BOOKS: A History of the Christian Church

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HAVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

From the Bequest of

JOHN HARVEY TREAT

OF LAWRENCH MASS, CLASS OF 1863

A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

BY WILLISON WALKER

TITUS STREET Professor of Ecclesiastical History

in Yale University.

New York

Charles Scribner’s Sons

1921

Copyright, 1918, By

Charles Scribner’s Sons

Published March, 1918

Reprinted May, 1919.

PREFATORY NOTE

In this history, the writer has endeavoured to treat the vast field of the story of the church so as to make evident, as far as he is able, the circumstances of its origin, its early development, the changes which lead to the Reformation, as well as the course of that tremendous upheaval. And those influences which have resulted in the present situation and tendencies of the life of the church. As far as space would permit, he has directed attention to the growth of the doctrine and the modification of Christian thought.

He is under obligation to many who have labored in this field before him, but he would express special indebtedness to Professor Friedrich Loofs, of Halle, whose Leitfaden Zum stadium der dogmengeschichts has been especially helpful in the treatment of Christian thought and to professor Gustav Gruger, of Giessen, and his associates whose handbuch der Kirchengeschichts is a mine of recent bibliographical information.

WILLISTON WALKER

New Haven, March, 1918

PERIODE ONE: FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO THE GNOSTIC CRISIS.

Section 1:

 The General Situation:

The birth of Christ saw the lands which surrounded the Mediterranean in the possession of Rome. To a degree never before equalled, and unapproached in modern times, these vast territories which embraced all that common men knew of civilized life, were under the sway of a single type of culture. The civilisation of India or of China did not come within the vision of the ordinary inhabitant of the Roman Empire. Outside his borders he knew only savage or semicivilised tribes. The Roman Empire and the world of civilized men were co-extensive. All was held together by allegiance to a single emperor, and by a common military system subject to him. The Roman army small in comparison with that of a modern military state, was adequate to preserve the Roman peace. Under that peace, commerce flourished, communication was made easy by excellent roads and by sea, and among educated men at least in the larger towns, a common language that of Greece facilitated the interchange of thought. It was an empire that despite of many evil rulers and corrupt lower officials secured a rough justice such as the world had never before seen; and its citizens were proud of it and of its achievements.

Yet with all its unity of imperial authority and military control, Rome was far from crushing local institutions. In domestic matters, the inhabitants of the provinces were largely self governing. Their local religious observances were generally respected. Among the masses, the ancient languages and customs persisted. Even native rulers were allowed a limited sway in portions of the empire, as native states still persist under British rule in India. Such a land was Palestine at the time of Christ’s birth. Not a little of the success of Rome as a mistress of its diverse subject population was due to this considerate treatment of local rights and prejudices.

2: The General Religious Background:

The diversity in the empire was scarcely less remarkable than its unity. This diversity was nowhere more apparent than in the realm of religious thought. Christianity entered no empty world. Its advent found men’s minds filled with conceptions of the universe, of religion, of sin and of rewards and punishments, with which it had to reckon and to which it had to adjust itself. Christianity could not build on virgin soil. The conceptions which it found already existing formed much of the material with which it must erect its structures. Many of these ideas are no longer those of the modern world. The fact of this inevitable inter-mixture compels the student to distinguish the permanent from the transitory in Christian thought though the process is one of exceeding difficulty, and the solutions given by different scholars are diverse.....To be continued

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