A History of Christian Thought, Volume 1

            This past semester I did some reading in historical theology in the ancient church. I've put together some reviews of those primary and secondary sources I read, many of which were interesting. Happy reading! The first is a general overiew of the period.

This excellent book was written by Justo Gonzalez to provide an introduction to the history of Christian thought (as is easily observable from the title of the book). Gonzalez seeks to keep a balance in the book between two purposes. First, he wants to make the book easy to read and understand, a purpose for which he has admirably succeeded. Second, he wants to show the complexity and the “rich variety” (9) of Christian thought, and as far as possible in a book of this size, he has completed this purpose as well. Gonzales also does not desire this work to be used in purely an intellectual fashion, as he gives a further purpose for the second edition: “being faithful and obedient in the world in which we have been placed” (8). Christian thought is not to simply intrigue the reader, but to help the reader follow God in a better fashion, an emphasis I appreciate.

Gonzalez helpfully presents some of his own theological presuppositions at the beginning of the book so that the reader can understand some of his background and why he chose to write the book in the manner he did. The presupposition which is he most concerned for his reader to know is that he holds to “a Christian view of the nature of truth” (25). He uses the Incarnation and two early heresies as a heuristic model. Truth does not simply exist in the realm of the eternal (similar to Docetism), but it also is not relative (comparable to Ebionism).  Just as Jesus was both God and human, so truth is “given in the concrete, the historical, and the particular, contained and hidden within it, but in such a way as never to lose its veracity for all historical moments” (27). While we cannot give with unequivocal certainty the exact and unchanging definition of a doctrine, our definitions can be adequate, as they are based upon Scripture and the history of Christian thought. It is refreshing to read an author give their worldview at the beginning of a book.

Since the history of Christian thought is a vast field, the methodology of presenting it involved making many difficult choices. Gonzales decided to divide the field into three large portions and make each of them a book. The first volume (which is the portion under review here) covers the period after the New Testament until the Council of Chalcedon.

Some of the contributions of this book can best be seen when it is compared to a similar work, The Story of Christian Theology by Roger Olson. Olson covers the same topic, although he focuses more specifically upon theology and his book is smaller than the three volume work by Gonzalez. Both books are well written and both are easy and enjoyable to read, although, in my opinion, Olson is a better writer and his book is a more pleasurable read. This characteristic is important for a day and age when history is fairly unpopular: students need all the help they can get to read history.

Both works also help to show the reader the big picture and how everything fits together, that is, that the controversies are not hermetically sealed from each other. Even though topics are covered in separate chapters, they are not necessarily separate issues, such as the possible connections between Antioch and Pelagius (Gonzalez 355).  It is easy to think of discrete units and times in history, but history simply does not work in such a fashion. Everything is connected in some way, and both authors show this aspect of history well.

But the differences between the books show the respective strengths of the works. Olson helps to tie everything together and connects many of the loose strings present in the story. This makes the book quite coherent and helps the student to get a better handle on the situation if they are unversed in the history of Christian thought. Gonzalez, on the other hand, does not have that same coherence. The greater length of Gonzalez’s three volume work allows him to get deeper into the history and show more of the complexity of the arguments and the situations. This deeper look allows him the opportunity to get past some of the generalizations and spend more time looking at the exceptions, with the result that everything is not as tidy as it ends up appearing in Olson’s book. While Olson’s book is more helpful for the beginner to understand the situation, Gonzalez’s book is more complex, making it harder to understand the situation, but more realistic at the same time, as he is able to spend more time on the exceptions than Olson.

            Since Gonzales has more space than the average introduction, he has more room to go into details and show the exceptions and more of a background for why people thought in a certain manner. An example of an exception is found in the area of the western understanding of the Trinity. Before I read Gonzalez, I had thought that the primary western attitude was to focus on the unity of God and underplay the diversity, threatening them with modalism. But Gonzalez notes that some in the west (such as Hippolytus) react so much against modalism that they are accused of ditheism (233). The west is not as monolithic as I had been led to believe.

            An example of helpful background material is found with Tertullian. While Tertullian is opposed to philosophy, as evidenced by the famous quote about the lack of proprietary of association between Rome and Athens, he is still heavily influenced by his surroundings. In particular, Gonzalez shows that the forensic background of Tertullian shaped some of his views. The terms “substance” and “person” are legal terms which Tertullian brought in to use in the Trinitarian debate, and their legal background must be understood before we can understand what Tertullian meant. With “substance”, the word referred to “property and the right that a person has to make use of it” (179). Hence, it is possible for more than one person to share a substance, which is the parallel with the Trinity, or for one person to have two substances, which is the parallel for Christology. Gonzalez also notes that the legalism of Tertullian helped to make the Western church more legalistic, a pattern that has continued to this day in both Protestantism and Catholicism (185).

            Gonzalez is very helpful in making the Trinitarian debate intelligible for the modern reader, especially the time after the Council of Nicea, as he shows how the issue really was not settled. Modalism remained a very real danger, and even Arianism did not simply roll over and die (272-290). A fascinating point from before Nicea I had not realized before was that the term used in the creed (ομοουσιος) had earlier been rejected at the second council of Antioch. Paul of Samosata had used this phrase and by it had meant that Jesus did not have a subsistence of his own (251). But at the Council of Nicea it was determined that in spite of the history of the word it was the best choice.

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