Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-9q27g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T13:33:37.139Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ancient Church History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Robert M. Grant
Affiliation:
University of the South-University of Chicago

Extract

The problem of writing and teaching Church History is being discussed in this journal and elsewhere, and it is obviously related to the more general problem treated by Mr. Harbison in the last number: the “meaning of history” and the writing et history. In the case of Ancient Church History it is especially difficult. “The problem of defining ‘Church’” may seem simpler because of the rigidity of the ecclesiastical organization developed in the early centuries and not broken by the year 800; but, given the fact that it did develop only gradually, how is the historian to treat gnosticism, Montanism, even Arianism? Is he always to say, “the Church was right”? If he says so, how is he to treat the elements of rightness in what came to be regarded as heresies? Or should he make value judgments other than tentative ones? To what extent is his history art and interpretation and to what extent is it science?

Type
Surveys of Recent Literature
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1952

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)