Primary Authors & Sources
HIST-102 builds its reading list from required primary and classical sources in primitive christianity and imperial church growth. The authors below are read as teachers across the centuries, not as entries in a bibliography. A Neander contributes General History of the Christian Religion and Church, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. William Mitchell Ramsay contributes The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Herbert B. Workman contributes Persecution in the Early Church, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study.
Taken together, these readings form a coherent conversation across centuries — students encounter real arguments, not flattened summaries. Philip Schaff serves as the great historian of creeds and councils, making confessional documents accessible in their historical context, notably in History of the Christian Church and History of the Christian Church. Beresford James Kidd contributes A History of the Church: To A.D. 313, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. John Benjamin Firth contributes Constantine the Great: The Reorgainsation of the Empire…, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study.
What You Will Study
Students study the expansion of primitive Christianity from Pentecost through the apostolic era, examining Acts, New Testament epistles, and early second-century sources on church growth under Roman rule. The course covers missionary expansion, Gentile inclusion, persecution, organizational development, and the transition from apostolic to post-apostolic leadership. Readings include primary patristic witnesses alongside scholarly histories that contextualize house churches, urban congregations, and the spread of the gospel across the Mediterranean. Students analyze how doctrine, worship, and discipline took shape in communities founded by apostles and their immediate successors. Particular attention falls on parallels between first-century house fellowship and contemporary Reformed house church practice in the Florida Keys.
Course Objectives
Objectives include narrating the geographic and ethnic expansion of the early church, identifying major figures and controversies in Acts and the Pauline mission, explaining how Roman political and religious structures affected Christian witness, and comparing primitive church patterns with modern ecclesial forms. Students will evaluate claims about early Christian communism, egalitarianism, and episcopal development with historical care. The course cultivates appreciation for the Spirit's work through ordinary believers in house gatherings and public proclamation. Written work requires essays on persecution, martyrdom, and the transition to institutional forms without romanticizing or despising either era. Students will articulate lessons for contemporary mission and church planting.
Ministry & Life Application
Understanding primitive Christianity encourages modern believers to hold lightly to cultural accretions while fiercely guarding apostolic faith and practice. House church leaders in the Keys find historical warrant and practical wisdom in studying how the earliest Christians worshipped, shared goods, endured suffering, and proclaimed resurrection hope. Pastoral ministry gains perspective when shepherds see their congregations as heirs of a movement that began in upper rooms and spread through faithful witness. This course inspires evangelistic courage and ecclesial simplicity rooted in Scripture rather than novelty. The church today is strengthened by knowing its origins in the Spirit-empowered community that turned the Roman world upside down.