Drawing upon the methodology developed in his Dynamics of Theology (1990) and exemplified in Jesus Symbol of God (1999), Roger Haight, in this magisterial work, achieves what he calls an historical ecclesiology, or ecclesiology from below. In contrast to traditional ecclesiology from above, which is abstract, idealist, and ahistorical, ecclesiology from below is concrete, realist, and historically conscious.

In this first of two volumes, Haight charts the history of the church’s self-understandings from the origins of the church in the Jesus movement to the late Middle Ages.