from founding to today

Dr. Marty has chosen a principle of selectivity which the historic Christian church would approve. The ideal of the church, as expressed in its ancient ecumenical creed, is that it be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. The history of the Christian church can therefore be interpreted as its effort to achieve unity, sanctity, universality, and authentic witness. History, however, testifies to the tension and imbalance, the anguish and stress, which have beset Christendom as one or the other of its ideal attributes have been submerged and recovered, overwhelmed and re-appropriated. With this guiding criterion in mind Dr. Marty accomplishes a brilliant, instructive, and eminently fair statement of the history of Christianity from its founding to the present day.

History, Christianity