Includes bibliographical references and index.

"This book aims to introduce you to historical theology as an important and interesting subject. It is also a very large topic; to do justice to it, at least five substantial volumes would be required. This book is an introduction to its aims and themes. It aims to pack as much useful information into a single volume as is realistically possible, using approaches which have been tried and tested in classrooms in Europe, North America, and Australasia. The book makes use of some material already presented in the best-selling work Christian Theology: An Introduction, which has been reconfigured for the specific purpose of introducing students to the discipline of historical theology. Although much new material has been added and some existing material rewritten, the basic approach and some contents of this earlier work have been retained. The guiding principle which lies behind this volume is selective attention. It is like a map, giving you a good idea of the landscape, filling in enough detail to help you make sense of things, and making it easier to move on to a more detailed engagement with any of its features. It is assumed that you do not have the time to become familiar with every aspect of the history of Christian thought, but want a general familiarity with its most important aspects. The approach adopted is to begin by painting a scene using some very broad brush strokes, and then filling in the fine detail in selected areas of importance (the 30 "Case Studies). This will allow you to come away from reading this book with a good general understanding of the development of Christian theology. Despite its brevity, however, the work includes a lot of material - considerably more than is included in most introductions of this kind"--