Baptists and Unity
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 51, No. 1 – Fall 2008
Managing Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
A Short History of Christianity. By Stephen Tomkins. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006. 256 pages. Softcover, $15.00
Church History 101: A Concise Overview. By Christopher M. Bellitto. Liguori, MO: Liguori Press, 2008. 141 pages. Softcover, $14.95.
A Short World History of Christianity. By Robert Bruce Mullin Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008. 312 + ix pages. Softcover, $29.95
There is no end to the writing of Christian history textbooks. While Gonzalez’s two volume The Story of Christianity (now available in a one volume version that retains the numbering of the originals) remains the standard in most seminary classes, it suffers from two deficiencies. First, it is nearly twenty-five years old and its scholarship is dated. Second, it sacrifices nuance for readability at many points. New additions to the market are stronger than Gonzalez in some regards. For instance, although not without its shortcomings, The History of the World Christian Movement, Volume 1 (Irvin and Sunquist, eds.; Orbis, 2001) provides a more comprehensive global picture of Christianity than the standard Westocentric approach. However, its embrace of Christian pluralism (e.g. they consistently refer to Gnosticism as “Gnostic Christianity”) will trouble many evangelicals, who do not share the larger scholarly community’s suspicion of “orthodoxy” as a legitimate historical category. For those so discomfited, Everett Ferguson’s Church History, Volume One: From Christ to the Pre-Reformation (Zonder- van, 2005) is a good alternative. Although not quite as readable, it is a re- markable text, integrating social, institutional, and theological history and utilizing visuals (maps, charts, photographs) exceptionally well. Ferguson embraces a rather conventional narrative, but not without engaging recent trends in scholarship, making it a strong option for those who generally endorse a more traditional narrative. In addition, professors will find it valuable for developing lectures. Two problems confront these newer entries. Both suffer from the publishing lag time that is all too common: the second volume has appeared for neither. Second, although most seminar- ies and divinity schools still require the standard two course church history sequence, more and more colleges and universities offer the history of Christianity as a single semester course for which two volume histories are ill suited. Thankfully, some recent market entries address this need.
In recent years, a spate of books recounting the history of Christianity in a single volume has been published. With words like “brief,” “short,” or “concise” in their titles, these volumes are a welcome addition to the field. In A Short World History of Christianity Robert Bruce Mullin, the Society for the Promotion of Religion and Learning Professor of History and World Mission and Professor of Modern Anglican Studies at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church (New York City), does a good job with a difficult task: writing a world-wide history of Christianity in less than 300 hundred pages. Mullin’s narrative is quite good and despite space limitations, he weaves some interesting and unfamiliar tidbits into the story, helping hold the reader’s interest. The murder of Melchite Bishop Proterius by a monophysite mob is one such gruesomely fascinating account (80); his reminder that Armenia is the oldest Christian nation is another (54).
Like Irvin & Sunquist, Mullin’s approach in A Short World History is generous to groups generally considered heretical by the standard treat- ments of the past. In chapter 3, Mullin notes that in “defending and defining” the faith during the second century, “the paths rejected, some now claim, were lost opportunities” (26). Later he is sharper, referring to the Nicene struggle as “defining and dividing” Christianity and, in a play on Catherine Albanese’s phrase, subsequent conciliar decisions bring many Christianities out of what had been one. All of this fits the contours of Mullin’s overall narrative that moves from globalization to globalization. Having passed through various monolithic periods, Christianity is returning to being what it was in its earliest years: a multiplicity of sometimes competitive regional manifestations (xii). For Mullin, the early broad consensus of regional Christianities began to break apart during early defi- nitional struggles and became fully fractured during the conciliar period (87). During the medieval period, as the Eastern Empire succumbed to the Ottomans, the Latin Church emerged as the “dominant community” (105). Soon, although some form of Christianity continued in each European state, the Reformation “shattered” that hegemony (131). Subsequently, the mission efforts of the “great century” (213–28), the independency of post-colonial regional Christianities and decline of Christianity in the West brings the story full circle (261–77). In his words, a new “era of competing regional Christianities has returned (277).” Mullin’s assessment is plausible, and, like Philips Jenkins’ The Next Christendom (2003), ought to spur evangelicals to thoughtful consideration of such matters.
Mullin writes well. Concise without being terse, A Short World History summarizes difficult thinkers, such as Kant and Schleiermacher (184–186), in remarkably brief paragraphs. Although careful, Mullin does not shy away from interpretation and, even when I found myself in disagreement—such as his equating of pietism, Methodism and evangelicalism as the same “religion of the heart” in different geographical contexts (168)—his interpretations are most often plausible. A few exceptions emerge such as when he interprets the via mediaas Elizabeth’s policy of “inclusivity” (144), an anachronism that would have puzzled both Elizabethan Roman Catholics and Puritans. Along those lines, most evangelicals will be unhappy with his implicit approval of Darwinism and nineteenth-century approaches to the Bible (200–12). At the same time, unlike many contemporaries, he refuses to entirely equate missions with colonialism (214), giving it fair treatment. Likewise, he discusses conflict raised by the global South’s opposition to liberalizing trends, such as the ordination of homosexuals in some fellowships. Although a few factual mistakes are scattered throughout—e.g. the monothelite controversy was not really a compromise aimed at settling the monophysite controversy (81) and Wollstonecraft’s famous book is A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, not Women(181)—overall, Mullin’s text is solid historically. Finally, Mullin and Westminster John Knox would have improved this product’s utility by expanding the too-short “suggest- ing readings” list and by adding maps and charts, which are critical to any introductory text. Despite these small issues, it is a good choice as the main text for those pesky one-semester college courses that cover the entire history of Christianity. For evangelicals, the areas of disagreement can become “talking points” around which to orient class discussions.
Christopher M. Bellitto, Assistant Professor of History at Kean Uni- versity (Union, NJ), contributes Church History 101: A Concise Overview to this collection. Physically small (5”x7”) with a mere 141 pages, this volume is the shortest of the short. Bellitto’s work is splendid. The former Paulist Press academic editor targets the Roman Catholic laity, specifically “general readers, parish study groups, RCIA [Right of Christian Initiation for Adults] candidates, catechists and students” (9). Superbly organized, Bellitto offers chapters from each of the standard periods of church history— early, medieval, reformation, and modern—prefaced by an introduction and followed by an epilogue. Across each of the four periods, his sub-sections are the same: “The Big Picture,” “The Church’s Hierarchy,” “The Church in the Pews,” and “What Makes this Period Unique?” It is hard to imagine a better approach to providing a concise overview. Helpful maps preface each chapter, as does a timeline with important dates from the period. Although they are grayscale, both are visually appealing and readable. At the end of each chapter are questions to answer and suggestions for further reading. While the questions are broad and overly simple, the reading lists are solid.
Overall an excellent product, readers should be reminded that Bellitto is a committed Roman Catholic and, for the most part, takes a Roman Catholic perspective on contested developments in church history. For instance, the medieval popes “can’t be faulted for taking steps to protect their own interests; the Church needed peace, prosperity, protection, and freedom to keep her theology clear and her officials independent” (59–60). Protestants might demur that the very developments that protected the freedom of the popes vis-à-vis secular rulers allowed the papacy to squelch the freedom of some reform-minded groups like the Waldensians, who Bellitto labels heretics (68). In addition, Bellitto perceives that the Cru- sades emerged from an effort to protect Christian pilgrims who “were being harassed—meaning robbed and at times killed—by Muslims” (69–70). Yet Bellitto does not ignore church failures. He laments both the medieval pogroms (72–73) against the Jews and raises the question of the Roman Catholic Church’s complicity in the Holocaust (136). Neither does he shy away from difficult topics like papal infallibility or Marian piety (122, 126) nor hesitate to point out the troubling aspects of Protestantism, e.g. how it splintered into a multiplicity of variations “over the next decades and centuries” (82), an issue few Protestants engage in depth. Bellitto’s Catholicism also means that he is fairly orthodox in his understanding of the Trinity and the person of Jesus Christ and, à la Newman, that he perceives continuity in the development of doctrine, e.g. Vatican II completes Trent (132–33).
Although Bellitto embraces an overt Catholic perspective on historical events, they are usually within the bounds of legitimate historical interpretation. Only in a few instances does this translate to inaccuracy. For instance, his characterization of medieval piety movements that emphasized Jesus’ humanity as “evangelical” (62, 66, 94) and his characterization of Zwingli (a verymagisterial reformer) as part of the Radical Reformation (83) is perplexing. Besides this, Church History 101 remains a good book and would be an easy good place to start for Protestants who want to understand how Catholics view Church History.
If Bellitto contributes the briefest short history, Stephen Tomkins provides the funniest in A Short History of Christianity. Although he holds a Ph.D. in Church History from the London School of Theology, classroom history bored Tomkins as a boy, and thus, “despite whatever the cover may have led you to believe, this is not a history book. This is a storybook. It is a true story.” Intended to be a fast-moving, humorous account aimed at lay readers who don’t know “their John Paul from their George and Ringo,” Tomkins’ book is very funny indeed. For instance, in describing the fraudulent “Donation of Constantine,” he notes that it “is called the most successful fraud in history, but one can’t help wondering how we can be so sure” (80). In a later section, he notes that although the appellation “fundamentalist” had “originally meant ‘conservative Protestant’” it “now, if anything, means ‘someone more religious than I approve of ’” (224). This type of humor begins on the cover, which is graced with a photo of the “Nativity Kitchen Timer,” continuing through the preface and each of the four major sections: “As It Was in the Beginning,” “The Rise of Rome,” “The Reformation,” and “Globilisation.” Each section contains its own chapter numbering, so that “Trent” is chapter 3 of “Part 3: The Reformation.” This attractive book also contains a brief glossary of technical terms (e.g. “asceticism,” “homoousios”) that, although simple, will be helpful to uninitiated readers.
Tomkins is a good writer and his flair for humor makes reading A Short History joyful. Aside from the humor, the strength of Tomkins’ recounting is the ease with which he weaves ethnographic and political developments in throughout his brief church history. In addition, other than Hegel (whose absence is curious considering his overarching influence on the late nineteenth century), all the usual suspects appear. The description of many events is ideal. For instance, he succinctly summarizes the events surrounding the council of Chalcedon (65–67) and the crusades (104–16). His ultra-brief description of the development of the European feudal system will find its way into my lecture on the medieval church (85–86).
Evangelicals, not to mention Catholics and Orthodox, will not be entirely satisfied with Tomkins’ assessment of Docetism, Gnosticism, or Marcionism as “rival versions of Christianity” (28) nor his indicative ques- tion: “Has the age of councils degraded Christianity into a pseudo-science where knowing precisely who Christ supposedly was is more important than doing what he said?”(71). In addition, Tomkins errs at several points. Three examples should suffice. First, in an attempt to connect to economically-minded contemporary readers, he points to “tax disputes” as the cause of war between the Romans and Jews in AD 66 (22). More precisely, the Roman governor’s attempt to levy taxes on the temple treasury, a religious is- sue that violated the Roman’s own previous policy, was the culprit. Second, although some patristic scholars have viewed the Trinitarian conflict in terms of competing interpretations of Origen’s doctrine of God, describing it as “middle way” between Arius and Athanasius is perplexing (49). Third, Tomkins wrongly asserts that for the continental pietists, “Christianity was not about right doctrine but about spiritual rebirth and godly living” (186). In reality, the pietists wanted right doctrine anda vibrant spiritual life. They did not want to substitute the former with latter. After all, in the event described by Tompkins on pages 190–91, it was pietist parexcellence A.H. Franke that recommended and achieved the removal of Chris- tian Wolffe for deviating from orthodoxy. Such errors occur enough that this volume misses its intended audience. Because of them, neophytes will come away with an erroneous perspective on certain aspects of the history of Christianity. At the same time, experienced church historians should be able to identify these types of errors while enjoying Tomkins’ humor.
