A. K. M. Adam
23 Seabury Hall
Office 328-9300 ext 39
Resources for Studying the Early Church
There are many wonderful resources for enriching our work together this term. While some books will be required--that is, we'll assume that you've read particular assignments and absorbed their content--you may want to go further and explore other sources as well. Thus, we've structured the reading list this way:
Required Reading
Alan L. Hayes, Church and Society in DocumentsStudents will also be required to obtain and consult one of the course's recommended books on writing better:
Deborah Core, The Seminary Student Writes
--(starts from the basics)
Rise Axelrod and Charles R. Cooper, The St. Martin's Guide to Writing
--(comprehensive!)
Joseph M. Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Style and Grace
--(unsurpassed guide to polishing your prose)
Joseph M. Williams, The Craft of Argument
--(a helpful perspective on the whole business of writing for a purpose)
Some additional readings will be available online, and all should be held on reserve.
Many of the assignments will have links to online documents; of these, many will draw on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library website.
You'd be well served to order a copy of Christian Classics Ethereal Library CD-ROM; for $29, you get all the Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, the writings of Josephus, Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church, and vast numbers of other theological and devotional writings.
Students frequently derive benefit from consulting books that are not specifically on the syllabus. For instance, if you need more visual stimuli than the conventional textbook offers--and even if you don't--I recommend How to Read Church History, volume 1, by Jean Comby.
Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church (on the above-mentioned CD-ROM & associated website) is a nineteenth-century reference guide. W. H. C. Frend, a master of early church history, wrote The Early Church and The Rise of Christianity; Jaroslav Pelikan wrote a five-volume history of the church, of which the first volume, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, deals with our period. Hans von Campenhausen wrote books with short biographies of the Latin and Greek Fathers, conveniently collected now into a single volume entitled (surprisingly) The Father of the Church. Introductory material on church history abounds: try Henry Chadwick's The Early Church, Roland Bainton's Early Christianity, the first colume of Justo Gonzalez's History of the Christian Church, and William Placher's History of Christian Theology (which is sometimes assigned for Prof. Barker's "Development of Doctrine" course) among others.
On-line, you may want to consult the Early Christian On-Line Encyclopedia, a treasury of information about and images from church history. ECOLE features a glossary, a timeline, and more extensive articles on topics pertinent to church history. Another web resource is the Catholic Encyclopedia, an on-line version of the many-volume research tool; though the Catholic Encyclopedia dates from the early twentieth century, it offers fuller coverage than many smaller, more recent sources. Use it critically, but do feel encouraged to use it. Finally, the Christian Classics Ethereal Library not only publishes a CD-ROM you can buy, but also makes its contents available over the net. Look here for the texts of the Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, and as a first check for any other Christian texts.
Susan Shroff's webpage offers helps for studying the Elements of Early Church History and a Javascript quizzing window for practicing Salvific Pursuit.
If the whole business about writing better gets you down, I warmly recommend Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, a friendly book from a strong writer who sympathizes with your dismay at the prospect of having to write twelve pages about Cyprian's theology of martyrdom. Really, she does. And Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb, and Joseph Williams have put together a guide to composing research papers in The Craft of Research.
All of these complement the specific concerns we'll be emphasizing in our in-class writing workshops.
Here are some web links to helpful sites on writing better:
Purdue Univesity's Online Writing Lab, with intensely helpful observations on composition.
Despite the dire predictions of naysayers, writing is every bit as important on the web as it is in print; in certain respects, writing is even more important. Hence, a number of web-usability sites offer tips on writing better, with a view to web literacy. These provide wonderful advice, but observe thoughtfully one of their emphases: that one needs to write with a view to who will be reading you, and where and how they'll be reading. Writing for the web isn't the same as writing for a term paper, for instance, though the skill of writing deliberately and carefully will help you in both settings. Anyway, look at the writing column on the Fuse website, or look for writing tips at Jakob Nielsen's UseIt site.
Walk down Sheridan Road, or check out Northwestern's Writing Center here first. This page doesn't give specific advice, but it conveys the excitement that NU's writing program engenders.
Cabrillo College's web-based curriculum for their composition course, including some specifics on writing papers
Lots of resources at GrammarNow.
A K M Adam
E-Mail: akm.adam@seabury.edu