Can anyone recommend a good book on church history that walks the fine line between cynicism and blind acceptance? I want the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Thanks!
I’d recommend -
***A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years ***by Diarmaid MacCulloch. I know that TRMII - another site member - also enjoyed this book greatly.
I’ve heard good things about that book, too, although I haven’t read it.
All the good histories I know of run more than one book, or cover only one period in one book. (Or cover one period in four or five books. 
)
A multi-book volume I also expect good things about (and which has had a strong reputation since the 19th century) is Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church in eight volumes. Schaff was once THE Protestant source for Patristic textual criticism and translation, so he absolutely knows his sources, and is still highly regarded today (although critical editions of Patristic sources have gotten better). A Reformed Protestant, his sympathetic studies of early Christian history not only led him to be tried for heresy (although also acquitted) by his Calvinist mates for being too pro-Catholic, but he also became a Christian universalist.
So he ought to provide a warts-and-all account that is respectful to all sides.
His 67 works (of which I’ve collected 63 by the way–I don’t recall which works of his I skipped, but I figured I could read all those others first and pick up the spares later if I cared to ) can be downloaded for free in VERY good editions from CCEL here.
Vol 1: Apostolic Christianity, AD 1 to 100, 819 pages.
Vol 2: Ante-Nicene Christianity, AD 100-325, 846 pages.
Vol 3: Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity, AD 311-600, 952 pages.
Vol 4: Mediaeval Christianity, AD 590-1073, 738 pages. (Note: we’d largely call this Dark Ages today.)
Vol 5: Middle Ages, AD 1049-1294, 711 pages.
Vol 6: Middles Ages 2, Electric Boogalo 
, AD 1294-1517, 650 pages. (He didn’t give it a separate title.)
Vol 7: Modern Christianity, the German Reformation, 633 pages. (i.e. Luthor and his period)
Vol 8: Modern Christianity, the Swiss Reformation, 793 pages. (i.e. Calvin and his period)
I don’t know if he attempted a volume of Christian history of the Enlightenment period up to his present time or thereabouts. If so, the CCEL doesn’t have it. (Or perhaps it’s included in the latter two volumes.)
Those tomes naturally summarize (and add to) an even larger body of work: 10 volumes of Ante-Nicene Patristic literature, and TWO 14 volume sets of Nicene/Post-Nicene Patristics. (For some weird reason the first volume set runs from Augustine afterward, while the second volume set starts with Eusebius and then picks up Nicene Fathers from around Athanasius up to roughly Augustine’s time.) These things are so large that the 10th volume of the ANP collection is an index by itself; but they still don’t include all the Patristic texts. Editor Roger Pearce has made a noble effort at collecting missing Patristic texts, along with other influential texts (Christian and nonChristian) from the Patristic period, here as an adjunct.
He also wrote three collections of Creeds, but the Evangelical Creed volume for some reason isn’t provided by CCEL in pdf (and the Kindle version for sale was very badly formatted). It can still be accessed from their site online, but that’s a sucky way to read it even though it looks good.
(He also contributed to some dozen volumes or so of a Christian encyclopedia, the standard work of its time; and a two volume series of replies to the radically sceptical “histories” of Christ popularized in his day.)
Thanks, guys! I’ll check both of those out