From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity
The Great Courses audio class
By Bart Ehrman
Rating: 8 of 10

Ehrman is one of the best-known and most persuasive scholars on the history of early Christianity.  I have read other books of his and written about him here.  This audio class, distributed by The Teaching Company, is Ehrman’s Early Christianity course taught at The University of North Carolina, a stone’s throw from my own seminary, Duke Divinity School.  While UNC and Duke are so close geographically, this course and the one I took at Duke are worlds apart.  The distance was particularly helpful to me.

The expanse between my own early Christianity course and Ehrman’s is one of confession.  My professor, Warren Smith, is a Christian; Ehrman is not.  Ehrman presents the course material as a way of explaining why what is called today “Orthodox Christianity” won out over all the other “Christianities” that were competing in the first and second centuries.  Warren Smith presented the history of Christianity as one who believes that Orthodox Christianity was right to win out in the competition!

There are too many differences between the two courses to highlight them all here, so I will focus on two.  First, Ehrman highlights the variables in early Christianity that contributed to a very hostile stance between Jews and Christianity.  Much of this side of Christian history is deplorable.  In many ways Christians totally forgot that their spiritual roots lay in the Hebrew people with a Jewish messiah.  When this animosity moves from being a kind of sibling rivalry of two minorities to a huge power difference as it did with the conversion of Constantine and the Christianization of the West, the end of the story is not a good one for the Jews.

Second, Ehrman presents the classical theory of the relationship between Orthodoxy and heresy as explained by the first church historian, Eusibus, and a counter thesis first proposed by Walter Bauer, a German scholar 1600 years later.  The classical theory states that there was broad consensus of orthodoxy in the early church that was occasionally willfully corrupted by small groups of heretics.  Bauer suggests a very different picture.  He studied the earliest known sources in various regions of Christendom and according to Eherman, “In most of the places for which we have evidence, the earliest evidence is of forms of Christianity that were later deemed heretical.”  Furthermore, Ehrman adds, “It appears that in most places…heretical forms of Christianity were in evidence before orthodox forms and were the majority view in the earliest stages.”

I must admit that this picture of Orthodox Christianity is disheartening.  I am reminded of a statement by Irenaeus of how some of the early Gnostics have taken the mosaic of a king and turned it into a picture of a fox!  But then again, Irenaeus is in the line of orthodoxy.  I’m very interested in exploring this further and intend to look further in Bauer’s thesis.  I’m thankful for a quick response email from Ehrman suggesting some follow-up resources.

One thing that I noticed in Ehrman’s presentation that he seemingly neglected to mention was that while there were competing theological perspectives for Christianity, they all agreed upon at least one thing: the importance of Jesus.  I am no expert on all these early “Christanities” but it also appeared to me that while they all disagreed upon the details of the conception of what it meant for Jesus to be the Son of God, they all agreed that he was the Son of God.  If this is the case, then it begs the question, which one really was the best conception of what that meant?  They can’t all be right if they disagree on their answer to this question.

I am in the end humbled again by the boundaries of my own knowledge.  There is much that I do not know, and likewise, there is much that we don’t know about the mysteries of the Son of God in Jesus Christ.  It would behoove us to approach those with whom we disagree with an openness to hear what they have to say and consider it carefully.  I continue to do this with Bart Ehrman and his writings.

Currently Reading/Listening:
The Shack by William P. Young
Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear by Scott Bader-Saye
Documents in Early Christian Thought edited by Wiles and Sante
Generation to Generation by Edwin H. Friedman
Turning Points by Mark Noll
Sacred Parenting by Gary Thomas
From Jesus to Constantine by Bart Ehrman
Essential Church by Thom S. Rainer and Sam S. Rainer
unChristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

An Essential Guide: Church History
By Justo L. Gonzalez
Rating: 5 out of 10

I feel bad giving this book a 5 out of 10.  It’s actually an extremely helpful book, but not for the purpose for which I was looking.  Gonzalez provides a super brief (95 pages to be exact!) history of 2000 years of Christian history, and in many ways Western history.  The nature of the project is more outline by design than an exploration of any nuance or theme carried through the entire narrative.  For example Gonzalez did a decent job of summarizing John Wesley and Methodism in one paragraph, less than a ¼ of the page.

What Gonzalez does well is give the student of Church history a birds eye view of events and how they fit together on a timeline, but the sparse narrative provides absolutely no nuance and ends up making the history of Christianity sound like one war after another after another.  At one level, this is a helpful realization and I am reminded of a poster I have seen which reads: “A Modest Proposal for Peace: Let the Christians of the world agree not to kill one another.”  And yet there is so much more going on in Christian history that has to do with true faith and not just the way that faith and politics get intertwined.  Here is where my own purposes got lost.  I was looking for a helpful exploration of the theological development within the church, not a blow-by-blow account of the political maneuverings of this Christian group and that Christian group.

This book reminds me of the need to also pay attention not just to what the kings and queens and popes and official church bodies are doing in regards to the Faith, but also how the Faith is being practiced by the common person.  There is often a big disconnect between the two even though they are tightly intertwined and effect one another in significant ways.

If you’re looking for help getting in sight the big picture timeline of Christian and Western history, this book is for you.  That’s actually Gonzalez’s stated purpose.  But if you want to understand the nuance of it all, you’ll need some other books.  Thankfully, Gonzalez provides at the end of each chapter suggestions and even chapters from the major textbooks currently used.

Currently Reading/Listening:
American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists by John H. Wigger
The Shack by William P. Young
God’s Economy by Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove
The Expectant Father by Armin A. Brott and Jennifer Ash
Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear by Scott Bader-Saye
The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker
Documents in Early Christian Thought edited by Wiles and Sante
Generation to Generation by Edwin H. Friedman
Last Call by Daniel Okrent
Turning Points by Mark Noll
A People’s History of Christianity by Diane Butler Bass