Christianity

Christianity is the largest religion in the world, with over two billion adherents, and is made up of a large set of traditions originating in first-century Palestine with the philosophy and teachings of Jesus Christ. As an historical and theological offspring of Judaism, the early Christian community incorporated the Jewish scriptures into their Bible and the relationship between the Jewish and Christian traditions remains complex and multifaceted. Christianity is a monotheistic faith that teaches that God is made up of three persons sharing a single essence (this teaching is known as Trinitarianism), and that His will for the world has been revealed in the Bible, a book made up of several dozen pieces of literature composed over 2,000 years in the Ancient Near East.

• see Protestantism

see Roman Catholic Church

Theology

Christian theology centers around several main beliefs. Christianity is monotheistic; that is, Christians believe in one God, who is in 3 persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost). Christians believe that Jesus was both fully human, and fully divine. Christianity asserts that God is ethically perfect, or holy, and that God is immutable; that is, God does not change. God was traditionally seen as infinite, as well as omnipotent, or all-powerful, but in the early 19th century Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 –1834) merged all God's characteristics into the idea of causality; his Romantic treatment shaped liberal Protestant thought. Karl Barth in the 20th century emphasized God's transcendance. Lastly, God is omniscient, or all-knowing, although a small minority of Christian scholars argue that God does not exhaustively know the future, a belief known as "open theism".

Soteriology

Soteriology is the theology of salvation. Christians believe that, as a result of the fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden, all humans are sinful. Because of this "sinful nature", all people are doomed to be condemned to Hell, for breaking God's command. However, Christian soteriology asserts that Christ came to Earth as a human being, and was killed to take the punishment for man's sin. Christians generally believe that a person must accept God's forgiveness, and if they do so, that they are allowed to go to heaven. Most Christian denominations today agree that salvation is "by grace alone", meaning that a person is not required to do good works to get into heaven, although good works will generally be a by-product of salvation.

Eschatology

Eschatology is the theology of "last things", or beliefs about the end of the world. Christians believe that after Christ was crucified, he resurrected from the dead (the origin of the celebration of Easter), that he later ascended to heaven, and he will return to Earth.

The Hebrew and Christian scriptures both have a wide body of work known as prophecy, which purports to predict the future. However, because prophetic literature is highly symbolic, there is very wide disagreement among Christian scholars about how exactly the end of the world will come about. The disagreement tends to focus on when exactly Christ will return to Earth, and whether the book of Book of Revelation is primarily about past, current, or future events, or whether it should be interpreted as metaphor.

Despite this, a recurring theme in the history of Christianity is that, in every age, there are Christians who believe that the eschatological pronouncements of the Bible apply to that point in history. Interestingly, this tendency even existed with the earliest Christians. In 1 Corinthians 7, the apostle Paul urges his followers not to worry too much about their present state of affairs: "I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short... For the present form of the world is passing away" (1 Cor. 7:29-31, trans. NRSV)-- a statement most scholars take to mean that Paul believed the return of Christ (and perhaps the end of the world) was immanent.

Denominational taxonomy

Christianity has developed into a variety of traditions and ecclesiastical bodies over the past 2,000 years. The broadest division is between Eastern and Western Christianity, two families that come from historical differences between the Latin-speaking Roman Empire and the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire. The Eastern traditions are made up of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Church, two associations of national churches in communion (although not with one another) and the much smaller Assyrian Church of the East, whose leadership lives among the Assyrian diaspora in Chicago. The Western faiths trace their heritage through direct descent, Reformation, or missionizing to the Roman church and include Catholicism, Protestantism, and Anglicanism.

In addition, there are hundreds of millions of independent Christians - many in the United States; sub-Saharan Africa, where the Pentecostal movement has been influential; and in China - that have a legacy of some Protestant history, but are not formally associated with a church authority. Some churches from the East have formally joined the Catholic faith, and are historically and culturally Eastern, but ecclesiastically Western. Additionally, there are some movements - such as Messianic Judaism or Christian anarchism - which eschew these distinctions, and are based on a radical interpretation of early Christianity.

Western Christianity

Catholicism

see Roman Catholic Church

Protestantism

Protestantism is not a single church body or set of formally-related organizations, but a grouping of various church families whose history extends to the Reformation in 16th century Europe. The main families are the Lutheran, the Reformed, and the radical sects.

Certain pre-Reformation groups are frequently included in discussions about Protestantism, such as Waldensians and Moravians, who are legacies of reformation movements lead by Peter Waldo in 12th-century Italy and Jan Hus in 15th-century Bohemia. Some classification systems also include Anglicans as well, as the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church ceased to be in communion roughly concurrent with the Reformation.

Bibliography

• Briggs, J. H. Y., Robert D. Linder, and David F. Wright. Introduction to the History of Christianity: First Century to the Present Day (2006) excerpt and text search
• Gonzalez, Justo L. A History of Christian Thought: Volume 1: From the Beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon (2nd ed. 1987); excerpt and text search vol 1; A History of Christian Thought: Volume 2: From Augustine to the Eve of the Reformation (2nd ed. 1987) excerpt and text search vol 2; A History of Christian Thought: Volume 3: From the Protestant Reformation to the Twentieth Century (1987) excerpt and text search vol 3
• Horsley, Richard A. Christian Origins: A People's History Of Christianity, Vol. 1 (2006), 318pp excerpt and text search
• Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A History of Christianity (2 vol 1975) excerpt and text search vol 1, to 1500
• Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A history of the expansion of Christianity (7 vol 1939-1970), monumental history of missionary work worldwide
• MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation (2005), influential recent survey excerpt and text search
• McGonigle, Thomas D., and James F. Quigley. A history of the Christian Tradition: From Its Jewish Orgins to the Reformation (1988); A History of the Christian Tradition, Vol. II: From the Reformation to the Present (1996) excerpt and text search vol 2
• Noll, Mark A. The Old Religion in a New World: The History of North American Christianity (2001) excerpt and text search
• New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (1911), ), major sources of older scholarly articles; mainline Protestant perspective
  • Vol. 1: Aachen - Basilians
  • Vol. 2: Basilica - Chambers
  • Vol. 3: Chamier - Draendorf
  • Vol. 4: Draeseke - Goa
  • Vol. 5: Goar - Innocent
  • Vol. 6: Innocents - Liudger
  • Vol. 7: Liutprand - Moralities
  • Vol. 8: Morality - Petersen
  • Vol. 9: Petri - Reuchlin
  • Vol. 10: Reutsch - Son
  • Vol. 11: Son of Man - Tremellius
  • Vol. 12: Trench - Zwingli
  • Vol. 13: Index

Primary sources

• Placher, William C. Readings in the History of Christian Theology, Volume 2: From the Reformation to the Present (1988) excerpt and text search