Justin Kellner's Book Lists

Tertullian (c. AD 160 - 225) was one of the first theologians of the Western Church and ranks among the most prominent of the early Latin fathers. His literary output is wide-ranging, and provides an invaluable insight into the Christian Church in the crucial period when the Roman Empire was in decline. These crucial works studied, together with Geoffrey D. Dunn 's comprehensive commentary, illuminate the early church's reaction to paganism, Judaism, Scripture, and its development of a distinctive Christian ethic. [ Source ]

  In Defence of Christianity examines the early Christian apologists in their context in thirteen articles divided in four parts. Part I provides an introduction to apology and apologetics in antiquity, an overview of the early Christian apologists, and an outline of their argumentation. The nine articles of Part II each cover one of the early apologists: Aristides, Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, the author of the Letter to Diognetus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Minucius Felix. Part III contextualizes the apologists by providing an English translation of contemporary pagan criticism of Christianity and by discussing this critique. Part IV consists of a single article discussing how Eusebius depicted and used the apologists in his Ecclesiastical History. [ Source ]

The writings in this volume cast a glimmer of light upon the emerging traditions and organization of the infant church, during an otherwise little-known period of its development. A selection of letters and small-scale theological treatises from a group known as the Apostolic Fathers, several of whom were probably disciples of the Apostles, they provide a first-hand account of the early Church and outline a form of early Christianity still drawing on the theology and traditions of its parent religion, Judaism. Included here are the first Epistle of Bishop Clement of Rome, an impassioned plea for harmony; The Epistle of Polycarp; The Epistle of Barnabas; The Didache; and the Seven Epistles written by Ignatius of Antioch—among them his moving appeal to the Romans that they grant him a martyr's death. [ Source ] Andrew Louth (ed.) Early Christian Writings  

The Apostolic Fathers are a small number of Early Christian authors who lived and wrote in the second half of the 1st century and the first half of the 2nd century. They are acknowledged as leaders in the early church, although their writings were not included in the New Testament. They include Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, the author of the Didache , and the author of the Shepherd of Hermas . The Apostolic Fathers, the earliest extant Christian writings outside the New Testament, are a primary resource for the study of early Christianity. These works are important because their authors were contemporaries of the biblical writers. J. B. Lightfoot is known as the greatest British New Testament scholar of the nineteenth century. [ Source ]  

Although the story of the triumphant rise of Christianity has often been told, it was a triumph achieved through blood and tribulation. The literal meaning of the term martyr meant witness, but among early Christians it quickly acquired a harsher meaning 'one who died for the faith' and that witness through death was responsible for many conversions, including those of Justin Martyr, himself to offer just such witness, and perhaps Tertullian. Persecution was seen by early Christians, as by later historians, as one of the crucial influences on the growth and development of the early Church and Christian beliefs. Why did the Roman Empire persecute Christians? Why did thousands of Christians not merely accept but welcome martyrdom? In his classic work, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church , the late W.H.C. Frend explores the mindset of those who suffered persecution as well as the motivation of those who persecuted them. [ Source ]  

The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom is a 2013 book by Candida Moss , a professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. In her book, Moss advances a thesis that: 1. The traditional idea of the "Age of Martyrdom", when Christians suffered persecution from the Roman authorities and lived in fear of being thrown to the lions, is largely fictional. 2. There was never sustained, targeted persecution of Christians by Imperial Roman authorities. Official persecution of Christians by order of the Roman Emperor lasted for at most twelve years of the first three hundred of the Church's history. Moss writes: "This does not mean, however, that there were no martyrs at all or that Christians never died. It is clear that some people were cruelly tortured and brutally executed for reasons that strike us as profoundly unjust." 3. Most of the stories of individual martyrs amassed by the early modern perio...

  The Church History of Eusebius , the bishop of Caesarea, was a 4th-century pioneer work giving a chronological account of the development of Early Christianity from the 1st century to the 4th century. It was written in Koine Greek, and survives also in Latin, Syriac and Armenian manuscripts. The result was the first full-length historical narrative written from a Christian point of view. In the early 5th century, two advocates in Constantinople, Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen, and a bishop, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Syria, wrote continuations of Eusebius' church history, establishing the convention of continuators that would determine to a great extent the way history was written for the next thousand years. [ Source ] Paul L. Maier, (tr.)

In this revised and updated version of his popular history, Justo González retains the essential elements of his earlier three volumes as he describes the central figures and debates leading to the Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon. Then he moves to Augustine and shows how Christianity evolved and was understood in the Latin West and Byzantine East during the Middle Ages. Finally, he introduces the towering theological leaders of the Reformation and continues to trace the development of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christianities through modernity in the twentieth century to postmodernity in the twenty-first. [ Source ] A History of Christian Thought  

Conceived originally as a serious presentation of the development of philosophy for Catholic seminary students, Frederick Copleston 's nine-volume A History of Philosophy has journeyed far beyond the modest purpose of its author to universal acclaim as the best history of philosophy in English. Copleston, an Oxford Jesuit of immense erudition who once tangled with A. J. Ayer in a fabled debate about the existence of God and the possibility of metaphysics, knew that seminary students were fed a woefully inadequate diet of theses and proofs, and that their familiarity with most of history's great thinkers was reduced to simplistic caricatures. Copleston set out to redress the wrong by writing a complete history of Western philosophy, one crackling with incident and intellectual excitement -- and one that gives full place to each thinker, presenting his thought in a beautifully rounded manner and showing his links to those who went before and to those who came after him. [ Source...

Christianity and Classical Culture is considered one of the great works of scholarship published in the last century. The theme of Christianity and Classical Culture is the fundamental change in thought and action that occurred from the reign of Augustus to the time of Augustine. The classical world sought to practice politics and understand the world in purely rational terms, but the difficulties of this program were already evident as Christianity began developing a completely new understanding of the human world. It is from this revolution in ideas that our modern world was forged. [ Source ] Charles Norris Cochrane  

  From the second century AD to the conversion of the first Christian emperor, Constantine, Robin Lane Fox 's Pagans and Christians: In the Mediterranean World gives a fascinating new perspective on an extraordinary era. The transition from pagan to Christian in the ancient Mediterranean world was a process whose effects we still live with today. How did this monumental conversion come about? How did Christianity compare and compete with the pagan gods in the Roman Empire? This scholarly work, from award-winning historian Robin Lane Fox, places Christians and pagans side by side in the context of civic life and contrasts their religious experiences, visions, cults and oracles. Leading up to the time of the first Christian emperor, Constantine, the book aims to enlarge and confirm the value of contemporary evidence, some of which has only recently been discovered. [ Source ]

This book, which includes a new preface by the author, offers an engrossing portrayal of the early years of the Christian movement from the perspective of the Romans. [ Source ] Robert Louis Wilken The Christians as the Romans Saw Them  

  “ MacMullen …has published several books in recent years which establish him, rightfully, as a leading social historian of the Roman Empire. The current volume exhibits many of the characteristics of its predecessors: the presentation of novel, revisionist points of view…; discrete set pieces of trenchant argument which do not necessarily conform to the boundaries of traditional history; and an impressive, authoritative, and up-to-date documentation, especially rich in primary sources…A stimulating and provocative discourse on Roman paganism as a phenomenon worthy of synthetic investigation in its own right and as the fundamental context for the rise of Christianity.”―Richard Brilliant, History [ Source ] Paganism in the Roman Empire

The Roman World 44 BC – AD 180 deals with the transformation of the Mediterranean regions, northern Europe and the Near East by the military autocrats who ruled Rome during this period. The book traces the impact of imperial politics on life in the city of Rome itself and in the rest of the empire, arguing that, despite long periods of apparent peace, this was a society controlled as much by fear of state violence as by consent. [ Source ] Martin Goodman  

  Each chapter in this workbook designed for middle- and high-school students presents well researched, current, readable information on a topic the family, education, entertainment, political life, to name a few. Multiple exercises are contained in each chapter. The authors' own photographs as well as illustrations from the American Academy in Rome enhance this reader workbook. [ Source ] Margaret A. Brucia & Gregory Daugherty To Be a Roman: Topics in Roman Culture

The World of Rome is an introduction to the history and culture of Rome for anyone seriously interested in the ancient world. It covers all aspects of the city--its rise to power, what made it great and why it still engages and challenges us today. Frequent quotations from ancient writers and numerous illustrations make this a stimulating and accessible introduction to ancient Rome. [ Source ] Peter V. Jones