What is Reddit's opinion of The Early Church (The Penguin History of the Church)?

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This is a good question with a very complicated answer! That being said, not sure it's really a "debate religion" question and you might get some less than helpful answers.

You should post over on /r/AcademicBiblical or /r/AskBibleScholars! You'll likely get more thorough, high quality answers that way.

This book is also a great introduction. Albeit a little dense.

The Penguin/Pelican History of the Church series has been a pretty standard text for a while, though they're a bit dated now. I found them very useful, although they cover such large swathes of history that they can only cover each topic very briefly. The Reformation Book covers the whole Munich thing in like one page - a topic that Dan Carlin covers in a four and a half hour podcast.

These books will give you the standard classical view of church history, and they won't give you the latest in controversial research. But they're also quite good at giving a neutral point of view.

This is book one of the series.

https://www.amazon.com/Early-Church-Penguin-History-v/dp/0140231994/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=early+church&qid=1619143835&sr=8-2

Henry Chadwick's history of the early Church is an older book but a classic.

This one, The Patient Ferment, is very much worthwhile as well.

For primary sources, the Didache is a good place to start, probably followed by 1 Clement and the seven letters of Ignatius of Antioch. Beyond that, longer works by Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian. I think it's pretty key to concentrate on the Ante-Nicene writers of the 1st through 3rd centuries (before the Council of Nicaea in 325, and the Edict of Milan in 313) because of the shifts that happen in the 4th century as Christianity becomes legal, then quickly predominant, and finally the state religion. You could also call it the "pre-Constatine" Church. They're not perfect by any means, and there were plenty of heresies and doctrinal controversies, but it is still the Church at a time of minority status and persecution, not the later Late Antiquity or Medieval Church as a force of social and political power which is always problematic.

My suggestion would be to read about the early church. Christians spent their first few hundred years wrestling with how to reconcile Monotheism with the Bible's teaching about Jesus. Studying up on that history might help you see alternative approaches and clarify your beliefs.

This book is great: https://www.amazon.com/Early-Church-Penguin-History-v/dp/0140231994. It's not too long and is a good read.

Lots more you can dig into in the early church if you want to go deeper.

Read: The Early Church or Early Christianity: A Brief History by Joseph H. Lynch

<em>The Early Church</em> by Henry Chadwick is a great brief intro to the first ~1000 years of Christianity.