A More Catholic Catholicity: Christianity in Late Antiquity

The problem with Roman Catholicism is that it is insufficiently catholic. The problem with Protestantism, including confessional Reformed Christianity, is that it too is often insufficiently catholic. Roman Catholicism is insufficiently catholic because, by definition, it has no real place for the global church of every age. This includes the patristic and Late Antique era, not only the churches after the Reformation. Rome has quietly set the Western terms for what counts as theology, holy philosophy, and the tradition, and we too often blindly follow their lead. We know Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, and we tend to think this is the history of Christian theology when it really is the history of Western theology. We don’t know Ephraim, the Didascalia, or the origins of Islam as they took form within the Church rather than outside of it.

This is the key reason why at Greystone we read far more widely and deeply than our favorite theologians and events; why we include and strongly encourage our courses in Christian Syriac and other languages; and why we are committed, in the context of a hearty and confessional Reformed Christianity, to a substantial and working catholicity. These are just a few things that you’ll learn from Dr. Mark Graham’s Greystone course module on Christianity in Late Antiquity. For today’s Greystone Conversations episode, we are pleased to introduce this fascinating course of lectures. In what follows, you’ll be able to listen in on Dr. Graham’s introductory lectures for this course.

Dr. Graham’s course is one that may just provoke a revolution in our thinking about the Church, and what ought to be the rich density of the catholicity of the Reformed Faith. We encourage the listener to think deeply through these lectures, and to continue listening to them at Greystone Connect. Doing so, you may learn far more about your own family history as a Christian, and what you learn may reconfigure, in a lasting way, what you thought you already knew. 

Dr. Graham is a Greystone fellow in Christianity and Late Antiquity. An accomplished scholar and active churchman, Dr. Graham has taught in the History department at Grove City College since 2003, serving as full professor there since 2013. He is the author, with Eric H. Cline, of Ancient Empires: From Mesopotamia to the Rise of Islam (New York: Cambridge University Press, June 2011), and News and Frontier Consciousness in the Late Roman Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006).

Dr. Graham’s Greystone course on Christianity in Late Antiquity is available this fall for credit or to audit, and his multiple lectures on this topic are available now for all Greystone Members. Become a member today for unlimited access to the growing Greystone Connect library.