A History of the Christian Church [Hardcover]

Williston Walker (Author), Richard A. Norris (Author), David W. Lotz (Author), Robert T. Handy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1985

Since publication of the first edition in 1918, A History of the Christian Church by Williston Walker has enjoyed outstanding success and recognition as a classic in the field. Written by an eminent theologian, it combines in its narrative a rare blend of clarity, unity, and balance. In light of significant advances in scholarship in recent years, extensive revisions have been made to this fourth edition. Three scholars from Union Theological Seminary in New York have incorporated new historical discoveries and provided fresh interpretations of various periods in church history from the first century to the twentieth. The result is a thoroughly updated history which preserves the tenor and structure of Walker's original, unparalleled text.

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About the Author

Williston Walker was born in Portland, Maine, July 1, 1860, the son of a distinguished Congregational minister. He received his A. B. degree from Amherst College in 1883, was graduated from Hartford Theological Seminary in 1886 and received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Leipzig in 1888. He succeeded Woodrow Wilson as associate professor of history at Bryn Mawr College. He later taught church history at Hartford Theological Seminary. In 1901 Yale University called him to succeed George Park Fisher as Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History, a position which he held until his death in 1922. The Reformation, Ten New England Leaders, Great Men of the Christian Church, and A History of the Christian Church are among his distinguished works.

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Chapter 1

The General Situation

At the birth of christ, the lands which surrounded the Mediterranean Sea were under the political control of Rome, whose empire embraced not only the coastal territories but their hinterlands as well. Bounded by the ocean and by the Rhine and Danube rivers to the north of the Mediterranean, it encompassed North Africa and Egypt and stretched in the East to the borders of Armenia and of the Persian Empire.

In the century and a half before the appearance of Christianity, the sway of the Senate and People of Rome was extended from Italy to include not merely Gaul, Spain, and North Africa in the West, but also, in the East, the Hellenistic monarchies which had succeeded to the empire of Alexander the Great. This time of expansion coincided with an era of growing conflict and instability in the social and political life of the Roman republic. The assassination (44 B.C.) of Julius Caesar, carried out by a party which feared his subversion of traditional republican institutions, was followed by civil wars which affected all parts of the territories ruled by Rome. It was generally with relief and hope, therefore, that people greeted the final triumph of Octavian, Caesar's nephew and adopted son, whose task it became to reconstitute the Roman state and to reform the administration of its provinces. Preserving the form of republican institutions, Augustus (as Octavian was officially and reverently named in 27 B.C. by the Senate) eventually concentrated all effective power (imperium) in his own hands, receiving lifetime status as tribune of the people and then as consul, with the title "leading citizen" (princeps). Acting with this authority, he brought order to the government of the provinces and relative peace to the whole of the Mediterranean world.

The imperial system which Augustus thus established embraced peoples of many languages and cultures. In most regions of the empire, the basic political and social unit was -- or came to be -- the polis, a term commonly but inadequately translated into English as "city." This was a corporation of citizens tending the affairs of a modest territory whose heart was an urban center of greater or smaller size. Under Roman aegis, such civic corporations -- which were ruled oligarchically for the most part -- were responsible for their own local affairs as well as for the taxes which supported the imperial establishment and its armies. Each city thus provided for the worship of the god or gods who were its patrons, for the administration of justice, and for the welfare of its citizens and other residents. Each was a focus of local pride, with its economic roots in the surrounding countryside.

Put together as it was out of a multitude of ethnic, cultural, and religious groupings, the empire was held together by a common political allegiance, by economic and commercial interdependence, and by a shared higher culture. Politically, everything depended upon Rome, its emperor, and its armies, both for the maintenance of internal order and for the protection of the outer frontiers of Mediterranean civilization, where most of the legions were stationed. Within the empire, the principal source of wealth was the land and its products, and agriculture was the chief industry. Communities distant from the Mediterranean and its tributary rivers lived for the most part on local produce, but the cities of the seacoast -- and especially great cosmopolitan centers like Rome -- were dependent on a lively trade in the staples of life: grain, wine, and olives. North African grain fed the population of Rome as, at a later period, Egyptian grain transported from the seaport of Alexandria sustained the inhabitants of Constantinople. Italy itself was a center of viniculture, and its wines were exported extensively. The Mediterranean cities, then, which were the core of the empire, were increasingly bound together in a nexus of commercial relationships.

The unity and cohesion of the empire, however, depended also upon the existence of a common higher culture -- the "Hellenistic" culture which grew up in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.), as Greek language, education, and civic institutions were diffused through the eastern Mediterranean world. Even Rome, in the century and a half before the birth of Christ, became a cultural and intellectual tributary of the Greek tradition. As Greek became the daily speech of city-dwellers in the East, it also became a normal second language for educated persons in the West, where Latin was the common tongue. Other languages -- Aramaic, Coptic, Punic -- by no means disappeared, but they tended more and more to become languages of the uneducated and of the rural population. In this way, Greek science, Greek religious philosophy, and Greek art and literature enriched and were enriched by other traditions and created the possibility of a shared world of cultural and religious values for the urban civilization of the Mediterranean area.

In this complex, variegated, and remarkably sophisticated world, religious concerns, beliefs, and practices were central in the lives both of individuals and of communities. At the same time, however, the religious currents of the time were diverse. To speak in general terms, one can distinguish three broad categories of religious belief and observance. First, there was the traditional religion of the family and community gods -- what one might call the "civic religion" of the Roman-Hellenistic world. Second, there were the so-called "mystery cults." These were for the most part oriental cults which had their mythic roots in local fertility rites, but which, in the cosmopolitan world of the Greek-speaking empire, underwent a transformation and became voluntary brotherhoods which offered their initiates salvation from the trammels of Fate and Fortune. Finally, there was the way of life which sought human fulfillment and blessedness through the pursuit and practice of philosophical wisdom: a wisdom founded upon criticism of the traditional gods of the Greek pantheon, but capable, as time went on, of offering a "demythologized" version of traditional religion. In practice, these different styles of religion coexisted peacefully, and some individuals were, to one degree or another, involved in all three of them. They responded, however, to different needs, and to some extent they presupposed differing perceptions of the human situation.

On one matter, however, the various types of religion were at one. People in the Roman world were acquiring -- had, indeed, for the most part already acquired -- a new picture of the cosmos. Gone was the flat earth and overarching heaven of ancient myth. Educated and half-educated persons alike now saw the earth as a sphere set motionless at the center of things. Around it in their orbits moved the seven planetary spheres, and around this whole system moved "the heaven," the realm of the fixed stars. To the ancients, however, this cosmos was no mere machine. They perceived it rather as an ensouled -- that is, a living -- thing, in which orderly change and motion were maintained by divine Mind. The world was pervaded by life, and the gods who inhabited the heaven and the planetary spheres were the manifestations or representatives of the ultimate divine Power which extended to all things, even to affairs in that sector of the cosmos -- earth -- which was farthest removed from the divine realm.

Traditional religion in the Roman-Hellenistic world was a public and social affair, an affair of family and community. Since human well-being depended at every moment on the good will of the gods, the cosmic powers, religion sought their help for the common concerns of life: the growing of crops, the conduct of business, the difficult enterprises of war and diplomacy. Its rites were age-old and traditional, seldom rationalized, and conducted by the normal leaders of the community: the head of the family or the elected magistrates of the city. It used divination, dream, and oracle to seek the will of the powers; it used prayer and sacrifice to gain their alliance.

It is in the setting of such traditional religion that one must understand the phenomenon of emperor worship or worship of the state that grew up in the Roman Empire. The triumphs of Roman arms and the benefits which the imperial order conferred on the Mediterranean world convinced the Romans themselves, and most of their subject peoples too, that Roman power was a manifestation of the power of the gods -- that Rome had a divine mission. Augustus himself, conscious that the imperial city's destiny could only be fulfilled if she maintained her covenant with the gods, undertook a revival of traditional religion. Furthermore, just as he erected an altar to the goddess Peace in the Senate-House in Rome, so he followed earlier eastern precedent by encouraging a cult of the goddess Roma -- the divine power manifested in the conquering and ordering work of the Roman state. A similar outlook lay behind the establishment and growth of the cult of the divine emperor -- whose actual origins lay in the East and not in Rome itself. When first permitted in Italy, this cult took the relatively modest form of veneration of the "genius" of the emperor (that is, of the divine alter ego of the human ruler), or else of the "deification" of an emperor after death. Roman sensibilities did not originally permit the declaration that an ordinary human being was himself a god; only an acknowledged madman like Caligula (37-41 A.D.) could have taken such a step. In the provinces, however, and especially in the East, such restraint was less common. There, following age-old custom, worship was offered to the emperor in his own person as a living manifestation of the divine. This cult evoked no deep personal piety, widespread and carefully organized as it eventually was; it belonged to the realm of formal civic religion, and its role, as people generally recognized, was political. It did, however, represent a real conviction: that the basis of political order lay in th...

Product Details

• Hardcover: 768 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 4th edition (May 1, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684184176
• ISBN-13: 978-0684184173
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #359,151 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Resource for the Serious Student, August 3, 2001

By 

Todd Hudnall (Colorado Springs, CO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A History of the Christian Church (Hardcover)

A History of the Christian Church by Williston Walker was first published in 1918 and has gone through significant revision over the years. This is the fourth edition and includes the latest scholarship in the field of Christian history. The book is the major text for many seminary and university courses on the subject and with good reason, it includes quality research and scholarship. If you are a serious student of the subject you will enjoy the book and find it helpful in your own research. If you are a novice or casual inquirer, I recommend you look elsewhere. It does not offer a smooth flow through history like other texts of this nature. On the spectrum of Christian scholarship, the text is on the liberal end. The reading is more difficult than most introductory texts. Also, the book does not seem to give equal print to subjects of equal value to the history of the world wide Church. Yet, for the serious student of church history, it is an outstanding resource.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Recognized Classic in the Field of Christian History, September 17, 2005

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T. B. Vick "T.B.V." - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A History of the Christian Church (Hardcover)

This is one of the most comprehensive and thorough single volume works of Christian Church History that I have ever read. Originally published in 1918 by Yale University's 'Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History,' Williston Walker, this work has been 'updated' or revised through the years by three Union Theological Seminary Professors based on new discoveries, insights, data, uncovered archaeological evidence, and historical discoveries.

The subsequent revised versions included a final section on 'Modern Christianity.' So much of what happen in the 20th century was added to later editions. The book is nicely divided into seven (VII) periods. These seven periods are:

Period I - The Beginnings to the Gnostic Crisis. This period covers the first two centuries of Christianity from Christ's time to the apologists ending in the second century.

Period II - From the Gnostic Crisis to Constantine. This is one of the better sections or 'Periods' marking the growth of the Church, the formation of Catholicism, and the development of theology.

Period III - The Imperial State Church. This section covers controversies which arose (Arianism, Pelagianism, etc.). It also covers the division which occurred between the East and the West, Augustine of Hippo, the Growth of the Papacy, etc.

Period IV - The Middle Ages to the Close of the Investiture Controversy. This section covers the expansion of Christianity into Europe, The Greek Church, the Papacy and the Ottoman Empire, and much more.

Period V - The Latter Medieval Ages. This is another excellent section covering the rise of Scholasticism and its thinkers (Anselm, Aquinas, etc.). The rise of Orders (Dominicans, Franciscans, etc.) The effects/theology of mysticism, Wyclif and Hus, and into the Italian Renaissance (and much more).

Period VI - The Reformation. This sections covers every aspect of the Reformation from beginning to end in as much detail as can be allowed in about 150 pages.

Period VII - Modern Christianity. This section covers the end of the Middle Ages to the current day. Christianity in America, Britain, the rise of Protestantism, the Great Awakenings, Deism, Pietism, the Puritans, Colonial discoveries and the spread of Christianity to North America, etc. are all covered in this section.

One of the best features of this work is the bibliography. The compilers have actually created a bibliography for every period mentioned above. So if the reader wants to do more specific research on any given period or thinker, there is a very detailed reference/bibliography section that is 21 pages long. This makes for excellent research sources and further study.

Overall, this work is very well balanced, very well written in such a short space. It covers nearly every detail from major to minor (with the exception of a few things that were left out that should have been included - e.g. Louis de Molina is not included, and thus Molinism is left out). It is quite easy to read, and is systematically put together in a nice chronological order (as history actually unfolded).

If you are looking for a detailed but somewhat brief (709 plus pages) Christian History text, then I recommend this one.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not your typical single volume survey, August 14, 2002

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Daryl Smith (just outside of Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A History of the Christian Church (Hardcover)

I once heard a taped lecture in which the late church historian John Gerstner recommend Williston Walker's text as the best single volume work on the history of Christian Church that one could find. I have since concluded that Gerstner's assessment is correct. Any single volume work that attempts to cover such a broad and complex field is bound to suffer from gaps and over generalizations, but I must say that Walker, and his later revisers, have nonetheless done a fantastic job with the material covered. One of this book's strengths is the way it successfully ties together both theological issues and the broader historical context as they played a role in shaping the doctrine, life, and practice of the Church. There are a about nine maps scattered throughout, but apart from these there is nothing else in the way of images, just meaty text. An extensive bibliography can be found in the back of the book that is nicely divided up by periods, with each period further divided into various topical categories such as, "Sources and Documents," or "Thought and Theology." It should be noted, however, that this bibliography has not been updated since around 1984.

Despite the fact this is a one volume survey, I do not think this work is for the casual reader looking for a light introduction to church history. I don't mean to suggest that it is difficult reading, because I think it is actually written very well. It just seems to me that this text's appeal and value will be for the serious student who desires a more scholalry survey.