The following books and articles are some of those appearing on the Comprehensive Reading List for PhD Students in Church History at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I have actually read most of the books on this list.
Biblical Foundation
The Hebrew Old Testament
The Greek New Testament
Methodology
Appleby, J., et al. Telling the Truth about History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994.
Bradley, James E. and Muller, Richard A. Church History: An Introduction to Research, Reference Works, and Methods. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.
Bauman, Michael, and Martin Klauber I. Historians of the Christian Tradition: Their Methodology and Influence on Western Thought. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1995.
Fischer, David. Historians’ Fallacies. New York: Harper and Row, 1970.
Nash, Ronald. Christian Faith and Historical Understanding. Grand Rapids: Academic Renewal Press, 2002.
Stout, Harry S. and D. G. Hart. New Directions in American Religious History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
General Surveys
Ahlstrom, Sidney. Religious History of the American People, 2d. New Haven: Yale University, 2004.
Harnack, Adolph. Outlines of the History of Dogma. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001.
Hastings, Adrian, ed. A World History of Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.
Larsen, Timothy. Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2003.
Latourette, Kenneth Scott and Winter, Ralph D. A History of Christianity, Revised, 2 vols. San Francisco: Harper-Collins, 1975.
Ferguson, Everett. Church History Volume One: From Christ to the Pre-Reformation. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004.
Moffett, Samuel H. A History of Christianity in Asia, Vol. 1, Beginnings to 1500. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1992.
Neill, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions. Harmonsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1990.
Reid, Daniel G., ed. Dictionary of Christianity in America. Downer’s Grove: Intervarsity, 1990.
Walker, Williston, et. al. A History of the Christian Church. New York: Scribner, 1985.
Stout, Harry S. and D. G. Hart. New Directions in American Religious History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Early Christianity
Creeds: Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, Creed of Constantinople, Creed of Chalcedon
Augustine. Confessiones. W. Watts, ed. Loeb Clasical Library, 2vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1912.
__________. De Civitate Dei. G.E. McCraken, et al, eds. Loeb Classical Library, 7 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966.
Brown, Peter R.L. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Clark, Elizabeth A. The Origenist Controversy: the Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
__________. Reading Renunciation: Scripture in Early Christianity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Crouzel, Henri. Origen: the Life and Thought of the First Great Theologian. Trans. A. S. Worrall. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1989.
Eusebius. Historia Ecclesiastica. K. Lake, ed. Loeb Classical Library, 2vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926.
Esler, Philip F., ed. The Early Christian World. 2 vols. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Ferguson, Everett. Early Christians Speak. 3d ed. Abilene, Texas: ACU Press, 1999.
__________. Backgrounds of Early Christianity. Third Edition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.
Frend, W.H.C. The Rise of Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984.
Kelly, J.N.D. Early Christian Doctrines, Revised. San Francisco: Harper-Collins, 1978.
__________. Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom-Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.
Meyendorff, John. Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes. New York: Fordham University Press, 1987.
Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition.
Stark, Rodney. The Rise of Christianity. San Francisco: Harper-Collins, 1997.
TeSelle, Eugene. Augustine the Theologian. New York: Herder & Herder, 1970.
Wilken, Robert L. The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
__________. The Spirit of Early Christian Thought. Hew Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
Williams, Rowan. Arius: Heresy and Tradition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.
Young, Frances, Lewis Ayers, and Andrew Louth, eds. The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Medieval Christianity
Creeds: Lateran IV (1215)
Á Kempis, Thomas. The Imitation of Christ. New York: Dorset Press, 1986.
Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People. New York: Penguin Classics, 1991.
Brady, Thomas A. Jr., Heiko A. Oberman and James D. Tracy, eds. Handbook of European History: 1400-1600. 2vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.
Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctum.
Chazan, Robert. Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Missionizing and Jewish Response. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
Fairweather, A.M., trans. Nature and Grace: Selections from the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. Library of Christian Classics, vol. 11. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954.
Ha Levi, Judah. Kuzari: The Book of Proof and Argument. New York: Schoken Books, 1966
Knowles, David. The Evolution of Medieval Thought, Revised. London: Longman, 1988.
Lawrence, C. H. Medieval Monasticism, Revised. London: Longman, 1989.
Leclercq, Jean, O.S.B. L’Amour des lettrees et le desir de Dieu: Initiation aux auteurs monastiques du Moyen-Age. Paris: Cerf, 1991.
Lerner, Robert E. The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Latter Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
Lubac, Henri de. Exegese medievale: les quatre sense de l’Eciture. Paris: Aubier, 1954-64.
Maccoby, Hyam. Judaism on Trial: Jewish Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages. New York: Littman Library, 1993.
McCracken, George E. Early Medieval Theology. Library of Christian Classics, vol. 9. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1957.
Ozment, Steven. The Age of Reform, 1250-1550. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980.
Riche, Pierre. Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne. Trans. Jo Ann McNamara. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1978.
Southern, R.W. Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1970.
Spinka, Matthew. Advocates of Reform: From Wyclif to Erasmus. Library of Christian Classics, vol. 14. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953.
Ware, Timothy Kallistos. The Orthodox Church, 2d ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1995.
Reformation
Creeds: Augsburg Confession, Council of Trent, Second Helvetic Confession, Schleitheim Confession, Heidelberg Catechism, Thirty-Nine Articles, Synod of Dort, Westminster Confession, First London Confession
Armstrong, Brian G. Calvinism and the
Amyraut Heresy: Protestant Scholasticism and Humanism in Seventeenth-Century France. Madison, 1969.
Benedict, Philip. Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Bromiley, G.W., ed. Zwingli and Bullinger. Library of Christian Classics vol. 24. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953.
Calvin, John. Institutes of Christian Religion. 2vols. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960.
Dickens, A.G. The English Reformation, 2nd ed. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989.
Erasmus, Desiderius. The Praise of Folly. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
Estep, W.R. The Anabaptist Story, 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.
George, Timothy. Theology of the Reformers. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1988.
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Renaissance Thought and its Sources. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.
Lohse, Bernhard. Martin Luther: An Introduction to His Life and Work. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986.
Luebke, David M. ed. The Counter-Reformation: the Essential Readings. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999.
Lull, Timothy F., ed. Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989.
MacCulloch, D. The Reformation: A History. New York: Viking/Penguin, 2004.
McGiffert, Michael. “William Tyndale’s Conception of Covenant.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 32 (1981): 167-84.
McGrath, Alister E. Reformation Thought: An Introduction, Third edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
Muller, Richard A. God, Creation, and Providence in the Thought of Jacob Arminius: Sources and Directions of Scholastic Protestantism in Early Orthodoxy. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1991.
Olin, John C. ed. Christian Humanism, and the Reformation, Selected Writings of Desiderius Erasmus, Revised. New York: Fordham University Press, 1987.
Paul, Robert S. The Assembly of the Lord. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1985.
Reuchlin, Johannes: Recommendation Whether to Confiscate, Destroy and Burn All Jewish Books, Peter Wortsman, ed. New York: Paulist Press, 2000.
Rummel, Erika. The Humanist-Scholastic Debate. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Rupp, E.Gordon. Patterns of Reformation. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969.
Steinmetz, D.C, Reformers in the Wings, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Troeltsch, Ernst. “The Economic Ethic of Calvinism” in Protestantism, Capitalism and Social Science: The Weber Thesis and Its Critics, 2d, Robert W. Green, ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin College Div, 1973.
Trueman, Carl R., and R. S. Clark, ed. Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment. Carlisle, UK: Paternoter Press, 1999.
Wendel, Francois. Calvin: The Origins and Development of His Religious Thought. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997.
Williams, George H. The Radical Reformation. Kirkville, MO: Truman State University Press, 1992.
Christianity in the Age of Reason
Ashton, Nigel. Christianity and Revolutionary Europe, 1750-1830. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Bebbington, David. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1992.
Black, Jeremy. Eighteenth Century Europe. 2d. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.
Byrne, James M. Religion and the Enlightenment: From Descartes to Kant. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997.
Clark, J.C.D. English Society 1660-1832. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Leslie, Charles. A Short and Easy Method with the Deists. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1880.
Noll, M. The Rise of Evangelicalism. Downers Grove, IL.: IVP, 2004.
Outler, Albert C., ed. John Wesley. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.
Spener, Philip Jacob. Pia Desideria. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999.
Tindal, Matthew. Christianity as Old as Creation. Garland, 1978.
Ward, W.R. Christianity under the Ancien Regime. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Watts, Michael R. The Dissenters, vol.1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
North American Studies
Ahlstrom, Sydney E. and Hall, David D. A Religious History of the American People, Revised. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
Cherry, Conrad. The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1966.
Conforti, Joseph A. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition, and American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Edwards, Jonathan. A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections. New Haven, Yale, 1959.
Finney, Charles G. Lectures on Systematic Theology. Whittier, CA: Colporter Kemp, 1944.
Frey, Sylvia and Betty Wood. Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830. University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
Fulop, Timothy E and Albert J. Raboteau, eds. African-American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Goen, C. C. Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740-1800: Strict Congregationalists and Separate Baptists in the Great Awakening. New Haven: Yale, 1962.
Hambrick-Stowe, Charles E. The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.
__________. Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.
Hatch, Nathan. The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven: Yale, 1989.
Haynes, Stephen R. Noah’s Curse: the Biblical Justification of American Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Carl Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1947.
Holifield, E. Brooks. Theology in America, New Haven: Yale, 2003.
Kling, David. A Field of Divine Wonders: The New Divinity and Village Revivals in Northwestern Connecticut, 1792-1822. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1993.
J Gresham Machen, Christianity & Liberalism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1923.
Marsden, George. Fundamentalism and American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
__________. Jonathan Edwards: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
May, Henry. The Enlightenment in America. New York: Oxford University Press. 1976.
Miller, Perry. Errand into the Wilderness. New York: Harper Torchbooks. 1956.
Murphy, Larry G., ed. Down by the Riverside: Readings in African American Religion. New York: New York University Press, 2000.
Niebuhr, H. Richard. The Kingdom of God in America. New York: Willett, Clark, and Co., 1937.
Noll, Mark A. America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Raboteau, Albert J. A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History. Beacon Press, 1995.
__________. Slave Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Smith, Timothy L. Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century America. New York: Abingdon Press,1957.
Stout, Harry S. The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Synan, Vinson. The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century, Revised. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.
Thornwell, James Henley. “The Christian Doctrine of Slavery.” In The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1974.
Wacker, Grant. Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
Christianity in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Vatican II
Kuyper, Abraham. Lectures on Calvinism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. The Christian Faith. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1948.
Troeltsch, Ernst. Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen understanding Gruppen. Aalen: Scientia, 1965.
Welch, Claude. Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 2vols. New Haven: Yale University, 1972.
Baptist History
General Textbooks
Leonard, Bill J. Baptist Ways: A History. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2003.
__________, ed. Dictionary of Baptists in America. Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP, 1995.
McBeth, Leon. The Baptist Heritage. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1995.
Wardin , Albert W. Baptists around the World. Nashville, Broadman and Holman, 1995.
Original Source Collections
Dever, Mark E., ed. Polity. Washington D.C.: Center for Church Reform, 2001.
Deweese, Charles W., ed. Baptist Church Covenants. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1990.
Lumpkin, William, ed. Baptist Confessions of Faith. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1981.
Nettles, Tom J. Teaching Truth, Training Hearts: The Study of Catechisms and Baptist Life. Amityville, N.Y.: Calvary Press, 1998.
Polity and Distinctives
Brackney, William H. The Baptists. Westport: Praeger Press, 1994.
Grenz, Stanley. The Baptist Congregation. Vancouver, B.C.: Regent College, 1998.
Hiscox, Edward Thurston and Everett C. Goodwin, The New Hiscox Guide for Baptist Churches. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1995.
Norman, R. Stanton. More than Just a Name: Preserving our Baptist Identity. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2001.
Sullivan, James L. Baptist Polity: As I See It. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1998.
Theology
Basden, Paul A. Has our Theology Changed? Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1994.
Bush Russ L. and Tom Nettles. Baptists and the Bible. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1999.
George, Timothy and David Dockery eds, Baptist Theologians. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1990.
_________. Theologians of the Baptist Tradition. Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2001.
James, Robinson B. and David Dockery, eds. Beyond the Impasse? Scripture Interpretation and Theology in Baptist Life. Nashville: Broadman, 1992.
Tull, James E. Shapers of Baptist Thought. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1984.
Histories
Briggs, John H.Y. The English Baptists of the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 3. Oxford: Baptist Historical Society, 1994.
Brown, Raymond. The English Baptists of the Eighteenth Century, Vol. 2. Oxford: Baptist Historical Society, 1986.
Lumpkin, William Latane. Baptist Foundations in the South: Tracing through the Separates the Influence of the Great Awakening, 1754-1787. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1961.
Shurden, Walter B. Associationalism among Baptists in America, 1707-1814. New York: Arno Press, 1980.
Stanley, Brian. The History of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792-1992. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992
White, B. R. The English Baptists of the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 1. Oxford: Baptist Historical Society, 1996.
Wooley, Davis C. Baptist Advance: the achievements of the Baptists of North America for a Century and a Half. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1964.