Reviews for Short History of Christian Thought

The average rating for Short History of Christian Thought based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-12-19 00:00:00 Stephanie Pappas Pretty good treatment of the historical issues presented both to and within the Christian faith, beginning with the perspectives of the different Biblical writers to issues in doctrine and dogma such as Christologies, The Trinity, and Original Sin to philosophical issues such as arguments for the existence of God all the way up to current issues facing the faith (not that the previous have gone away by any means though!!!!): Christianity's relationship with other faiths, liberation theology, and feminist perspectives. Good survey by conservative Episcopal priest Linwood Urban, once a Professor of Philosophy at the renowned Swarthmore College.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-07-16 00:00:00 Henry Raw 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.