CHURCH HISTORY · CHRISTIANITY
Robert Louis Wilken
Robert Louis Wilken is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of the History of Christianity emeritus at the University of Virginia. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, past president of the American Academy of Religion, the North American Patristics Society, and the Academy of Catholic Theology. He is chairman of the board of the Institute on Religion and Public Life, the publisher of First Things. Among his numerous publications are The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (2013), The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (2003), The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (1984/2003), and Remembering the Christian Past (1995). He has taught at Fordham University, the University of Notre Dame, the Institutum Patristicum (Augustinianum) in Rome, the Gregorian University in Rome, and Providence College.
It is a daunting task for a reader to face sixty-six chapters in page after page of unbroken print.
— from Isaiah
Most acclaimed
The Land Called Holy
1992
From the time of Jesus, Palestine has been an integral part of the Christian experience. Not only have Christians always lived in Palestine, but more important, since the fourth century Christians gradually came to see Palestine as a Holy Land and Jerusalem as the Christian city. In this authoritative and accessible book, Robert L. Wilken discusses how Palestine became a Holy Land to Christians and how Christian ideas and feelings toward the land of the Bible evolved as they lived there and made it their own. Drawing on both primary texts and archaeological evidence, Wilken traces the Christian conception of a Holy Land from its origins in the Hebrew Bible to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in the seventh century. - Jacket flap.
The First Thousand Years
2009
This work is a narrative account of the history of Christianity from its beginning to the end of the first millennium. The principal theme is the slow drama of the building of a Christian civilization. A major theme is the mission of Christians among different peoples in many regions of the ancient world: Ethiopia, Nubia, Armenia, Georgia, Persia, central Asia, India, China as well as among the Germanic peoples of northern Europe and the Slavic peoples in the Balkans and Russia. The rise and spread of Islam is integral to the story. How did a community that was largely invisible in the first two centuries of its existence go on to remake the civilizations it inhabited, culturally, politically, and intellectually? Beginning with the life of Jesus, the author narrates the dramatic spread and development of Christianity over the first thousand years of its history. Moving through the formation of early institutions, practices, and beliefs to the transformations of the Roman world after the conversion of Constantine, he sheds new light on the subsequent stories of Christianity in the Latin West, the Byzantine and Slavic East, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Through a selected narration of particularly noteworthy persons and events, he demonstrates how the coming of Christianity set in motion one of the most profound revolutions the world has known. This is not a story limited to the West; rather, Christian communities in Ethiopia, Nubia, Armenia, Georgia, Persia, Central Asia, India, and China shaped the course of Christian history. The rise and spread of Islam had a lasting impact on the future of Christianity, and several chapters are devoted to the early experiences of Christians under Muslim rule. The author reminds us that the career of Christianity is characterized by decline and attrition as well as by growth and expansion. - Publisher.
Isaiah
The volumes in The Church's Bible are designed to present the Holy Scriptures as understood and interpreted during the first millennium of Christian history. In his extremely thorough work on Isaiah, Robert Wilken brings to bear his considerable knowledge of early Christianity. Drawing on writings of the church fathers -- Eusebius of Caesarea, Ambrose, Jerome, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret of Cyrus, Bernard of Clairvaux, and nearly sixty others -- all of them masterfully translated, this work allows the complex words of Isaiah to come alive. Wilken's selection of ancient commentators clearly illuminates how Isaiah was used by the New Testament writers and understood by the early church fathers. Each chapter begins with a modern English translation of the septuagint, prepared by Moisés Silva. Editorial comments provide a foundation for understanding the excerpted commentaries and other writings that follow for each chapter. Isaiah: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators is ideal for devotional and spiritual reading and for a deeper understanding of the church's historical interpretation of this major prophet. - Publisher.