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The first three hundred years of the common era witnessed critical developments that would become foundational for Christianity itself, as well as for the societies and later history that emerged thereafter. The concept of 'ancient Christianity,' however, along with the content that the category represents, has raised much debate. This is, in part, because within this category lie multiple forms of devotion to Jesus Christ, multiple phenomena, and multiple permutations in the formative period of Christian history. Within those multiples lie numerous contests, as varieties of Christian identity laid claim to authority and authenticity in different ways. The Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity addresses these contested areas with both nuance and clarity by reviewing, synthesizing, and critically engaging recent scholarly developments. The 27 thematic chapters, specially commissioned for this volume from an international team of scholars, also offer constructive ways forward for future research.

The Cambridge History of Reformation Era Theology explores the key developments in both Protestant and Catholic theology ca. 1475-1650. Exploring the various settings and schools in which theology was formulated and taught, and the social backgrounds of its exponents-including women and non-university-trained men, as well as writers both in and outside Europe-it establishes how the major denominations took their positions and participated in a broader discourse. The volume examines specific theological themes from different denominational perspectives, demonstrating how theology affected the lives of believers via pastoral theology, canon law, and spirituality, and how theological ideas were linked to politics, warfare, science, and the arts. Written by an international team of leading scholars in the field, this History expands the range of theological discourse by introducing new topics and spokespersons, as well as global and ecumenical perspectives. It will remain the definitive place to begin any further study of theology during this period for years to come.

"From the end of the Civil War until the early twentieth century, Anglo, immigrant, and African American settlers were moving north and west faster than ministers within the major denominations could follow them with churches. In 1890, Northern Methodists, the largest Protestant denomination, only claimed 3.5 percent of the American population. Roman Catholics claimed 9.9 percent, and African American Baptists, the largest Black denomination, claimed only 18 percent of the African American population. In total, under 30 percent of Americans went to church on a weekly basis. While African American churches served a relatively larger role within their communities, the major white denominations played a minor role in the lives of the working poor. Clergymen like Dwight Moody reflected, "The gulf between the churches and the mases is growing deeper, wider and darker every hour." Home missionaries like Josiah Strong warned, "Few appreciate how we have become a non-churchgoing-people." Strong was right. In large fractions of the country, especially mining and industrial centers in the West, a simple lack of church edifices and long-term ministers to fundraise for them gave way to a vacuum of Protestant, denominational authority. In part, this disconnect between the number of churches and the size of the population was a result of culturally dislocated migrants. In 1890, more than 9 million Americans were foreign-born, and only a small fraction of those Americans had any familiarity with Anglo-Protestant traditions. They were joined by another 1 million African Americans migrants from the South to northern industrial centers. But this was only one of many reasons the poor did not go to church with the wealthy. While middle-class families paid lip service to the importance of building capacious churches, their own policies and practices reinforced the class system. As one minister reflected in 1887, "The working men are largely estranged from the Protestant religion. Old churches standing in the midst of crowded districts are continually abandoned because they do not reach the workingmen." Meanwhile, he continued, "Go into an ordinary church on Sunday morning and you see lawyers, physicians, merchants and business men with their families [-]you see teachers, salesmen, and clerks, and a certain proportion of educated mechanics, but the workingman and his household are not there." As the working-classes swelled with the expansion of American factories, ordained Protestant ministers served an ever-dwindling proportion of the country"-- Provided by publisher.

• Herman Bavinck : the development of a theologian
• Bavinck : the intellectual context
• Theological method
• Trinity and retrieval : revelation
• Trinity and retrieval : confession
• Trinity and retrieval : Christian consciousness.

"This book examines the theological methodology of Dutch theologian, Herman Bavinck (1854-1921). The focus of the book is on the influence of the German historicist movement on his theological method and uses Bavinck's doctrine of the Trinity as a way to test the argument that while not embracing all of the relativising implications of the movement, the role of history as a force that both shapes the present and allows for development into the future has a demonstrable influence on his theological methodology. To make this argument the book considers Bavinck's larger nineteenth century context. It traces the development of both history and theology being understood as sciences in the university and how this required a reimagining of both disciplines. It could be said that the theology is thoroughly historicised in the nineteenth century. The book then considers the three principia of Bavinck's theological methodology: Revelation, Confession, and Christian Consciousness, demonstrating how Bavinck both appropriates and adapts historicist assumptions"-- Provided by publisher.

• "Supereffability" and the sacraments of Christ's humanity
• Seeing double: representing the hypostatic union
• No ideas but in things: aesthetics and the flesh of the Word
• Concealing is revealing, pt. 1: Opacity and enigma in the wisdom tradition
• Concealing is revealing, pt. 2: The shadow manuscript in the margins of CCCC 41

This rich study takes Insular art on its own terms, revealing a distinctive and unorthodox theology that will inevitably change how scholars view the long arc of English piety and the English literary tradition. Drawing on a wide range of critical methodologies, Aesthetics and the Incarnation in Early Medieval Britain treats this era as a "contact zone" of cultural clash and exchange, where Christianity encountered a rich amalgam of practices and attitudes, particularly regarding the sensible realm. Tiffany Beechy illustrates how local cultures, including the Irish learned tradition, received the "Word that was made flesh", the central figure of Christian doctrine, in distinctive ways: the Word, for example, was verbal, related to words and signs, and was not at all ineffable. Likewise, the Word was often poetic --an enigma-- and its powerful presence was not only hinted at (as St. Augustine would have it) but manifest in the mouth or on the page. Beechy examines how these Insular traditions received and expressed a distinctly iterable Incarnation. Often disavowed and condemned by orthodox authorities, this was in large part an implicit theology, expressed or embodied in form (such as art, compilation, or metaphor) rather than in treatises. Beechy demonstrates how these forms drew on various authorities especially important to Britain --Bede, Gregory the Great, and Isidore most prominent among them. Beechy's study provides a prehistory in the English literary tradition for the better-known experimental poetics of Middle English devotion. The book is unusual in the diversity of its primary material, which includes visual art, including the Book of Kells; obscure and often cursorily treated texts such as Adamnán's De locis sanctis ('On the Holy lands"); and the difficult esoterica of the wisdom tradition

• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction: The Idea of Africa
• Part 1: Roman Africa
• Part 2: Alexandria and Egypt
• Part 3: The Davidic Kingdom of the South
• Epilogue: The Meaning of Africa for Christians Today
• Suggested Readings

"When we survey the history of the faith, it is undeniable that the lands of northern Africa were profoundly influential in the development of early Christianity. The faith arrived early in Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Libya, and the territories we now call Eritrea, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. African Christians made decisive contributions in theology, liturgy, biblical studies, and culture." [taken from back cover]

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Potential
• 3. Pentecost
• 4. Mediation
• 5. Body
• 6. Imagination
• 7. World
• 8. Legacy

• A hollow and deceptive philosophy
• What is Christian nationalism?
• Turn the other cheek?
• Do not be afraid?
• Lay down your sword?
• May your kingdom come, on Earth as it is in heaven?
• And who is my neighbor?
• Remaking American Christianity.

"An expert on Christian nationalism identifies three areas-power, fear, and violence-where nationalism conflicts with core gospel beliefs and reveals its theological and spiritual costs in the church before pointing a way forward"-- Provided by publisher.
Power. Fear. Violence. These three idols of Christian nationalism are corrupting American Christianity. Whitehead reveals how Christian nationalism threatens the spiritual lives of American Christians and the church. He uses two key examples-- racism and xenophobia-- to demonstrate that the three idols violate core Christian beliefs. In furthering conversation about what Christian nationalism threatens, Whitehead explains how it can be faced-- and why it is vitally important to do so. -- adapted from Goodreads info

• Philosophy and Christianity: the Occidental synthesis
• The return of the ostracized
• The attack on Holy Scripture
• Philosophical-theological dissent
• Epilogue.

"The present study, for the first time, provides a comparative analysis of the objections raised against Christianity by late antique pagan philosophers (esp. Celsus in Alethes logos, Porphyry in Contra Christianos, and Julian the Apostate in Contra Gali-laeos) and Enlightenment philosophers and freethinkers and examines the impact of pagan thinking on the critique of Christianity in the 16th to 18th centuries - in particular, on discussions concerning the authority of the Bible, biblical exegesis, the Christian concept of faith, religious coercion and the uniformity of faith, the belief in miracles, and the Christ-ian understanding of morality"-- Provided by publisher.

• Naso erat magister? : Virgil and other classical poets in Luther's Tischreden / R. Alden Smith
• Nugatory nonsense : why Luther rarely cites Catullus / John G. Nordling
• "Pious Mirth" : listening to Martin Luther's Latin poetry / Carl P.E. Springer

"Scholarship has tended to assume that Luther was uninterested in the Greek and Latin classics, given his promotion of the German vernacular and his polemic against the reliance upon Aristotle in theology. But as Athens and Wittenberg demonstrates, Luther was shaped by the classical education he had received and integrated it into his writings. He could quote Epicurean poetry to non-Epicurean ends; he could employ Aristotelian logic to prove the limits of philosophy's role in theology. This volume explores how Luther and early Protestantism, especially Lutheranism, continued to draw from the classics in their quest to reform the church. In particular, it examines how early Protestantism made use of the philosophy and poetry from classical antiquity. Contributors include: Joseph Herl, Jane Schatkin Hettrick, E.J. Hutchinson, Jack D. Kilcrease, E. Christian Kopf, John G. Nordling, Piergiacomo Petrioli, Eric G. Phillips, Richard J. Serina, Jr, R. Alden Smith, Carl P.E. Springer, Manfred Svensson, William P. Weaver, and Daniel Zager"-- Provided by publisher

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology
• Chapter 2: De Řgnon Reconsidered
• Chapter 3: Early Latin Trinitarian Theology
• Chapter 4: The Forms of Latin Theology
• Chapter 5: Other Latin Nicenes
• Chapter 6: Marius Victorinus
• Chapter 7: Rereading Augustine's Trinitarian Theology
• Chapter 8: Exegesis and Polemic in De Trinitate I
• Chapter 9: The Arians of Book V and the Genre of De Trinitate
• Chapter 10: The Visible Christ and the Invisible Trinity
• Chapter 11: De Trinitate VI and VII
• Chapter 12: Augustine's Last Pneumatology
• Chapter 13: Ebion at the Barricades
• Bibliography.

• The Context of the Martyrs
• The Example of the Martyrs
• The Time of the Martyrs
• The Court of the Martyrs
• The Rhetoric of the Martyrs

"This monograph places Augustine's martyr discourse in the context of classical rhetoric in order to flesh out the claim that such discourse is inherently rhetorical. It is argued that Augustine's martyr discourse can be understood as rhetorical in three ways: First, Augustine develops and deploys his understanding of martyrdom within particular rhetorical contexts. This is the weakest and most general sense of "rhetorical" that will appear in this study, falling short of, yet providing the necessary context for, the more technical analyses that make up the heart of the book. Second, Augustine uses techniques of classical rhetorical argumentation to construct his martyrs and to create their theological significance. This claim refers less to techniques of ornamentation or style than it does to those techniques more associated with the category of inventio and to some degree dispositio. Third, in Augustine's depiction, the martyrs themselves are ideal Christian rhetors"-- Provided by publisher.

• The Context of the Martyrs
• The Example of the Martyrs
• The Time of the Martyrs
• The Court of the Martyrs
• The Rhetoric of the Martyrs

• Christology and Desire
• Ecclesiology and Desire
• Happiness, Well-being, and Desire
• Eschatology and Desire
• Conclusion: Where Do We Go From Here?

"The Enarrationes in Psalmos is the collection of Augustine's commentaries and sermons on the Psalms. Although Augustine is often at his philosophical best here, bearing various resemblances to the Platonists and other philosophers, he also articulates a distinctively Christian view on what we should desire, on how desire has gone wrong, and on how it is healed. The renewal of desire takes place as a result of and through the unity of Christ and the church, which is the guiding theme of the Enarrationes. Augustine's Preaching and the Healing of Desire in the Enarrationes in Psalmos traces this theology of desire as it connects to Augustine's Christology, his ecclesiology, his account of happiness and well-being, and his eschatology. The book closes with some suggestions on what the church can learn today from the Enarrationes in the areas of psychology and wellbeing, biblical exegesis, and homiletics" -- Page 4 of cover.

"This panoramic study makes Augustine's theology of the resurrection accessible to students and scholars of theology, religious studies, and late antiquity. Contextualizing Augustine within the early Church and the intellectual and religious cultures of the late Roman Empire, it provides a penetrating analyses of his theological articulations"-- Provided by publisher

• The Book: Religious Texts of Nineteenth-Century Burma
• The School: Models of Religious Imagination in Burmese Education
• The Pagoda: Icons and Iconoclasm
• The Portrait: American Jesus in Burma

"How did authority function before the Bible as we know it emerged? Lee Martin McDonald examines the authorities that existed from the church's beginning: the appeal to the texts containing the words of Jesus, and that would become the New Testament, the not yet finalized Hebrew Scriptures (referred to mostly in Greek) and the apostolic leadership of the churches"-- Provided by publisher