Customer Reviews

Two Kingdoms: The Church and Culture Through the Ages

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I found this book to be most beneficial on church history that I have read. It is compulsory reading at the seminary I attended and for good reason. Its wide arc'ing coverage is second to none. Previous reviewers have obviously bought the book expecting to find the authors to have written from the readers own world view. This is not how historical books are written, before writing a review know the subject being dealt with.

I love church history. I've studied a lot of church history formally and informally. I like to talk about church history and teach church history. It's amazing to me how few even dedicated Christians know about their own history.

But the problem comes in the fact it's hard to find a very solid, thorough and readable church history book that is useful as an introduction in an academic setting and useful to those who just want a basic overview for their own benefit. Two Kingdoms is among the very few books that fits this.

I first read it as an assigned book in Mark Nolls church history class as an undergraduate. Since then this has been the first book I recommend to anyone who doesn't have a foundation in church history and wants to know more. There are more thorough books, to be sure, but none that would be as accessible.

It's a great book. Very balanced in its views, even as it's certainly not comprehensive. The blend of church history and surrounding history makes for a very great understanding of the events and contexts of the last 2000 years.

This Church history is interesting because it tries to put it back into the overall context, but there is not much of secular history, as the title misleads.
Although I am a Protestant, I think that the Protestant bias of the book is too strong. What I also dislike is the leftist orientation of the book, especially for the modern times (on issues such as poverty & wealth, thirld world, ethnicity, war, environment, and more slightly on feminism and charismatism).

This would have been a very good book (liked the larger print and the timelines) but everything seemed to tilt toward evangelical Protestantism (not surprised being this was a Moody publication). It overlooked a lot of early history that is very important to the Church today.

Protestants are very keen on things just coming from the Holy Scripture and I admire that. But, denominationalism is not in the Holy Scripture. Scholars estimate there are over 2600 groups (denominations) who lay claim to being the Church, or at least direct descendants of the Church described in the New Testament. I repeat 2600! But for the first thousand years of her history the Church was essentially one. There were occasional heretical groups going their own way as alluded to in the book, to be sure, but the Church was unified until the 11th century. Then we have a split, the Roman Patriarch pulled away claiming headship of the Church (we know this to be the Roman Catholic Church).

What happened to the other folks? Of course we know of Luther's Split from Rome and the many, many splinter groups thereafter, but what happened to the other folks? And why didn't Luther re-associate with them?

The authors could have done a better job answering these questions.

I am very displeased with this book and it's accuracy (or the lack thereof) of "church" history! I would not have given it a single star if I had of had that choice! This book is very procatholic in it's origin of "the church" and doesn't even mention when it thinks it began! I would recommend this book to no one!