A Short History Of Christian Thought Book

I'd call this the "good-enough" introduction to theology. Urban takes a historical approach to describing the major topics that theologians have investigated over the centuries, which I find helpful in many ways. That said, the amount of depth given to any particular topic will vary, depending (it seems) on the author's interest and awareness of it.

It will introduce a student or reader to most of the major topics, doctrines, and historical battles, and certainly show what to look into if someone wanted to do further reading. Like many historically-oriented texts, it is stronger in its presentation of earlier conversations, and takes less time with the most recent movements. The most recent editions attempt to include contemporary debates, but other sources are stronger.

It's pretty readable if you want to go once-through the history of theology from a fairly traditional Western perspective, but I think there are better texts for any given project.