The Trinity guide to the Christian church
"Over the past two thousand years, the Christian Church has taken a bewildering variety of shapes and forms. In addition, the doctrine of the Church, or ecclesiology, has changed throughout history to reflect the challenges the churches have encountered in culture. Popular writer William J. La Due-whose books on Jesus, the Trinity, and eschatology have offered accessible introductions to their respective subjects-provides a compelling introduction to the history of the Christian Church. The book opens with a lively description of the various models of the church found in the New Testament and follows that up with a survey of the views of the church in early Christian theologians such as Augustine, Origen, and Tertullian. He examines the disagreements and the controversies that led to the development of theologically distinct Christian communities in the East and the West." "La Due goes on to trace the medieval papacy and the impetus it provided for the Protestant Reformation to take the Church in a new direction. He analyzes the ideas of the Church of the Protestant Reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin, as well as the major theologians and movements of the English Reformation. La Due explores the ways that nineteenth- and twentieth-century theologians ranging from Schleiermacher, Tillich, Kung, Rahner, Moltmann,and Ruether developed new models of the Church for their times. La Due's accessible introduction to the Christian Church is a valuable tool for anyone interested in how the Christian Church got to be where it is today. Book jacket."--BOOK JACKET
ix, 166 pages ; 23 cm
9780826419507, 082641950X
70176807
The earliest developments
The agents of the Reformation
Protestant ecclesiology comes of age
Recent views of traditional Catholic ecclesiology
The next generation of Protestant ecclesiology
Other approaches to church