When Ian completed his Ph.D. and was invited to lecture part-time on Church History at the Scottish Baptist College, he preferred to give an ‘overview’ of the two thousand years. He also did this three times, for eight weeks at a time, at the Asian Theological College in Manila in the Philippines in 2001 and 2002. He similarly taught students at the Faith Mission Bible College from 2008 to 2012 and at the Edinburgh Bible College from 2013 to 2016, as well as ‘Saturday only’ students at the Institute of Biblical Studies, held at the Carrubbers Christian Centre in Edinburgh, every year from 1995 to 2016.
Now that he is no longer able to deliver these lectures in person, he has been asked to make them available in this format, for any who would like an overview of Western Church History.
The original lectures were a combination of (1) a printed hand-out, which contained an abstract of the lecture and charts, maps and pictures, which the students had open on their desks, and (2) a one-hour oral lecture, which worked through the hand-out and expanded on the material. As it is impracticable to display (1) and (2) together on the average website, they have been combined here into one document for every lecture.
Students were asked to speak for ten minutes on a Topic relevant to the lecture, about halfway through the hour, to break up the time and to get them involved. The guidance given to the students is reproduced here, at the end of the relevant lecture, but there is no record here of what they said.
Overview
♦ Lecture Syllabus
Early Church (30-500)
♦ Introduction, Cradle of Christianity; (Topic) Septuagint
♦ Apostolic Fathers, C2 Apologists; (Topic) C2 Church worship
♦ Early Christianity at Rome and Alexandria; (Topic) Date of Easter
♦ First heresies, New Testament Canon; (Topic) Marcion
♦ Tertullian at Carthage, Christian language; (Topic) Montanus
♦ Cyprian at Carthage, Church government; (Topic) Eucharist
♦ Persecution of Early Church, Constantine’s conversion; (Topic) Constantine’s faith?
♦ Golden Age of Early Church, Chrysostom, Ambrose; (Topic) Jerome and Vulgate
♦ Augustine, Pelagians, Donatists; (Topic) Pelagius
♦ Councils and Creeds to 451; (Topic) Athanasius
Middle Ages (500-1500)
♦ Rise and fall of Papacy to 1500; (Topic) Charlemagne
♦ Monasticism to 1500, Mendicant Orders; (Topic) Benedict ofNursia
♦ Evangelism in West, ‘Christian Europe’; (Topic) Synod of Whitby
♦ Evangelism in East, Division of Church; (Topic) Icons
♦ Crusades, Indulgences; (Topic) Damage by Crusades
♦ Medieval Church life, Schoolmen; (Topic) Anselm
♦ Voyages of Discovery, Catholic ‘Propaganda’; (Topic) Francis Xavier
♦ Movements for reform, Humanism; (Topic) Thomas a Kempis
Reformation (1500-1650)
♦ Reformation overview, Martin Luther; (Topic) Philip Melanchthon
♦ Ulrich Zwingli, Reformers’ differences; (Topic) Heinrich Bullinger
♦ Radical Reformers, (a) Anabaptists; (Topic) Anabaptist Munster
♦ Radical Reformers, (b) Mennonites; (Topic) Amish
♦ John Calvin, Arminianism; (Topic) Calvin’s Institutes
♦ English Reformation, Puritans and Pilgrims; (Topic) Westminster Confession
♦ Scottish Reformation, Church government; (Topic) Presbyterianism
♦ Catholic Reformation, Evaluation of Reformation; (Topic) Ignatius Loyola
Modern Period (1650-2016)
