Christianity

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, storms of contention and division continued to plague the churches of Europe. During these two centuries there was an eclipse of official, church-to-church attempts at unity. Instead, ecumenical witness was made by individuals who courageously spoke and acted against all odds to propose Christian unity.

In England, John Dury, a Scots Presbyterian and (later) an Anglican minister, “a peacemaker without partiality,” traveled more extensively than any other ecumenist before the 19th century. He negotiated for church unity in his own country and in Sweden, Holland, France, Switzerland, and Germany. Richard Baxter, a Presbyterian Puritan, developed proposals for union, including his Worcestershire Association, a local ecumenical venture uniting Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Anglicans.

Efforts were undertaken in Germany and central Europe as well. The German Lutheran George Calixtus called for a united church between Lutherans and Reformed based on the “simplified dogmas,” such as the Apostles’ Creed and the agreements of the church in the first five centuries. Nikolaus Ludwig, Graf (count) von Zinzendorf, applied his Moravian piety to the practical ways that unity might come to Christians of all persuasions. The philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz worked tirelessly for union between Protestants and Roman Catholics, writing an apologia interpreting Roman Catholic doctrines for Protestants. John Amos Comenius, a Czech Brethren educator and advocate of union, produced a plan of union for Protestants based upon the adoption of a scriptural basis for all doctrine and polity and the integration of all human culture.

Eastern Orthodox Christians also participated in the search for union. Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow and the Russian Orthodox theologian Aleksey S. Khomyakov expressed enthusiasm for ecumenism. Cyrillus Lukaris, Orthodox patriarch of Alexandria and later of Constantinople, took initiatives to reconcile a divided Christendom. People throughout Europe held tenaciously to the dream of ecumenism, although no attempt at union was successful. 19th-century efforts

A worldwide movement of evangelical fervour and renewal, noted for its emphasis on personal conversion and missionary expansion, stirred new impulses for Christian unity in the 19th century. The rise of missionary societies and volunteer movements in Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States expressed a zeal that fed the need for church unity. Enduring the harmful results of Christian divisions in different countries, Protestant missionaries in India, Japan, China, Africa, Latin America, and the United States began to cooperate.

In 1804 the British and Foreign Bible Society, an interdenominational Protestant organization, came into existence to translate the Scriptures into the world’s vernaculars and distribute the translations throughout the world. This was followed, 40 years later, by the founding of two important Christian organizations in England: the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA; 1844) and the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA; 1855). Their international bodies, the World Alliance of YMCAs and the World YWCA, were established in 1855 and 1894, respectively. The Evangelical Alliance, possibly the most significant agent of Christian unity in the 19th century, held a unique place among the volunteer associations of the age. Founded in London in 1846 (the American section was established in 1867), the alliance sought to draw individual Christians into fellowship and cooperation in prayer for unity, Christian education, the struggle for human rights, and mission.

Also pivotal in the 19th century were advocates for the visible unity of the church. In the United States, where the most articulate 19th-century unity movements were heard, the witness to the unity and union was led by three traditions. The Lutherans Samuel Simon Schmucker and Philip Schaff pleaded for “catholic union on apostolic principles.” Among Episcopalians, the visionaries for unity included Thomas Hubbard Vail, William Augustus Muhlenberg, and William Reed Huntington, who proposed the historic “Quadrilateral” of the Scriptures, the creeds, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and episcopacy as the keystone of unity. Thomas Campbell and his son, Alexander, and Barton Warren Stone, members of the church of the Disciples of Christ, taught that “the Church of Christ on earth is essentially, intentionally and constitutionally one.” Ecumenism was enflamed in the hearts of 19th-century Christians and in the next century shaped the churches as never before. Ecumenism since the start of the 20th century

The 20th century experienced a flowering of ecumenism. Four different strands—the international Christian movement, cooperation in world mission, Life and Work, and Faith and Order—developed in the early decades and, though distinctive in their emphases, later converged to form one ecumenical movement.

The modern ecumenical era began with a worldwide movement of Christian students, who formed national movements in Great Britain, the United States, Germany, Scandinavia, and Asia. In 1895 the World Student Christian Federation, the vision of American Methodist John R. Mott, was established “to lead students to accept the Christian faith” and to pioneer in Christian unity. The World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh (1910) inaugurated another aspect of ecumenism by dramatizing the necessity of unity and international cooperation in fulfilling the world mission of the church. In 1921 the International Missionary Council (IMC) emerged, bringing together missionary agencies of the West and of the new Christian councils in Asia, Africa, and Latin America for joint consultation, planning, and theological reflection. The Life and Work movement was pledged to practical Christianity and common action by focusing the Christian conscience on international relations and social, industrial, and economic problems. Nathan Söderblom, Lutheran archbishop of Uppsala, inspired world conferences on Life and Work at Stockholm (1925) and Oxford (1937). The Faith and Order movement, which originated in the United States, confronted the doctrinal divisions and sought to overcome them. Charles H. Brent, an Episcopal missionary bishop in the Philippines, was chiefly responsible for this movement, although Peter Ainslie, of the Disciples of Christ, shared the same vision and gave significant leadership. World conferences on Faith and Order at Lausanne (Switzerland; 1925), Edinburgh (1937), Lund (Sweden; 1952), and Montreal (1963) guided the process of theological consensus building among Protestants, Orthodox, and Roman Catholics, which led to approval by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches of the historic convergence text Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (1982).

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a privileged instrument of the ecumenical movement. Constituted at Amsterdam in 1948, the conciliar body includes more than 300 churches—Protestant, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox—which “confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Its general secretaries have been among the architects of modern ecumenism: Willem Adolph Visser ’t Hooft (Netherlands), Eugene Carson Blake (United States), Philip Potter (Dominica), Emilio Castro (Uruguay), Konrad Raiser (Germany), and Samuel Kobia (Kenya). The witness and programs of the WCC include faith and order, mission and evangelism, refugee and relief work, interfaith dialogue, justice and peace, theological education, and solidarity with women and the poor. What distinguishes the WCC constituency is the forceful involvement of Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches and churches from the developing world. Through their active presence the WCC, and the wider ecumenical movement, has become a genuinely international community.

Roman Catholic ecumenism received definitions and momentum at the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II; 1962–65), under the ministries of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, and through the ecumenical diplomacy of Augustin Cardinal Bea, the first president of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. The church gave the ecumenical movement new hope and language in the “Decree on Ecumenism” (1964), one of the classic ecumenical teaching documents. Another result of Vatican II was the establishment of a wide variety of international theological dialogues, commonly known as bilateral conversations. These included Roman Catholic bilaterals with Lutherans (1965), Eastern Orthodox (1967), Anglicans (1967), Methodists (1967), Reformed (1970), and Disciples of Christ (1977). Topics identified for reconciling discussions included baptism, the Eucharist, episcopacy and papacy, authority in the church, and mixed marriage. Conversations were also held with the Oriental Orthodox churches and the Assyrian Church of the East, resulting in joint statements (1992 with the Oriental Orthodox; 1994 with the Assyrian Church of the East) that resolved many of the ancient Christological disputes, although they did not result in full communion.

Critical to modern ecumenism is the birth of united churches, which have reconciled formerly divided churches in a given place. In Asia the first united churches were organized in China (1927), Thailand (1934), Japan (1941), and the Philippines (1944). The most-heralded examples of this ecumenism are the United Church of Canada (1925), the Church of South India (1947), and the Church of North India (1970). Statistics of other united churches are revealing. Between 1948 and 1965, 23 churches were formed. In the period from 1965 to 1970, unions involving two or more churches occurred in the West Indies (in Jamaica and Grand Cayman), Ecuador, Zambia, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Pakistan, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Belgium. Strategic union conversations were undertaken in the United States by the nine-church Consultation on Church Union (1960) and by such uniting churches as the United Church of Christ (1957), the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (1983), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (1988). In Europe the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (2004) was formed from the merger of the three largest Dutch churches.

Spiritual disciplines play a key role in ecumenism, a movement steeped in prayer for unity. During the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, celebrated every year (January 18–25), Christians from many traditions engage in prayer, Bible study, worship, and fellowship in anticipation of the unity that Christ wills. Paul A. Crow The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Christianity and world religions

The global spread of Christianity through the activity of European and American churches in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries brought it into contact with all other existing religions. Meanwhile, since the beginning of the 19th century, the close connection between Christian world missions and political, economic, technical, and cultural expansion was, at the same time, loosened. Meanwhile, as the study of religion emerged as an academic discipline, scholarship on non-Christian and non-Western religious traditions developed. Philosophers and writers in both Europe and the United States (particularly the New England Transcendentalists) drew from an increasing body of scholarly and missionary writing on Indian and Chinese traditions, incorporating some Eastern ideas—or at least their interpretations of them—into their own idiosyncratic religious visions of a reformed or reinvigorated Christianity. The World Parliament of Religions, held at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, increased the visibility in the West of traditions from South and East Asia in particular.

After World War II the former mission churches were transformed into independent churches in the newly autonomous Asian and African states. The concern for responsible cooperation between the members of Christian minority churches and their non-Christian fellow citizens became more urgent with a renaissance of the Asian higher religions in numerous Asian states.

Missionaries of Asian world religions moved into Europe, the Americas, and Australia. Numerous Vedanta centres were established to introduce Hindu teachings within the framework of the Ramakrishna and Vivekananda missions. In the United States the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 dramatically increased the number of legal immigrants from East, Southeast, and South Asia, the vast majority of whom were not Christians. In that year the Hare Krishna movement (formally the International Society for Krishna Consciousness [ISKCON]) was founded in the United States, attracting followers to its version of Vaishnavism, one of the main branches of Hinduism. Followers of South Asian Theravada Buddhism; Mahayana Buddhism, particularly that of Japan (largely Pure Land, Nichiren [especially Sōka-gakkai], and Zen); and Tibetan Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism founded temples (some of which were called “churches”), meditation centres, community centres, and other spiritual retreats. This influence penetrated Europe and North America on several fronts, whether in the form of a spontaneously received flow of religious ideas and methods of meditation through literature and philosophy, through developments in psychology and psychotherapy, or through institutions within which individuals could develop a personal practice of meditation and participate in the life of the sangha (community). As a result, Christianity in the latter part of the 20th century found itself forced to enter into a factual discussion with non-Christian religions.

There has also been a general transformation of religious consciousness in the West since the middle of the 19th century. Until about 1900, intimate knowledge of non-Western world religions was still the privilege of a few specialists. During the 20th century, however, a wide range of people studied translations of source materials from the non-Christian religions. The dissemination of the religious art of India and East Asia through touring exhibitions and the prominence of the 14th Dalai Lama as a political and religious figure have created a new attitude toward the other religions in the broad public of Europe and North America. In recognition of this fact, numerous Christian institutions for the study of non-Christian religions were founded: e.g., in Bengaluru (Bangalore), India; in Yangon, Myanmar (Rangoon, Burma); in Bangkok, Thailand; in Kyōto, Japan; and in Hong Kong, China.

The readiness of encounter or even cooperation of Christianity with non-Christian religions is a phenomenon of modern times. Until the 18th century, Christians showed little inclination to engage in a serious study of other religions. Even though contacts with Islam had existed since its founding, the first translation of the Qurʾān (the Islamic holy book) was issued only in 1141 in Toledo by Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny. Four hundred years later, in 1542/43, Theodor Bibliander, a theologian and successor of the Swiss reformer Zwingli, edited the translation of the Qurʾān by Peter the Venerable. He was subsequently arrested, and he and his publisher could be freed only through the intervention of Luther.

Christian exposure to Asian religions also was delayed. Although the name Buddha is mentioned for the first time in Christian literature—and there only once—by St. Clement of Alexandria about 200 ce, it did not appear again for some 1,300 years. Pali, the language of the Theravada Buddhist canon (see also Pali literature), remained unknown in the West until the early 19th century, when the modern Western study of Buddhism began.

The reasons for such reticence toward contact with foreign religions were twofold: (1) The ancient church was significantly influenced by the Jewish attitude toward contemporary pagan religions. Like Judaism, it viewed the pagan gods as “nothings” next to the true God; they were offsprings of human error that were considered to be identical with the wooden, stone, or bronze images that were made by humans. (2) Beside this, there was the tendency to identify the pagan gods as evil demonic forces engaged in combat with the true God. The conclusion of the history of salvation, according to the Christian understanding, was to be a final struggle between Christ and his church on one side and Antichrist and his minions on the other, culminating with the victory of Christ. Conflicting Christian attitudes

The history of religion, however, continued even after Christ. During the 3rd and 4th centuries a new world religion appeared in the form of " class="md-crosslink">Manichaeism, which asserted itself as a superior form of Christianity with a new universal claim of validity. The Christian church never acknowledged the claims of Manichaeism but considered the religion a Christian heresy and opposed it as such.

Christianity faced greater challenges when it encountered Islam and the religions of East Asia. When Islam was founded in the 7th century, it considered the revelations of the Prophet Muhammad to be superior to those of the Old and New Testaments. Christianity also fought Islam as a Christian heresy and saw it as the fulfillment of the eschatological prophecies of the Apocalypse concerning the coming of the “false prophet,” as portrayed in the Revelation to John. The religious and political competition between Christianity and Islam led to the Crusades, which influenced the self-consciousness of Western Christianity in the Middle Ages and later centuries. In China and Japan, however, missionaries saw themselves forced into an argument with indigenous religions that could be carried on only with intellectual weapons. The old Logos theory prevailed in a new form founded on natural law, particularly among the Jesuit theologians who worked at the Chinese emperor’s court in Beijing. The Jesuits also sought to adapt indigenous religious traditions to Christian rituals but were forbidden from doing so by the pope during the Chinese Rites Controversy.

Philosophical and cultural developments during the Enlightenment brought changes in the understanding of Christianity and other world religions. During the Enlightenment the existence of the plurality of world religions was recognized by the educated in Europe, partly—as in the case of the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz—in immediate connection with the theories of natural law of the Jesuit missionaries in China. Only in the philosophy of the Enlightenment was the demand of tolerance, which thus far in Christian Europe had been applied solely to the followers of another Christian denomination, extended to include the followers of different religions.

Some missionaries of the late 18th and19th centuries, however, ignored this knowledge or consciously fought against it. Simple lay Christianity of revivalist congregations demanded that a missionary denounce all pagan “idolatry.” The spiritual and intellectual argument with non-Christian world religions simply did not exist for this simplified theology, and in this view a real encounter of Christianity with world religions did not, on the whole, occur in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ernst Wilhelm Benz John Hick The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Contemporary views

The 20th century experienced an explosion of publicly available information concerning the wider religious life of humanity, as a result of which the older Western assumption of the manifest superiority of Christianity ceased to be plausible for many Christians. Early 20th-century thinkers such as Rudolf Otto, who saw religion throughout the world as a response to the Holy (or the Sacred), and Ernst Troeltsch, who showed that, socioculturally, Christianity is one of a number of comparable traditions, opened up new ways of regarding the other major religions.

During the 20th century most Christians adopted one of three main points of view. According to exclusivism, there is salvation only for Christians. This theology underlay much of the history outlined above, expressed both in the Roman Catholic dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside the church no salvation”) and in the assumption of the 18th- and 19th-century Protestant missionary movements. The exclusivist outlook was eroded within advanced Roman Catholic thinking in the decades leading up to the Second Vatican Council and was finally abandoned in the council’s pronouncements. The pope St. John Paul II’s outreach to the world’s religions may be seen as the practical application of the decisions of Vatican II. Within Protestant Christianity there is no comparable central authority, but most Protestant theologians, except within the extreme fundamentalist constituencies, have also moved away from the exclusivist position.

Since the mid-20th century many Roman Catholics and Protestants have moved toward inclusivism—the view that, although salvation is by definition Christian, brought about by the atoning work of Christ, it is nevertheless available in principle to all human beings, whether Christian or not. The Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner expressed the inclusivist view by saying that good and devout people of other faiths may, even without knowing it, be regarded as “anonymous Christians.” Others have expressed in different ways the thought that non-Christians also are included within the universal scope of Christ’s salvific work and their religions fulfilled in Christianity.

The third position, which appealed to a number of individual theologians, was pluralism. According to this view, the great world faiths, including Christianity, are valid spheres of a salvation that takes characteristically different forms within each—though consisting in each case in the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to a new orientation toward the Divine Reality. The other religions are not secondary contexts of Christian redemption but independent paths of salvation. The pluralist position is controversial in Christian theology, because it affects the ways in which the doctrines of the person of Christ, atonement, and the Trinity are formulated.

Christians engage in dialogue with the other major religions through the World Council of Churches’ organization on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies and through the Vatican’s Secretariat for Non-Christians, as well as through a variety of extra-ecclesiastical associations, such as the World Congress of Faiths. There is a National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States, and practically every U.S. state has its own similar state-level organization. A multitude of interreligious encounters have taken place throughout the world, many initiated by Christian and others by non-Christian individuals and groups. A Parliament of the World’s Religions was held in Chicago in 1993 to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the original parliament; it has been held every three or four years since then. John Hick The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Citation Information

Article Title: Christianity

Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Date Published: 12 August 2019

URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christianity

Access Date: August 14, 2019

Additional Reading General works

Information on aspects of Christianity treated in this article is available in David B. Barrett, George T. Kurian, and Todd M. Johnson (eds.), World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Study of Churches and Religions in the Modern World, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (2001); F.L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone (eds.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (1997); J.D. Douglas (ed.), The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed. (1978, reissued 1988); and New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., 15 vol. (2003), especially useful for study of the Roman Catholic Church. History of the Christian church

Broad overviews are found in Owen Chadwick, The Pelican History of the Church, 6 vol. (1960–70, reprinted 1985–86); Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity, rev. ed., 2 vol. (1975); and John McManners (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity (1990, reissued 2001).

Guides to the first centuries include W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (1984); Robert M. Grant, Augustus to Constantine: The Thrust of the Christian Movement into the Roman World (1970, reissued 2004); and Adolf Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, trans. from the German and ed. by James Moffat, 2 vol. (1904, reprinted 1998; also published as The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, 1908, reissued 1972). Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (1996), provides a sociological perspective on Christianity’s emergence.

Discussions of special topics are presented in Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen (1966, reprinted 1984); Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (1986, reprinted 1995); Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, 2nd ed. (2003); and J.M. Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire (1986, reissued 1990).

In addition to the relevant volumes of the histories cited above, the church in the Middle Ages and the Reformation is treated in Peter R.L. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, ad 200–1000, 2nd ed. (2003); John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (1985); Joseph H. Lynch, The Medieval Church: A Brief History (1995); Diarmaid MacCullough, The Reformation: A History (2004); Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform (1250–1550): An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (1980); and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church (1983).

Modern church history is covered in the general histories cited above; in the works cited in the sections below on Christian missions and ecumenism; and in Kenneth Scott Latourette, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age: A History of Christianity in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 5 vol. (1958–62, reissued 1973); and Glen T. Miller, The Modern Church: From the Dawn of the Reformation to the Eve of the Third Millennium (1997). Martin E. Marty Henry Chadwick Jaroslav Jan Pelikan The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Christian doctrine

On the New Testament period, C.H. Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments (1936, reprinted 1980), retains its value; H.E.W. Turner, The Pattern of Christian Truth (1954, reissued 2004), investigates orthodoxy and heresy in the early church; and John Behr, The Way to Nicea (2001), and The Nicene Faith (2004), discuss the development of Trinitarian doctrine in particular. Important issues in medieval Christianity are treated in Jeffrey Burton Russell, Dissent and Order in the Middle Ages (1992); and Per Erik Persson, Sacra Doctrina: Reason and Revelation in Aquinas (1970; originally published in Swedish, 1957). Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss (eds.), Creeds & Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, 4 vol. (2003), provides the official documents from the patristic, medieval, Reformation, and modern periods; while Jaroslav Pelikan, Credo (2003), is Pelikan’s “historical and theological guide” and companion volume to these creeds. Yves-M.-J. Congar, Tradition and Traditions (1966, reissued 1998; originally published in French, 2 vol., 1960–63), investigates the recurrent question of the relationship between scripture and tradition. Berard L. Marthaler, The Catechism Yesterday and Today (1995), traces “the evolution of a genre.” Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message, 2nd ed. (2009), discusses issues of inculturation in West Africa. Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), Principles of Catholic Theology (1987; originally published in German, 1982), lays “building stones” for the discipline. Avery Dulles, Magisterium (2007), discusses the office of “teacher and guardian of the faith” in the Catholic tradition. Communal exercises in theology are discussed from various perspectives in Patrick Henry (ed.), Schools of Thought in the Christian Tradition (1984); and William A. Christian, Sr., Doctrines of Religious Communities: A Philosophical Study (1987). An individual example of systematic theology with an ecumenical orientation and in a liturgical perspective is Geoffrey Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life (1980); a more informal systematics with reflections on theological method is Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (2000). Christian doctrine The meaning of dogma

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, trans. by G.W. Bromiley, 5 vol. (1961, reissued 2004; originally published in German, 4 vol. in 12, 1932–59); Yves-M.-J. Congar, A History of Theology, trans. from French by Hunter Guthrie (1968); Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 6 vol. (2002); and Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3 vol. (1991–98), are important introductions to the history of doctrine and major doctrinal issues by prominent Protestant and Roman Catholic historians and theologians. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

Different scholarly perspectives on Jesus Christ as the second person of the Trinity are Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, trans. by Matthew J. O’Connell (1984; originally published in German, 1982); Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. by W. Montgomery et al., 3rd ed. (1954, reissued 2001; originally published in German, 1906); and Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ, the Sacrament of the Encounter with God, trans. by Paul Barrett (1963, reprinted 1977; originally published in Dutch, 1960). Yves-M.-J. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, trans. by David Smith, 3 vol. (1983, reissued 1997; originally published in French, 1979–80); Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. by Joseph Donceel (1970, reissued 1997; originally published in German); and Michael O’Carroll, Trinitas: A Theological Encyclopedia of the Holy Trinity (1987), are useful introductions to the contemporary understanding of the persons of the Trinity. Anthropology

Excellent studies of Christian views on human nature are Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, 2 vol. (1941–43, reissued 1996); and Wolfhart Pannenberg, What Is Man?: Contemporary Anthropology in Theological Perspective (1970, reissued 1975; originally published in German, 1962). The church

Works on various aspects of church doctrine include, on the church, Hans Küng, The Church (1967, reissued 1976; originally published in German, 1967); on the formation of the biblical canon, Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (1987, reissued 1997); on Christian creeds and confessions, Philip Schaff, Biblioteca Symbolica Ecclesiae Universalis: The Creeds of Christendom, 6th ed., 3 vol. (1919, reissued 1977); and Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie R. Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, 4 vol. (2003); on the liturgy, Frank C. Senn, Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical (1997); and James F. White, Introduction to Christian Worship, 3rd ed. rev. and expanded (2000); on monasticism, David Knowles, Christian Monasticism (1969, reissued 1977); and Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. by Catharine Misrahi, 3rd ed. (1982, reissued 2000; originally published in French 1957); and, on Christian art and iconography, Emile Mâle, Religious Art from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century (1949, reissued 1982; originally published in French, 1945); Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, trans. by G.E.H. Palmer, 2nd ed. (1982; originally published in German, 1952); and Robert Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture (1988). Eschatology

The history and nature of Christian eschatology are examined in Rudolf Bultmann, History and Eschatology (1957; also published as The Presence of Eternity: History and Eschatology, 1975); Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology (1967, reissued 1993; originally published in German, 1964); and Frederic J. Baumgartener, Longing for the End: A History of Millennialism in Western Civilization (1999; reissued 2001). Influential works from the perspective of process theology are Catherine Keller, The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (2003); and Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, The End of Evil: Process Eschatology in Historical Context (1988). Ernst Wilhelm Benz Martin E. Marty The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Christian philosophy

Introductions to the early period include Christopher Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity (1994); and Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (2003). The classic works on the medieval period are Étienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (1938, reprinted 1966), and History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1955, reissued 1980). Modern developments are treated in James C. Livingston, Modern Christian Thought, 2 vol., 2nd ed. (1997–2000). Christian existentialism is addressed in George Pattison, Anxious Angels: A Retrospective View of Religious Existentialism (1999). Also useful is Hans Küng, Does God Exist?: An Answer for Today, trans. by Edward Quinn (1980, reprinted 1991; originally published in German, 1978). John Hick Mysticism

Many of the texts of the great Christian mystics have been published in new translations in The Classics of Western Spirituality series (1978– ). Bernard McGinn, Presence of God: A History of Western Mysticism, 2 vol. (1991–95), is a good introduction. Helpful for the serious student are the classic works of William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902, reissued 1977); and Rudolf Otto, Mysticism East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism, trans. by Bertha L. Bracey and Richenda C. Payne (1960, reissued 1987; originally published in German, 1926). Karl Rahner, The Practice of Faith: A Handbook of Contemporary Spirituality, ed. by Karl Lehmann and Albert Raffelt (1983; originally published in German, 1982), is one of the more important theological contributions of the late 20th century. Bernard J. McGinn Myth and legend

The nature of myth is examined in Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality, trans. by Willard R. Trask (1963, reprinted 1998; originally published in French, 1963); and Robert A. Segal, Myth: A Very Short Introduction (2004). Resistance to myth and legend in early Christianity is described in Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, ed. by Robert A. Kraft and Gerhard Krodel (1971, reissued 1996; originally published in German, 1934).

The Apocryphal gospels are covered in Morton Smith, The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel According to Mark (1973, reissued 1985); James M. Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 4th rev. ed. (1996); and Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (1979, reissued 1989). Also of interest is Charles W. Hedrick and Robert Hodgson, Jr. (eds.), Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism, and Early Christianity (1982).

Devotion to the saints is discussed in H. Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography, trans. by Donald Attwater (1907, reissued 1998; originally published in French, 1905); Lawrence S. Cunningham, The Meaning of Saints (1980); Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (1981); and Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints & Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700 (1982, reprinted 1986). The Arthurian cycles are treated in P.B. Grout et al. (eds.), The Legend of Arthur in the Middle Ages (1983).

Christian alchemy is described in C.G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, trans. by R.F.C. Hull, 2nd ed. rev. (1968, reprinted 1980; originally published in German, 2nd rev. ed., 1952). Alchemical researches of Enlightenment scientists, especially physicists and chemists, are examined in Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972, reissued 2002); and Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy; or, “The Hunting of the Greene Lyon” (1975, reprinted 1983).

Two examples of non-Western materials are Roger Bastide, The African Religions of Brazil: Toward a Sociology of the Interpenetration of Civilizations, trans. by Helen Sebba (1978; originally published in French, 1960), especially pp. 260–284 on Afro-Brazilian Christianity; and Marc de Civrieux, Watunna: An Orinoco Creation Cycle, trans. and ed. by David M. Guss (1980; originally published in Spanish, 1970). Lawrence E. Sullivan The relationships of Christianity

Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. by Olive Wyon, 2 vol. (1931, reissued 1992; originally published in German, 1912), is dated in specifics but is still one of the most comprehensive and influential studies of this topic. Another important general work is Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, ed. by Robert C. Kimball (1959, reissued 1978), essays on philosophy, art, literature, and science. Studies of various aspects of Christianity’s intersection with the world include, on pastoral care, Ronald L. Numbers and Darrel W. Amundsen (eds.), Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions (1986), a unique and comprehensive presentation by scholars of various faith traditions, with bibliographies; on birth control, John T. Noonan, Jr., Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists, enlarged ed. (1986); on black theology, James H. Cone, For My People: Black Theology and the Black Church (1984); on liberation theology, Deane William Ferm, Third World Liberation Theologies: An Introductory Survey (1986); and Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff, Introducing Liberation Theology (1987; originally published in Portuguese, 1986); and, on feminist theology, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (1983, reissued 2002). Carter H. Lindberg Christian missions

Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, 7 vol. (1937–45, reissued 1971), is a pioneering classic. Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions, 2nd ed. rev. by Owen Chadwick (1986), is a lively, engaging work. Pope Paul VI, On Evangelization in the Modern World (1975), addresses post-Vatican II debates. Andrew Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (1996), is another useful study. William Richey Hogg Ecumenism

Introductions to the topic are provided by Thomas Fitzgerald, The Ecumenical Movement: An Introductory History (2004); Jeffrey Gros, Eamon McManus, and Ann Riggs, Introduction to Ecumenism (1998); Constantin G. Patelos (ed.), The Orthodox Church in the Ecumenical Movement: Documents and Statements, 1902–1975 (1978); and Hans-Ruedi Weber, Asia and the Ecumenical Movement, 1895–1961 (1966). Paul A. Crow Christianity and world religions

The most comprehensive surveys of Christian attitudes toward the world religions are Paul F. Knitter, No Other Name? (1985), and Introducing Theologies of Religions (2002). A wide range of views are represented in John Hick and Brian Hebblethwaite (eds.), Christianity and Other Religions: Selected Readings, rev. ed. (2001); and Gerald H. Anderson and Thomas F. Stransky (eds.), Christ’s Lordship and Religious Pluralism (1981). The classic modern statement of a conservative position is that of Hendrick Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, 3rd ed. (1956, reissued 1969). Hans Küng et al., Christianity and the World Religions: Paths of Dialogue with Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, trans. by Peter Heinegg (1986; originally published in German, 1984), represents a contemporary Roman Catholic standpoint. The pluralistic option is expressed in, for example, John Hick, A Christian Theology of Religions: The Rainbow of Faiths (1995). Amos Yong, Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions (2003), provides an influential Pentecostal approach to religious diversity. S. Mark Heim, Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion (1995), provides an influential liberal Christian inclusivist position. John Hick The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica