God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World and Why Their Differences Matter: July 2010

±1±: Now is the time Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years Order Today!

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Jul 23, 2010 16:22:28

The National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of The Reformation returns with the definitive history of Christianity for our time

Once in a generation a historian will redefine his field, producing a book that demands to be read-a product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity is such a book. Breathtaking in ambition, it ranges back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible and covers the world, following the three main strands of the Christian faith.

Christianity will teach modern readers things that have been lost in time about how Jesus' message spread and how the New Testament was formed. We follow the Christian story to all corners of the globe, filling in often neglected accounts of conversions and confrontations in Africa and Asia. And we discover the roots of the faith that galvanized America, charting the rise of the evangelical movement from its origins in Germany and England. This book encompasses all of intellectual history-we meet monks and crusaders, heretics and saints, slave traders and abolitionists, and discover Christianity's essential role in driving the enlightenment and the age of exploration, and shaping the course of World War I and World War II.

We are living in a time of tremendous religious awareness, when both believers and non-believers are deeply engaged by questions of religion and tradition, seeking to understand the violence sometimes perpetrated in the name of God. The son of an Anglican clergyman, MacCulloch writes with deep feeling about faith. His last book, The Reformation, was chosen by dozens of publications as Best Book of the Year and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. This awe-inspiring follow-up is a landmark new history of the faith that continues to shape the world.

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±1±: Best Buy I would highly recommend this books placement in the reserved reading section of a University library. It's size makes it too big for a one semester course on the History of Christianity, but could be used for a two semester course. This book is slightly bigger than the other standard in the field (i.e. A History of Christianity by Williston Walker) but definately worthy to sit beside it. It is much more colorful and enjoyable to read than Walker's text, thus making it more captivating and memorable. It also covers many aspects of Christian history few books delve into with their Western focus. It would be worth buying simply for it's chapter on the conditions that allowed for or led to the Reformation. It presents such a good synthesis on this issue, that it would be good required reading for students taking a course that covers this period. I move now to a detailed look at the downsides and positive features of this book.

The downside of this book comes from the fact that it is more interpretive than some of the others in this field (i.e. Walker's). I suppose this cannot be avoided in a book of this size. This can be seen in the first four chapters more than the others as it deals with the formations of Judaism and Christianity delving into times when little was recorded in the historical record. Educated guesses sometimes have to be made with what little evidence there is and it seemed as if MacCulloch did this without making it completely clear what he was basing his conclusions on and why he took them in the directions that he did. When MacCulloch makes these guesses he takes a more liberal direction on them. I will give but one example. He notes the Ebionites (i.e. "the poor") that Saint Jerome encountered on the eastern side of the Jordan. These "Christians" did not believe in the virgin birth and practiced many Jewish customs unlike the Western Church. MacCulloch assumes these are "the poor" that Paul the Apostle mentioned as the church living in Jerusalem and headed by the Apostle James that was later dispersed by the persecution of Temple Authorities and the destruction of the Temple. He goes on to state the reason they didn't believe in the virgin birth is because they could read the Hebrew which says "alma" or "young woman" while the Western Church only knew how to read the Septuagint. These are plausible connections that could explain their name and practices, but they are mere educated guesses. He gives enough information for a careful reader to discern this, but I am not sure everyone will have the habit of reading between such lines. The two chapters before this chapter on Christianity's birth are even less clear. For instance, he states as fact the liberal assumption that Daniel was written not long before the time of Jesus since it had ideas similar to some that were in Persia (i.e. Zoro-Astr). But conservative scholars would contests such a late date for Daniel and there are scholarly debates that continue on this today. Instead of merely stating his view as a fact, it would have been helpful to explain his reasoning a bit more on this issue and perhaps explain plausible views other than his own. And I could give other examples along these same lines.

But once one moves past the first four chapters into the period right after Christ and so on, the book becomes less interprative as the facts are more established (i.e. there are more recorded records from the early church and other secular sources). What I like most about this book is that he not only traces the Western Calcedonian Church, but the Orthodox Church in detail as well. Williston Walker's was typical in that it hardly dealt with the Eastern Church. MacCulloch's book deals with it's divergence from the west and it's history down to our own present day. He also deals with that third wing of the Church that few even touch on: the Jacobite and Nestorian Churches. These churches which lay on the fringes of the Roman Empire never accepted the Council of Calcedon (unlike the Western and Eastern Orthodox Churches) but had more believers within them than the Western Church for a very long time. Missionaries from Syria even planted monastaries as far as India and China at a suprisingly early date. I found it refreshing that MacCulloch even covered the rise and demise of this church. Along with this eye for a comprehensive history of the Christian Church, MacCulloch takes his history to our own day. He covers the Missionary Movements of Roman Catholics after Trent into the New World and the later rise of Protestant missionary movements. He traces the decline of Christianity in Western Europe following the Enlightenment (and other factors), the emergence of the Anglican Communion, the uniqueness of the American (U.S.) version of Christianity and the rising tide of Christianity in new parts of the world (i.e. Africa, China and India). He then ends by stating challenges Christianity faces into the future with positive notes and projections as well. This book would serve well in the task of educating people on the WHOLE history of the Church (i.e. not just the Western Church, or the Calcedonian Churches, or up to Trent but remembering the Third-World as well). The comprehensiveness of his approach not only tells the full story of the Church up to now, but gives students interested in other cultures a stake in this history...

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