How to Use This Book
How to Use This Book
This book aims to introduce you to historical theology as an important and interesting subject. It is also a very large topic; to do justice to it, at least five substantial volumes would be required. This book is an introduction to its aims and themes. It aims to pack as much useful information into a single volume as is realistically possible, using approaches that have been tried and tested in classrooms in Europe, North America, and Australasia. The book makes use of some material already presented in my best-selling work Christian Theology: An Introduction, which has been reconfigured for the specific purpose of introducing students to the discipline of historical theology. Although much new material has been added and some existing material rewritten, the basic approach and some contents of this earlier work have been retained.
The guiding principle that lies behind this volume is selective attention. It is like a map, giving you a good idea of the landscape, filling in enough detail to help you make sense of things, and making it easier to move on to a more detailed engagement with any of its features. It is assumed that you do not have the time to become familiar with every aspect of the history of Christian thought, but want a general familiarity with its most important aspects. The approach adopted is to begin by painting a scene using some very broad brush strokes and then filling in the fine detail in selected areas of importance (the 30 Case Studies). This will allow you to come away from reading this book with a good general understanding of the development of Christian theology. Despite its brevity, however, the work includes a lot of material – considerably more than is included in most introductions of this kind.
The book opens with an Introduction that tries to explain what historical theology is, how it fits into the study of theology as a whole, and why it is a subject worth studying. You are strongly recommended to read this before proceeding further, as it will help you get a sense of orientation as you approach the subject.
To break the material down into manageable sections, the history of Christian thought has been divided into four broad periods. While this division of history is useful, it is important to realize that it is slightly arbitrary at points. We need to heed the warning of the Cambridge historian G. M. Trevelyan (1876–1962) on this matter: “Unlike dates, periods are not facts. They are retrospective conceptions that we form about past events, useful to focus discussion, but very often leading historical thought astray.” These four divisions are:
Chapter 1
Early Christian Theology: The Patristic Period, c.100–451
Chapter 2
The Middle Ages and the Renaissance, c.500–1500
Chapter 3
The Reformation and Post-Reformation Periods, 1500–1750
Chapter 4
The Modern Period, 1750 – The Present Day
These divisions, though a little arbitrary, have proved useful in a teaching context, in that they break a large body of material down into manageable segments, each with its own distinct historical “window.” Each chapter contains two major sections, as follows:
If you are using the book to teach yourself historical theology, it is recommended that you read the chapters in the order in which they are presented. If you want to do nothing more than gain an overview of each period, you need only read the historical overviews; the detailed engagement with specific themes in the case studies can be left for another time.
This volume works on the basis of “explain it the first time round.” Thus the material on the medieval period assumes that you know about the patristic period, the material on the sixteenth century assumes that you know about the medieval period, and so forth. However, if you are using the book in conjunction with a taught course, you can easily work out which sections of the book relate to the ordering of material used by your teacher. If in doubt, ask for guidance. A substantial section entitled “For Further Reading” will allow you to identify books or articles that will be helpful to you if you want to follow up on anything that interested you and that you would like to explore in greater depth.
If you come across terms which you do not understand, you have two options. First, try the glossary at the end of the work, which may give you a brief definition of the term and refer you to a discussion of the relevant material in the text. Second, try the index, which will provide you with a more extensive analysis of key discussion locations within the volume.
Finally, be assured that everything in this book – including the contents and the arrangement of the material – has been checked out at first hand with student audiences and readers in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The work is probably about as user-friendly as you can get. However, both the author and publisher welcome suggestions from teachers and students for further improvement, which will be included in later editions of the work.