I recently finished reading The History of the Church by Eusebius. Eusebius was an early bishop in the church who lived from 260-339 A.D. This work is important to those interested in church history because Eusebius provides an early history of the Christian church from the time of the Apostles until the time of Constantine. Eusebius ended his history in 324 following Constantine’s defeat of the wicked and Godless Licinius.

I found The History of the Church to be enlightening, sometimes shocking, and often dry but never dull. Reading an unedited history of the church, written by one of her own, and penned so close in time to the vital first three centuries, has challenged my ecclesial understanding and more than a few historical assumptions. I have been forced to wonder why it is possible to attend Bible college as a pastoral major, to take all required church history classes, and to never read an early church history book written during the time of the early church. One might conclude that this omission is related to the probability that students exposed to an accurate early church history might question the ecclesial validity of what I have come to term the protestant experiment.