HIST101: Church History

Year 1 • 3 Credits • Weekly Syllabus

HIST101 is a 3-credit course in the Year 1 program at Sozo Bible College.

12-Week Course Outline

1. Week 1 The Early Church — Pentecost to Persecution

   The book of Acts is not just history — it is the pattern. The early church spread explosively across the Roman world through ordinary people filled with an extraordinary Spirit, at enormous personal cost. This week traces the first century: the Jerusalem church, the Gentile mission, Paul's...

2. Week 2 The Apostolic Fathers — Holding the Line

   The generation after the apostles faced a critical question: how do you preserve and pass on what you received? The Apostolic Fathers — Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr — were the first custodians of apostolic teaching, writing in the late first and second centuries to churches facing...

3. Week 3 The Great Councils — Defining Doctrine Under Pressure

   The Council of Nicaea (325 AD) and subsequent councils didn't invent Christian doctrine — they defended it against specific, sophisticated attacks. The Arian controversy forced the church to articulate precisely what it believed about Christ's nature. Chalcedon (451 AD) settled the two-natures...

4. Week 4 Constantine and the Cost of Acceptance

   When Constantine made Christianity legal in 313 AD, the church gained protection and lost something harder to name. This week honestly examines what the Constantinian settlement did to the church: the gifts (freedom from persecution, resources, influence) and the costs (the merger of church and...

5. Week 5 The Desert Fathers — The Recovery of Depth

   In the same era that the church was gaining worldly respectability, some believers fled to the Egyptian desert to pursue God with total abandon. The Desert Fathers and Mothers — Anthony, Pachomius, Macrina — represent the church's instinct that something was being lost in the rush toward...

6. Week 6 The Medieval Church — Glory and Corruption

   The medieval period (roughly 600-1500 AD) presents the church at its most complex: extraordinary acts of faith, scholarship, art, and mission alongside institutional corruption, political manipulation, and the deep confusion of spiritual and temporal power.

7. Week 7 The Reformation — Scripture Alone, Faith Alone

   Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses in 1517 is the most famous moment in church history after Pentecost — but the Reformation was not one moment, it was a movement. Luther in Germany, Calvin in Geneva, Zwingli in Zurich, Tyndale giving England the Bible in English, Knox setting Scotland on fire.

8. Week 8 The Radical Reformers — The Free Church Tradition

   While Luther and Calvin worked to reform the state church, the Anabaptists asked a more radical question: should the church and state be mixed at all? The Anabaptists (re-baptizers) insisted on believers' baptism, separated church and state, practised non-violence, and were persecuted by...

9. Week 9 Revival — Wesley, Whitefield, and the Great Awakenings

   By the 1700s, much of the church had grown cold, formal, and nominal. Then God moved — through George Whitefield preaching in fields to thousands, through John Wesley riding on horseback across England, through Jonathan Edwards in New England. The First and Second Great Awakenings transformed...

10. Week 10 The Modern Missionary Movement — The Gospel to Every Nation

    William Carey going to India in 1793 launched what became the most extensive missionary expansion in church history. Hudson Taylor in China, David Livingstone in Africa, Amy Carmichael in India, Lottie Moon in China — the 19th and 20th centuries saw the Gospel reach every continent.

11. Week 11 The Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal

    Azusa Street, Los Angeles, 1906: a multiracial revival under William Seymour that sent Pentecostal fire across the world. Within fifty years, Pentecostalism had become one of the fastest-growing movements in Christian history — and within a century, the charismatic renewal had touched virtually...

12. Week 12 The Global Church Today — And Where We Fit

    The centre of Christianity has shifted dramatically. The largest Christian populations are now in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The fastest-growing churches are Pentecostal and charismatic. The Western church that once sent missionaries is now receiving them.