The Penguin History of the Church

The Penguin History of the Church

The Early Church (Vol. 1) - Henry Chadwick
The Reformation (Vol. 3) - Owen Chadwick
The Church and the Age of Reason, 1648-1789 (Vol. 4) - Gerald R. Cragg
The Church in an Age of Revolution (Vol. 5) - Alec R. Vidler

After reading Mangalwadi's book about how the Bible shaped western civilization, I realized that he knew a lot more about my history than I did.  So I dove into this history series to try and supply what my college Western Civ class distinctly omitted.

I'm not sure how to review history books, other than to affirm, "Yep, that happened."  For a professed fiction junkie like myself, I found the reading surprisingly enjoyable, with plenty of spice and humanity, rather than the oppressively academic laundry list of people and events I was afraid of encountering.  Owen Chadwick's account of the Reformation in particular brings that turbulent period to life and reveals Chadwick as an empathetic yet incisive observer. Each of the historians brings their own lens to the period they cover, and it is interesting to read their opinions, interpretations, and judgments alongside the historical narrative.  I suspect the authors are all British, since the later volumes especially seem to focus on the Anglican church rather heavily, and the Greek and Eastern Orthodox churches are almost entirely ignored after Volume 1, but I guess you can't cover everything in a relatively short space.

My take-away points from this educational romp:

1) It is almost frightening to see how quickly human pride, bickering, vindictiveness, and the need for control crept into the early church.  Though I guess it is impossible to keep human nature out of anything involving humans, it's still crazy to me that an oppressed and persecuted people professing God's love so quickly had "leaders" rise up and cause deadly internal strife over minute points of doctrine.  More fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, I suppose -- we have to be equal to God, fully understanding everything and pinning Him down to our own definitions.

2) It is equally frightening to see how quickly the same problems crept into each successive reformation and evolution of the church.  I had no idea that early Lutherans and Calvinists were still burning heretics at the stake -- again, you'd think the testimony of their own martyrs killed by the Catholic church would be enough to drive that notion out -- but it's a case of me judging history by my own understanding.  It was inconceivable to that world that the religion and the state be at all separate. Religious dissent was a form a treason. And before I get quick to judge, we still have types of "thinkcrimes" to some degree in our society, even they are more subtle in form and punishment.

3) I truly did not have a concept of how much time has passed between Jesus' life, death, and resurrection and the current day.  Vol. 1 covers 400 years - that is longer than the U.S. has been a country - and then Vol. 3 (I didn't have Vol. 2 on the Middle Ages) picks up 1,000 years later - and that is still 500 years ago. So many people lived and died, so many changes happened, and so many things stayed the same. It's mind-boggling.

4)  In the face of so much human frailty, error, violence, time, and sin, it is a revelation of God's grace to see how the Gospel was preserved clean through flawed humans and even more flawed institutions. To hear writers from the first century AD quoting the same scriptures that we are reading today is just phenomenal. The thread of grace through history shines brightly and remains unconquered by humanity's best attempts to eradicate it.

Arbitrary rating: 4 out of 5 threads of grace