of opposing viewpoints, but also to know who holds those viewpoints. In mathematics, for example, there are many proofs which exist that can be referenced in extended formulas so that you don't have to reprove the basic concepts each time.

He did briefly touch on the Free Reformed Churches in Australia in the second or third edition.

Your hyperlink didn't seem to work.

The advantage to books written by people from the CanRC is that they are written exactly from a CanRC perspective. If the book is written from a different perspective, readers need to be extra careful to read discerningly. Although it's good to know what others think, a non-CanRC author naturally thinks that his viewpoint is correct and feeds it to you as truth.

What I would like to see, is a book of all the denominations, with each denomination categorized with a number to indicate similarity to CanRC. Each denomination would take up maybe two pages: description, history, confessions, similarites, differences.

The advantage to books written by people from the CanRC is that they are written exactly from a CanRC perspective. If the book is written from a different perspective, readers need to be extra careful to read discerningly.

... but, correspondingly, if you read a book from a CanRC you need to read extra critically so that you don't let unbiblical ideas slip past, or too-readily dismiss opposing arguments when they're not clearly disproven.

... but, correspondingly, if you read a book from a CanRC you need to read extra critically so that you don't let unbiblical ideas slip past, or too-readily dismiss opposing arguments when they're not clearly disproven.

That applies regardless of who the author is. With a CanRC book, the probability is less.

Consider that one of the reformation ideals though was 'sola scriptura'. CanRC authors are not infallible, and I think that they tend to define things a little too rigidly at times.