The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation

(By Luke Timothy Johnson)

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Author	Luke Timothy Johnson

“Book Descriptions: 18 hours

Christianity is the largest and most global religious tradition in history. For nearly 2,000 years, the Christian faith has remained at or near the center of Western moral debate and conceptions of human identity, just action, and ultimate meaning. It has both shaped history and responded to history, showing an extraordinary adaptability within greatly differing cultures. Its practice and influence appears in
every land and every language, and one-third of humanity now affiliates in some way with Christianity.

How did this happen? How did a persecuted sect in 1st-century Palestine rise to command such a massive influence on human culture, imagination, and spirit? How did Christianity weather the first critical stages of its historical development and attain its fundamental and enduring cultural role?

Discovering the answers to these questions allows you to understand one of the most significant and integral currents of history, and to correct misconceptions about Christianity’s past; gain deep insight into the origins of Western societies, and to understand the relation of faith to politics, economics, and culture; grasp how Christian institutions, theology, and liturgy originated and developed; better comprehend the cultural present, where 7 out of 10 Americans hold Christian beliefs; and deepen your appreciation of the majestic sweep of history that Christianity’s rise represents.

Speaking incisively to all of this and more, The History of From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation tells the phenomenal story of Christianity’s first 1,500 years, in all its remarkable diversity and complex dimension.

In the company of popular Great Courses Professor Luke Timothy Johnson of Emory University, you follow the dramatic trajectory of Christianity from its beginnings as a “cult of Jesus” to its rise as a fervent religious movement; from its emergence as an unstoppable force within the Roman Empire to its critical role as an imperial religion; from its remarkable growth, amid divisive disputes and rivalries, to the ultimate schism between Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Catholicism; and from its spread throughout the Western world to its flowering as a culture that shaped Europe for 800 years.

In 36 enthralling lectures, you meet the towering figures of Christian history, such as Paul of Tarsus, Augustine, the emperor Constantine, and Pope Gregory VII, as well as many other pivotal players—kings, popes, saints, monastic figures, scholars, and mystics. And you delve deeply into the rituals, doctrinal issues, and fascinating theological controversies that defined the faith.

The History of From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation brings to life a truly epic story, giving you a multilayered knowledge of Christianity’s origins, rise, and civilization-shaping presence in our world.

The Forging of a Global Faith

Across the arc of the story, you reckon with the historical and theological milestones that formed Christianity, including these seminal

The Jesus Investigate the passionate claims of the first believers to an experience of ultimate, transforming power—and the means by which the movement exploded in the decades following Jesus’s death.

Critical challenges to the Witness the early Christians’ implacable commitment to the new religion, creating strong institutional and ideological structures even as they answered persecution through martyrdom and “apologetic” literature.

Christianity and Learn how the faith, once it was instated as the official religion by Rome, expanded geographically under imperial authority; how Christian culture developed through architecture, art, and ceremony; and how the religion became fatefully enmeshed in politics in the interface of patriarchs, popes, and emperors from Rome to Constantinople.

Great controversies of Dig deeply into the Trinitarian and Christological controversies that divided Christians between the 4th and 7th centuries, centering on differing conceptions of the nature of Christ and fiercely contested in the famous Councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon.

The rupture between East and Grapple with the overlapping factors of cultural distance, misunderstandings, political rivalries, and doctrinal disputes that led to the final split between Orthodoxy and Catholicism in the 11th century.

The flowering of European Experience the extraordinary richness of Christian culture in the Middle Ages, including the complex institution of monasticism, the glory of medieval cathedrals, the birth of universities, and the commanding presence of the papacy.

The Rich Diversity of Christian Experience

In charting the remarkable rise of Christianity, you uncover the specific social and cultural realities that drove the development of the faith.

Early in the course, you locate the b...”