Church History: Resurrection to Reformation

by Keith Crider

The history of the church is a history of real people—popes and priests, monks and martyrs, and many ordinary folks like us. All claimed to follow Christ, but not all had the same understanding of what it meant to be Christian. This account of the church up to the beginning of the Anabaptist movement helps us understand how the church grew and changed over the centuries. It inspires us to faithfulness to Christ and His teaching in our day.

407 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2018

Reviews

[Stennett Eberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and informational. It helped to fill in some gaps and provide some good perspective on unfamiliar angles of church history. I had never thought about the fact that had Europe not been riven by the Catholic/ Protestant divide, Anabaptism would probably not have survived. I was inspired by the thought of all the common, ordinary people who lived and died through it all. Those who lived faithfully left something we still enjoy the fruit of today. Well worth reading

[Matt Y. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid overview of church history from the first century AD to the Reformation. Well worth reading, especially if you're just starting out on church history and want something that's fairly easy to read and doesn't complicate things very much. It's also worth reading if you've never read church history from an Anabaptist perspective and haven't read the extent of the atrocities and corruption committed by the established church of the Middle Ages.

However, I have a couple criticisms. One, the author, in a sidebar early in the book, casts doubt on our Bibles today and suggests that the Septuagint is older and more reliable, suggesting that the Jews tampered with the Old Testament that we have. This is highly debatable and throws unnecessary doubt on our Bibles. The fact is, most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were from a proto-Masoretic tradition and offered overwhelming confirmation of the accuracy of the Masoretic text. We can have a high level of confidence in our modern translations from the traditional Hebrew texts; our modern translators do note when there is a significant variation in the text and if there is a good reason to think the Septuagint presents the more authentic version of a particular verse, they'll translate it accordingly. Furthermore, even what we call the "Septuagint" is complicated and it is somewhat misleading to say "the Septuagint" because there were multiple versions and multiple translations at different times and they are somewhat of a mixed bag.

Due to that early inaccuracy, I felt I had to carefully check a lot of what the author was saying for much of the book. Even as an Anabaptist myself, I felt he was too biased toward Anabaptists and eager to see forerunners of Anabaptism in every heretical (or "nonconformist") group that sprung up during the Middle Ages. Certainly we might have a healthy skepticism of some of the descriptions of the so-called heretics from their enemies. But that doesn't prove that they "probably" had Anabaptist ideas like the two-kingdom concept; he is much too quick to suggest that they probably, maybe, had ideas similar to the early Anabaptists without real evidence of it. He wants to believe that there was a true church of persecuted nonconformists somewhat hidden throughout the Middle Ages, without openly subscribing to the highly unhistoric "Trail of Blood" fundamentalist Baptist view. Honestly, sometimes they really were heretics and it's fine to say so, and I wouldn't care to be associated with them.

Overall, I'd still give it 4 stars but wish the author was a little more objective.

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great overview of church history from the time of Christ to the Reformation. I wish more could be known of the non conformist groups of Christians between 300 and 1500 A. D. And I appreciate the last chapter especially, which deals with the Anabaptists. The history of " my people."

[Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I have read that provides a survey of early Christian history and thought. It is one of the only books that takes the alternative groups seriously.