Church History Study Guide: Early Church to the Twentieth Century
Early Church (33 AD – 500 AD)
Prominent Figures
Luke: Credited with writing the New Testament book of Acts.
Emperor Trajan (98–117 AD): Roman Emperor under whose reign the Roman Empire expanded to its peak territorial extent.
Pliny the Younger: Roman official who authored a letter to Emperor Trajan in 112 AD requesting legal guidance on how to prosecute Christians who refused to participate in emperor worship.
Thecla of Iconium: Early church leader who originated as a "stay at home" aristocrat; after being inspired by the apostle Paul's preaching, she broke off her engagement to her fiancé to accompany Paul in his travels.
Emperor Galerius: Roman emperor who temporarily halted the imperial persecution of Christians, potentially convinced by Christians that an illness he suffered was divine punishment sent from God.
Emperor Constantine: Consolidated power to become the sole Emperor over both the Eastern and Western halves of the Roman Empire following his victory over Emperor Licinius; he subsequently eliminated all legal and civil barriers preventing Christians from practicing their faith.
Foundational Terminology
Emperor Worship: A mandatory form of civil religion enforced upon all Roman citizens within the empire.
Didache: A late 1st to early 2nd-century Christian manual that provides the earliest recorded indication that Christians assembled for worship on Sunday (the first day of the week).
Edict of Milan: An imperial decree that officially proclaimed religious freedom throughout both the Eastern and Western regions of the Roman Empire.
Monastic: Etymologically derived from the Greek term meaning "solitary" or "alone."
Metropolitan Bishop: A high-ranking bishop who exercises ecclesiastical oversight over all churches within an entire city, rather than presiding over a single local community or congregation.
Major Historical Developments and Movements
Christianization of Rome: Rapid transformation for which the Christian church was institutionally unprepared. Local congregational bishops accumulated substantial political power and civic influence, and massive monumental church buildings were constructed.
Monasticism: A spiritual movement defined by Christians departing from populated urban centers to settle in the isolation of the desert. The movement developed along two primary avenues of practice:
Living an isolated, solitary, and ascetic life.
Living a communal religious life (a model that expanded substantially in popularity during the 5th century).
Fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 AD): Marked by the barbarian chieftain Odoacer deposing Romulus Augustus, who was the last Western Roman Emperor. This political collapse is historically recognized as the demarcation point for the beginning of the Middle Ages.
The Middle Ages (500 AD – 1500 AD)
Prominent Figures
Mohammed (570–632 AD): Founder of the Islamic faith, recognized as having expanded Islam through regional military conquests.
St. Patrick (390–460 AD): Missionary to Ireland who returned to evangelize the Irish population after having previously been held captive in the country.
Gregory the Great (540–604 AD): Revered as the founder of the medieval papacy; he deployed missionary delegations to England, which contributed directly to the island's conversion to Christianity.
Peter Abelard (1079–1142 AD): Medieval theologian who implemented formal logic and rational argument to debate contentious theological matters. He introduced the theological concept of "limbo," defined as an afterlife condition within medieval doctrine reserved for those who died in their sins without being consigned to hell.
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274 AD): Italian Dominican priest, philosopher, and theologian who authored Summa Theologia as an exhaustive, rational defense of Christian doctrine; he also formulated philosophical proofs demonstrating the existence of God.
Pope Innocent III: Pontiff who established an ecclesiastical policy explicitly subordinating secular state power to the authority of the church.
Foundational Terminology
Byzantine Empire: The Eastern Roman Empire, which endured politically from 330 AD to 1453 AD.
Medieval: Descriptive term applied directly to the era and characteristics of the Middle Ages.
Scholasticism: A medieval European intellectual and theological movement characterized by the rigorous use of formal logic and dialectical reasoning to harmonize Christian revelation and theology with classical philosophy.
Dialectic: A method of rational discourse and philosophical inquiry designed to ascertain truth through the careful examination and reconciliation of contradictory propositions.
Cult: Specific codified ritual practices, forms of devotion, or distinct branches of religious worship.
Veneration: An attitude of profound respect, reverence, and awe directed toward a person's intrinsic dignity or sacred character.
Celtic Christianity: A distinct regional expression of Christianity that arose across Northern Europe, encompassing Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall, Brittany, and Wales.
Order of St. Benedict: Monastic order renowned for establishing large, scholarly monastic libraries. Benedictine spirituality comprises three fundamental core practices:
Liturgical prayer
Manual labor
Lectio divina (divine reading)
Major Historical Developments and Movements
The Great Schism Between East and West (1054 AD): The formal ecclesiastical division sundering the Eastern Church (Eastern Orthodoxy) from the Western Church (Rome). The schism was catalyzed by three primary disputes:
Theological differences regarding the relational nature of the Godhead (the specific relationship among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).
The liturgical controversy over whether to use leavened or unleavened bread in the celebration of the Eucharist.
An ongoing administrative and hierarchical power struggle between Eastern and Western ecclesiastical authorities.
The Crusades (1071–1270 AD): A sequence of eight coordinated military expeditions organized by the Western Latin Church against Muslim Turks.
The Conciliarist Movement: An ecclesiastical reform movement arguing that sovereign institutional power within the church should not reside solely in the papacy, but should instead be decentralized and vested within representative ecumenical or general church councils.
Fall of Constantinople (1453 AD): The definitive collapse of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, brought on by cumulative historical factors:
Structural and economic devastation inflicted by Western forces during the Fourth Crusade in 1204 AD.
Severe population collapse caused by the "black plague" in the mid-fourteenth century.
The final military conquest of the imperial city by the Ottoman Turks.
Reformation (1500 AD – 1650 AD)
Prominent Figures
Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536 AD): Renaissance humanist scholar who compiled and published the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament.
Martin Luther (1483–1546 AD): German Augustinian monk, reformer, and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg whose theological focus revolved around the biblical doctrine of justification.
Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531 AD): Swiss reformer deeply shaped by Erasmus and the broader humanist movement; an outspoken critic of clerical corruption.
John Calvin (1509–1564 AD): French-born leader of the Reformed movement celebrated for authoring the foundational systematic theological work Institutes of the Christian Religion.
Conrad Grebel (1498–1526 AD): Swiss Anabaptist leader who criticized Huldrych Zwingli for compromising and failing to consistently apply his own reforming principles.
Henry VIII (1491–1547 AD): English monarch who shaped the English Reformation by separating the national church from papal jurisdiction and re-establishing it under his personal royal authority.
Foundational Terminology
Renaissance: Translating to "rebirth," a cultural, artistic, and literary revival spanning the 15th and 16th centuries.
Humanism: An intellectual, ethical, and philosophical stance prioritizing human potential, agency, and inherent value.
Ad Fontes: Latin phrase meaning "Back to the Sources," serving as a foundational intellectual motto for Renaissance humanists and reformers.
Indulgences: A formal ecclesiastical grant providing remission before God of the temporal punishment due for sins whose eternal guilt has already received sacramental forgiveness.
Anabaptism: Literally meaning "second baptism" or "rebaptism."
Jesuits (Society of Jesus): Religious order established by Ignatius of Loyola emphasizing strict, militaristic discipline and obedience; responsible for extensive cross-cultural missionary initiatives throughout Asia and South America.
Elizabethan Settlement: A political-religious compromise that created a unified national Church of England by synthesizing broadly Protestant articles of faith with a traditional Catholic liturgical structure (order of church service).
Major Historical Developments and Movements
Protestant Reformation: A multifaceted 16th-century religious movement containing distinct theological branches:
Lutheran Reformation:
Asserted the absolute authority of the Holy Scriptures over church hierarchy and tradition.
Mandated that the Bible be translated directly into the vernacular languages of contemporary society.
Permitted the laity (lay church members) to partake of both the bread and the wine in the Eucharist, ending the medieval Catholic restriction to bread alone.
Championed the theological doctrine of the "priesthood of all believers."
Formally condemned the commercial sale of ecclesiastical indulgences.
Calvinist Reformation:
Aimed primarily at reforming the internal morals, ethics, and liturgical worship of the church.
Traced its historical and doctrinal roots to the work of Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger.
Formed the theological basis of the "Reformed" ecclesiastical traditions, including Presbyterianism.
Radical (Anabaptist) Reformation:
Displayed deep skepticism and distrust toward external civic and state authority.
Repudiated infant baptism, replacing it with believer's baptism administered exclusively to conscious adult converts.
Practiced common, communal ownership of personal property.
Maintained a strict devotion to Christian pacifism and non-resistance.
Catholic Reformation (Counter-Reformation): An internal renewal movement within the Roman Catholic Church responding directly to the challenges of Protestantism.
Council of Trent (1545–1563 AD): A general ecumenical council whose sessions were intermittently delayed by war and epidemic disease, achieving the following outcomes:
Clarified and defined orthodox Catholic dogma against Protestant critiques.
Upheld the specific liturgical practice of communion under one kind (administering bread alone to the laity).
Affirmed the Latin Vulgate as the authoritative, standard biblical text.
Reasserted the absolute necessity and efficacy of all seven traditional sacraments.
Systematically dismantled internal institutional abuses and corruption within the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Puritan Movement: An English reform movement that resisted lingering Catholic ceremonies within the Church of England, eventually withdrawing from the national church and migrating first to the Netherlands and subsequently to North America.
Thirty Years' War (1618–1648 AD): A devastating continental conflict sparked by anti-Protestant civil riots in Central Europe following the territorial expansion of Calvinism.
The Modern Period (1650 AD – 1900 AD)
Prominent Figures
Philipp Spener (1635–1705 AD): Authored Pious Wishes in 1675, a seminal publication recognized as the historical catalyst for the Pietist movement.
Nikolaus Zinzendorf (1700–1760 AD): Founded the Moravian Pietist settlement of Herrnhut and emphasized a deeply experiential, intimate relationship between Jesus Christ and the individual believer.
John Wesley (1703–1791 AD): Influenced by the Moravian Pietists, experienced a pivotal religious conversion at Aldersgate Street, and subsequently became the founder of the Methodist movement.
John Eliot (1604–1690 AD): Early Puritan missionary to Native American tribes who learned the indigenous "Natic" language in order to translate the Bible and preach to local populations.
George Whitefield (1714–1770 AD): Evangelist who popularized the practice of open-air "itinerant preaching" across rural fields and urban areas in the American colonies without official attachment to a settled parish church.
John Locke (1632–1704 AD): English Enlightenment philosopher who championed the necessity of political and religious toleration in the wake of destructive religious wars.
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1846 AD): American statesman and president who advocated that the separation of church and state was the most effective means to secure civil peace and prevent systemic oppression caused by religious establishments.
Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794 AD): French revolutionary and lawyer who orchestrated the Reign of Terror, facilitated the execution of King Louis XVI, and officially established the revolutionary Cult of the Goddess of Reason.
François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848 AD): French author whose influential text Genius of Christianity revived popular cultural appreciation for the Christian faith in post-revolutionary Europe.
Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930 AD): German liberal theologian who authored What is Christianity?, arguing that institutional Christianity possessed only a loose historical and conceptual connection to the historical Jesus of Nazareth.
Foundational Terminology
Concordat of 1801: A landmark legal and political agreement brokered between Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII aimed at resolving the intense religious fractures generated in France by the Revolution.
Biblical Criticism: An academic discipline applying historical, literary, philological, and scientific analytical methods to the Bible, treating it methodologically like any other human historical text.
Major Historical Developments and Movements
Pietism: A Christian renewal movement emphasizing personal devotion and the "religion of the heart" as a corrective to rigid, "dry orthodoxy"; derived from the Latin pietas, signifying godliness or piety.
Great Awakening: An intense wave of Protestant revivalism originating in Northampton, Massachusetts, that drastically altered the religious, social, and spiritual landscape of the American colonies.
The Enlightenment: An intellectual epoch asserting that human reason and empirical evidence, rather than divine revelation or God, constituted the foundational source of all valid knowledge and truth.
American Revolution: An anti-colonial political movement centered on severing British imperial control to establish comprehensive individual liberty across political, economic, and religious spheres.
French Revolution: A political and social upheaval characterized by aggressive anti-clerical and anti-Christian sentiment, inaugurated symbolically by the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789.
Romanticism: A philosophical, artistic, and literary movement emerging in the late 18th century as an overt aesthetic reaction against the dry rationalism of the Enlightenment.
First Vatican Council (1869–1870 AD):
Affirmed the intrinsic harmony between faith and human reason while maintaining the ultimate supremacy of supernatural faith.
Promulgated the dogma of Papal Infallibility, decreeing that the pope is preserved from error when speaking ex cathedra (in his official capacity as shepherd and teacher of all Christians) regarding matters of faith or morals.
The Twentieth Century (1900 AD – Present)
Prominent Figures
Charles Parham (1873–1929 AD): Founder of Bethel Bible College who directed his students to study New Testament evidence regarding the contemporary presence of the Holy Spirit; his students experienced the "gift of tongues," establishing it as the hallmark characteristic of Pentecostalism.
William J. Seymour (1870–1922 AD): Leader of the historic Apostolic Faith Mission revival on Azusa Street in Los Angeles, serving as a prominent founding figure of modern global Pentecostalism.
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924 AD): Russian Bolshevik leader who seized power in the October Revolution of 1917, identifying the eradication of religion as an essential prerequisite for achieving a socialist revolution.
Karl Marx (1818–1883 AD): Political philosopher and economist who critiqued religion as the "opiate of the people," arguing that it drugged the working classes into passivity and discouraged direct revolutionary action to secure socioeconomic change.
John Scopes (1900–1970 AD): Tennessee public high school science teacher arrested and convicted for violating state law by teaching biological evolution; he was found guilty and assessed a $100 fine.
Clarence Darrow (1857–1938 AD): Renowned defense attorney who represented John Scopes during the 1925 Scopes Trial.
William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925 AD): Fundamentalist statesman and political leader who acted as the lead prosecutor in the Scopes Trial.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945 AD) and Karl Barth (1886–1968 AD): Influential German Protestant theologians who formulated an unyielding theological and ethical critique against Adolf Hitler and National Socialism.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968 AD): Baptist minister and civil rights activist who mobilized mass direct action in the wake of Rosa Parks's arrest, sparking the American Civil Rights Movement.
Pope John Paul II (1920–2005 AD): The first non-Italian pontiff in 500 years; a Polish pope whose pastoral visits and moral authority inside his native Poland played an instrumental role in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Foundational Terminology
Pentecostalism: An indigenous American revival movement that originated as an integrated, multi-racial movement appealing to both Black and white believers; sparked at the Azusa Street Revival and distinguished by glossolalia (speaking in unknown tongues or foreign languages).
Fundamentalism: A theological movement that emerged in reaction to the creeping materialism, secularism, and moral looseness of the 1920s; sought a return to historic biblical orthodoxy in opposition to evolutionary biology, modern liberal theology, and higher biblical criticism.
Weimar Republic of Germany: The interwar democratic parliamentary regime that failed to sustain economic stability or social trust, subsequently collapsing into Adolf Hitler's National Socialist dictatorship.
Barmen Declaration: A 1934 theological manifesto drafted by the German Confessing Church affirming that the Christian church cannot conform its doctrines and mission to prevailing secular, political, or ideological regimes.
Major Historical Developments and Movements
Russian Revolution of 1917: The overthrow of the Romanov czarist monarchy that culminated in the seizure of state power by Vladimir Lenin and the radical Bolshevik party, establishing an officially atheist state.
Shift of Christianity to the Global South: A demographic transition during the 20th century wherein Western Europe experienced deep secularization while the primary demographic center of Christian vitality shifted toward sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
Second Vatican Council (1962–1965 AD):
Reaffirmed the collegial, shared episcopal authority of Catholic bishops alongside the pope.
Highlighted the role and ministry of the laity, encouraging active engagement with secular culture, politics, and society.
Officially recognized non-Catholic Christian communions as separated brethren rather than heretics.
Explicitly condemned anti-Semitism, repudiating historical Catholic complicity in anti-Jewish hatred and discrimination.
Authorized the celebration of the Mass and official liturgy in modern vernacular languages instead of Latin.
American Civil Rights Movement: A mass political and social campaign aimed at guaranteeing constitutional rights and racial equality for African Americans facing legal segregation and disenfranchisement. The movement's leadership, resilience, and rhetoric were rooted in Southern Black church culture, and its struggle was broadly understood by participants as a fundamentally religious crusade.