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Christianity is the world’s most populous religion, with some two billion adherents. As a world religion, Christianity has flourished because it is capable of taking on new forms in new contexts. To understand both the religion’s history and its present state, Mary Gerhart and Fabian Udoh gather original texts—from early Christian writings to contemporary documents on church-related issues—in The Christianity Reader. The most comprehensive anthology of Christian texts ever in English, this is a landmark sourcebook for the study of Christianity’s historical diversity. With newly edited, annotated, and translated primary texts, along with supplemental analytical essays, the volume allows Christianity, at long last, to speak in its many voices. Focusing on Christianity as a religion, Gerhart and Udoh select texts that illuminate issues such as theology, mysticism, and ritual, while also articulating the stories of previously marginalized groups, as well as those in new and growing epicenters of the religion. With nearly three hundred selections, the texts encompass the entire history of Christian writings excluding the New Testament, from Justin Martyr and Tertullian to Fabien Eboussi Boulaga and Teresa of Calcutta. Eight thematic sections cover biblical traditions and interpretations; early influences; nascent forms; patterns of worship; structures of community; philosophy, theology, and mysticism; twentieth-century issues and challenges; and the contemporary relationship between Christianity and other world religions. The Reader’s contents are arranged chronologically and are supported with introductions and source notes that explain the rationale for their inclusion and their context. Providing a far richer selection than ever before available in a single volume, The Christianity Reader will be welcomed as both a classroom resource and a work of reference for decades to come.

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This is the first English translation of the last two theological works of Eusebius of Caesarea, Against Marcellus and On Ecclesiastical Theology. The first text was composed after the deposition of Marcellus of Ancyra in 336 to justify the action of the council fathers in ordering the deposition on the grounds of heresy, contending that Marcellus was “Sabellian” (or modalist) on the Trinity and a follower of Paul of Samosata (hence adoptionist) in Christology. Relying heavily upon extensive quotations from a treatise Marcellus wrote against Asterius the Sophist, this text provides important information about ecclesiastical politics in the period before and just after the Council of Nicea, and endeavors to demonstrate Marcellus’s erroneous interpretation of several key biblical passages that had been under discussion since before the council. In doing so, Eusebius criticizes Marcellus’s inadequate account of the distinction between the persons of the Trinity, eschatology, and the Church’s teaching about the divine and human identities of Christ. On Ecclesiastical Theology, composed circa 338/339 just before Eusebius’s death, and perhaps in response to the amnesty for deposed bishops enacted by Constantius after the death of Constantine in 377 and the possibility of Marcellus’s return to his see, continues to lay out the criticisms initially put forward in Against Marcellus, again utilizing quotations from Marcellus’s book against Asterius. However, we see in this text a much more systematic explanation of Eusebius’s objections to the various elements of Marcellus’s theology and what he sees as the proper orthodox articulation of those elements. Long overlooked for statements at odds with later orthodoxy, even written off as heretical because allegedly “semi-Arian,” recent scholarship has demonstrated the tremendous influence these texts had on the Greek theological tradition in the fourth century, especially on the orthodox understanding of the Trinity. In addition to their influence, they are some of the few complete texts that we have from Greek theologians in the immediate period following the Council of Nicea in 325, thus filling a gap in the materials available for research and teaching in this critical phase of theological development.