A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch

A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years Reviews

• 
  Warwick

  ‘What religion am I?’ asks Homer Simpson in one episode of his family's eponymous cartoon. ‘I'm the one with all the well-meaning rules that don't work out in real life…uh…Christianity.’ One of the many pleasures in Diarmaid MacCulloch's amazingly comprehensive book is getting a handle on what historical basis there is for the rules and doctrines of this prolific and mercurial religion, which nowadays seems characterized by extreme reactions of either perfect secular indifference or increasingly literalist devotion.
  
  There are excellent books available for all kinds of angles on this story, but a single-volume history of the whole lot seems crazily ambitious. I think MacCulloch has done a beautiful job, and let's note the fact that anything which is acclaimed by both Christopher Hitchens and the Archbishop of Canterbury as being the definitive work of its kind must be doing something right. What makes it particularly impressive is that it combines a clear explanation of the usual theological debates of the early Church with a very wide-ranging, internationalist scope that also has perceptive things to say about Christianity's survival and development in Ethiopia, or why it succeeded in Korea but failed in Japan.
  
  Though MacCulloch is too even-handed to build a cumulative argument out of this story, the theme that emerges for me is the constant interplay between Christianity's interior, metaphorical truths, and the factual historicity of the information by which such truths have been communicated. This is related to a crucial duality present from the very start.
  
  Jewish and Christian traditions want to say at the same time that God has a personal relationship with individual human beings and that he is also beyond all meaning, all characterization.
  
  In part this comes from the dual heritage of Christianity, which is well encapsulated by this book's provocative subtitle, ‘The First Three Thousand Years’. The first 70 pages trace the Greek philosophical traditions of thinking about divinity – the Platonic idea of a remote, unknowable God – which became fused with Judaic tradition in an uneasy but dynamic relationship that is unique to Christianity.
  
  One result of this, after the Enlightenment, has been a hyper-literalist defence of religion which in modern times can be seen, especially in the US, in the uneducated flourishing of ‘Creationism’. MacCulloch, who demonstrates well that ‘there is no surer basis for fanaticism than bad history’, gives such concepts short shrift.
  
  The modern conservative Christian (and Islamic) fashion of Creationism is no more than a set of circular logical arguments, and Creationist ‘science’ has been unique among modern aspirations to scientific systems in producing no original discoveries at all.
  
  Quite; and yet, despite referring to modern ‘fashion’, one thing this narrative shows is that polarities of literalism and metaphoricity have always been there. In the second century,
  Marcion of Sinope was already writing commentaries on Biblical scriptures which denied any but the most literal interpretations; while his contemporary
  Origen could write such opposite things as this:
  
  Who is so silly as to believe that God, after the manner of a farmer, planted a paradise eastward in Eden, and set in it a visible and palpable tree of life, of such a sort that anyone who tasted its fruit with his bodily teeth would gain life?
  
  MacCulloch notes drily: ‘Origen might be saddened to find that seventeen hundred years later, millions of Christians are that silly.’ And yet neither of these theologians really won out: both saw their writings declared heretical, and the ‘official’ Churches have maintained an uneasy balance between the two ever since. Reading this, it's impossible to escape a sense of arbitrariness about such decisions among early religious authorities.
  
  This is particularly true when it comes to the bewildering array of theological debates over what exactly was meant by such counter-intuitive doctrines as the Trinity, or Christ's divinity. It's instructive to consider how little modern Christians think about such things, given their central importance to early thinkers. Were the three persons of the Trinity separate substances, or one substance manifested in three different essences? The difference was almost wholly semantic, and yet people fought and died over it. Did Christ have two distinct natures, fully human and fully divine, or did he have one composite nature which blended human with divine? The question was fought over with a violence and vehemence that now seems incredible. Those involved would be amazed to know that many modern Christians are probably not sure of the ‘right’ answers to these questions.
  
  While MacCulloch is bracingly clear on the arbitrary nature of many of these doctrines, he is also often critical of modern revisionism – he offers a reminder, for instance, that Gnosticism, far from being a kind of early New-Age mysticism, was generally much more ascetic and authoritarian than mainstream Christianity was. Similarly, a text like 1 Timothy 2:12, often pounced on by the anti-religious because its patriarchal ideas seem so opposed to modern values, is here given a far more interesting and nuanced reading:
  
  One has always to remember that throughout the New Testament we are hearing one side of an argument. When the writer to Timothy inisists with irritating fussiness that ‘I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent’, we can be sure that there were women doing precisely the opposite, who were probably not slow in asserting their own point of view. But their voices are lost […].
  
  One thing that this book creates is a deep awareness of just how different things might easily have been, had a few decisions gone the other way. It is fascinating to realise, for example, that if Islam had not suddenly exploded across the Middle East, the centre of Christendom in the Middle Ages would almost certainly have moved east to the region of Iraq, rather than west to Rome. MacCulloch is especially good on the interplay between these two faiths, offering such titbits as the fact that Islamic minarets may well have come about in imitation of Christian stylites – the early Orthodox monks who lived their lives on top of pillars. Such fascinating windows on history and belief are thrown open right the way through to the modern day, revealing such unexpected delights as the fact that most Christians among the Maasai in southern Africa think of God as a woman.
  
  It's hard to find much fault with this book, although there will always be sections where the narrative flags a little, depending on where your interests lie. I thought the tone was exemplary – in the words of Rowan Williams, who reviewed it for the Guardian, it is ‘neither uncritical nor hostile’, which is no small achievement in itself. In one of his most felicitous phrases, MacCulloch describes Christianity at one point as ‘a marginal branch of Judaism whose founder left no known written works’. Such a faith is always going to be a struggle between different interpretations, leading to a term – ‘Christianity’ – which can embrace the incense swung around an Orthodox icon, the speaking in tongues of a Pentecostalist, the resonant stone slabs which call faithful Ethiopians to prayer, and indeed the breezy indifference of Homer Simpson. If any book can give you a sense of how such diversity developed, and what it can possibly have in common – it's this one.
• 
  Marcus

  This book should have been called Christianity: A Speculative History from a Somewhat Antagonistic Viewpoint. I only read the first 150 pages, plenty far enough to understand how MacCulloch feels about Christianity. Most of the book is, by nature, extrapolation based on a very fragmented set of documents and conflicting histories, but MacCulloch is always overanxious to undermine Christianity by taking huge leaps of speculation and is never, at least that I saw in the first 150 pages, willing to remain neutral or actually go the other direction.
  
  I found his writing style to be good and the idea for the book is fantastic. I'm fully prepared to deal with problems in history and with the faults of Christians throughout history, but I'm not willing to read a book by an author I feel I can't trust or have to constantly second guess. Because of that, the bits of information I gleaned are all mentally footnoted as being something to go back and verify from a less biased source.
  
  Here are a few examples:
  
  "Yet at the heart of the Egypt and Exodus story is something which no subsequent Israelite fantasist would have wished to make up, because it is an embarrassment: the hero and leader of the Exodus, the man presented as writing the Pentateuch itself, has a name which is not only non-Jewish but actually Egyptian: Moses." My response is that if the Israelites lived in Egypt for 430 years is it so surprising and embarrassing that they'd eventually adopt Egyptian names? If the implication is that Moses was actually Egyptian, why doesn't MacCulloch just say that. It wouldn't be the longest logical jump he makes in the book.
  
  Later, this is what MacCulloch concludes about the Beatitudes. "There is nothing gentle, meek or mild about the driving force behind these stabbing inversions of normal expectations. They form a code of life which is a chorus of love directed to the loveless or unlovable, of painful honesty expressing itself with embarrassing directness, of joyful rejection of any counsel suggesting careful self-regard or prudence. That, apparently, is what the Kingdom of God is like." Really? Only the most literalistic reading of such a poetic passage could lead to such an imbecilic interpretation. MacCulloch makes similar mistakes of interpretation of various other passages in the New Testament, notably in the Lord's Prayer and the command to "leave the dead to bury their dead."
  
  When writing about the resurrected Christ (note, resurrected) he says, "He repeatedly appeared to those who had known him, in ways which confused and contradicted the laws of physics." Again, we are talking about a ressurected being. Why is physics even relevant?
  
  When he refers to Paul and his desire to teach of salvation through Christ alone, MacCulloch phrases it this way: "Paul managed to find a proper in the Tanakh to sum up what he wanted to say:.." This comes across as incredibly condescending, to take for granted that Paul was just manipulating the Tanakh to justify his message. If MacCulloch had left out "managed to find" and replaced it with "found" it would have made all the difference. It is maybe a small infraction on its own, but it was, for me, the last straw.
  
  In a way, I'm really disappointed to stop reading this. The parts of the book that talk about the origins of the Old Testament and the influence of Socrates and Aristotle on Christianity are great. The discussion of differing ideas of Satan, comparisons of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, ideas on prophecy and life after death in the Old Testament and the obsession with the virginity of Mary are all fascinating. For now though, I'm done. I don't have time to verify every reference and I don't trust MacCulloch to give it to me straight.
• 
  Jamie

  Honestly, to hold onto the mystery and conviction of a religion: don’t study its history.
• 
  Ray

  This is a monumental piece of work by an erudite scholar. It covers the whole range of Christian history from its roots in Judaism to modern day.
  
  As a starting point it delves into the Old Testament contrasting it's God jehovah -a jealous and vengeful God - with the loving God that sacrifices his son in the New Testament.
  
  It shows the rise of Christianity from an obscure Jewish sect, through the rebranding by St Paul, and on to an established state religion. It is a truly astonishing journey. Throughout its history Christianity evolves, slewing off new offshoots whilst some early established churches wither and die (particularly in the middle east and central asia). Modern Christianity is the largest and most dynamic religion in the world.
  
  I must confess that I got lost at times in trying to comprehend the infinitesimal gradations in interpretations of the substance of God and the trinity that has caused so much trouble in early Christianity, and also in the bewildering array of different churches and shades of thought in later times.
  
  Considering that this book comprises a thousand pages it rattles along, and subjects are introduced and dealt with succinctly, though not superficially, before we get to the next topic.
  
  A good book
• 
  BAM the enigma

  This book is seriously insane! I'm only halfway through and we've already covered: Rome, early popes, African christians, the Orthodox Church, the beginnings of various brotherhoods and convents, ways to pray, Constantine, early theologians and philosophers, pergatory, the energy of God. I can't list everything. The only issue I have is that it's just too much at once. This is the perfect book for someone studying theology.
  
  The Virgin Mary, the Tartars, the reformation and restoration, Martin Luther, Methodist and baptist churches, celebration by slaves, French Revolutionv, Bible Production, Free Masons, Quakers, witches, missionaries, Jesuits, the end of the British empire, Bonhoeffer, the Nazi regime, Pentocostalism, teaching evolution, apartheid-the list is endless!
• 
  Stuart Woolf

  I'll begin my review this way: there are a few reviewers who did not like this book due to the secular (but by no means anti-Christian) perspective most educated readers would expect from a serious church historian. (Naturally, many of these reviewers associate MacCulloch with the atheistic academic left, which I'm sure would come as a surprise to the author, given his background in the Church of England.) If Christian apologetics masked as church history is what you are looking for, then I have a few titles for you, but they are tear-your-eyeballs-out-bad.
  
  Suffice it to say I have been looking for a book like this one for a long time - and I doubt a better book on church history will be written anytime soon. The book is information-dense and rather dry (but, in all fairness to MacCulloch, a litany of jokes may have added a pound or two to this already hefty tome). Diarmaid doesn't spare us any details.
  
  I was tempted to give this book 4 stars instead of 5, because it is the kind of book where you often have to read a passage more than once - and even then, the details don't always stick. That being said, I found it rather engrossing - and regularly consulted other books on my shelf when reading it.
  
  A very enriching read.
• 
  Ben Fairchild

  This is a very good history. It depresses me a bit because it is written in the cynical, anti-establishment style which is typical of the educated elite today, but it is valuable for its quality and the insight which it offers regarding the multitude of different takes on Christianity (most of them sincere and justified, none of them isolated from political expediency) which were the fruit of the early Church. Its quite humbling for those who maintain 'the correct doctrines' and at the same time gives one the more justification for preferring the views that one holds. Oddly enough the last word in a huge tome seems to tell that it is, of all things, the doctrine of original sin that gives Christianity its most promising hope for continued relevance into the future!
• 
  Erik Graff

  This book may be too ambitious. It claims to cover three thousand years of global history, but it does so sketchily, most of its focus being on, first, the Middle East and, second, Europe and America. The Britishness of the author is clear as is the fact that he himself is not a Christian. The content ranges from the breezy, as in his descriptions of modern trends, to the dense, as in his treatment of the controversies animating the earliest church councils. Most readers will find parts of it objectionable--or, perhaps, find its omissions so.
  
  Still, it is not a bad read. MacCulloch writes well enough, peppering his tale with occasional amusing anecdotes or light sprinklings of wit and sarcasm. I found none of it boring and some of it, most particularly his treatment of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa, informative.
  
  My greatest objection to this enormous undertaking is that MacCulloch offered very little insight to the mysteries of the Christian faith. From my perspective, such "mysteries" are those elements of Christian belief that appear to fly in the face of experience, reason and common sense. How was it, for instance, that people murdered other people over questions of the exact nature of the the procession of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity--or for any number of other (to me at least) obscure reasons? That they did so is fact. Why they said they did so is often on record. MacCulloch reports on these matters well enough. What he doesn't do is offer insight into the real interests and passions involved, into the psychologies of those people. I want, in other words, a book that makes such concerns real to me, rather than just another at-a-distance description of the surfaces of history.
• 
  Justin Evans

  MacCulloch makes reading exhaustive history exhilarating rather than exhausting, and although everyone will have a favourite nit to pick - mine being the dubious treatment of Hegel, and the absence of anything about Erigena - only the most die-hard partisan could claim that this is anything other than brilliant. Ignore anyone who tells you it's anti-(insert your own sect here), and read it. Take your time. And I'm sure you'll be mining the 'recommended reading' section at the back of the book before you've finished chapter 7, at the latest.
  
  What I want to know is how MacCulloch manages to tell a linear story in a way that doesn't pervert the thematic content... or maybe he's written a thematically arranged book which doesn't pervert the temporal changes? In either case, a great relief from most long histories which are full either of repetition or of anachronies. Finally, I would guess that this is the only perspective from which such a book could be written: son of a clergyman, friend of but not believer in the religion, who obviously nonetheless cares greatly not only about its history, but also about its survival.
  
  Avoid, of course, if you want a biased, slanted interpretation of any given point.
• 
  Matt

  As a double priests kid (both my parents were Anglican clergy) an assumption was usually made that I knew quite a bit about Christianity. This was not accurate as I neither had much interest in the subject, nor access to a decent history about the faith. MacCulloch has rectified this with A History Of Christianity. Detailed yet readable, he takes an unbiased look at both the good and bad of the religion, never apologizing for either. He also doesn’t ignore the spiritual, faith aspect of his subject matter, explaining it as some of the rationale of Christians’ actions, yet not subscribing to it either. Highly recommended for anyone interested in religion and its effect on society.
• 
  Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship

  Read through page 522 out of 1016.
  
  This is an absolutely mammoth tome, and most of the more than three months I���ve spent with it have involved my debating between, on the one hand, “there’s a ton of facts in here I don’t know!” and on the other, “but it’s a drag and I’m not sure I’m retaining that much.” It’s funny—sometimes I’ll see other readers complaining that a book is dry when I find it perfectly readable, and other times others call accessible something I find overly academic. This fell into the latter category, very much the experience of reading an enormous textbook. There’s just so many facts stuffed into such a compact space that it’s hard to keep track of them all, and the writing style did not help me here.
  
  And there’s a sense in which MacCulloch’s writing is a bit toothless. It’s perhaps inevitable that a book covering two millennia and much of the world won’t have room to provide much analysis of specific events, people or ideas, so that anything you know about or are particularly interested in will seem to get short shrift. But his rendition of events also feels very tame. In fairness, he’s clear up front about being “a friend of Christianity” while having left the Anglican faith himself, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that he tries to strike a middle ground in criticizing particular historical actions, but not very sharply. In general I think there’s something to be said for a work that takes criticism from both sides (with some reviewers complaining that he’s not pro-Christian enough while others think he gives Christianity a pass), but in this case I’m inclined to just call it forgettable.
  
  Nevertheless, I’m somewhat sorry to give up on the book just because it is so packed with information, even if not organized in a way conducive to my remembering it. A few tidbits that I learned:
  
  - I’d assumed there were just three branches of Christianity: Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy. Not so, as it turns out: the early eastern Church, originally headquartered in Jerusalem, gave rise to missions that resulted in Christian churches all over the world, from Armenia to Ethiopia to China to India. These predated Protestantism by more than a millennium while not being under the control of the Catholic or Orthodox hierarchy.
  - The design of early Christian churches and the organization of their rites borrows heavily from the architecture and fanfare of royal courts. It was seen as natural to honor God in the same way one would honor a secular power—to do less would be disrespectful!
  - All those Catholic penances, where a particular sin can be forgiven if you say a particular number of Ave Marias, or what have you? Invented by early Irish clergy, who evidently had a very legalistic way of viewing the world—they started spreading the idea to everyone else in the 7th century.
  
  The first half of the book covers everything up to the Reformation and the second half the Reformation and onward. While the book does have a western focus overall, it’s actually much less true here than in most English-language history books, and no more than is called for based on where most Christians historically lived. Hundreds of pages focus on other parts of the world: particularly Eastern Europe, but also the Middle East and the broad range of countries with ancient Christian enclaves mentioned above. And the book is certainly an impressive achievement overall. I think I’d like to read something a bit more approachable, with stronger storytelling—
  Destiny Disrupted for Christianity, essentially. But this book is worth a try for the patient and dedicated reader, and maybe you’ll like it better than I did.
• 
  Clif Hostetler

  The title provides an early indication that the Ancient Greek and Hebrew roots of Christianity are covered by this book in addition to the past two thousand years that are more commonly accepted as the era of Christianity. That's a very long span of history, in fact too broad of a scope to cover in great detail even with 1184 pages (actually 1000 pages plus table of contents, notes, bibliography, index and illustrations). Nevertheless, the author does a good job telling the story in a free flowing but yet objective narrative.
  
  The author's discussion of Hebrew history appears to accept the story as portrayed in the Hebrew scriptures of kings David and Solomon as being historical. The strongest suggestion that the accounts of King Solomon may have been exaggerated was, "... later biblical writers living in less glorious days did nothing to diminish." As well informed as the author appears to be of critical historical scholarship elsewhere in the book, I'm reasonably sure he's aware that modern archeological findings have raised questions concerning that history. There is strong archeological evidence that Mt. Zion was unoccupied during that era of history when David and Solomon would have reigned (c.1000-c.930 BCE). I suggest reading
  The Bible Unearthed if you want to read more about this subject.
  
  The story of the spread of Christianity to the east, as far as the China Sea and India, is a part of history of which I knew little. Since Christianity didn't survive in great numbers in the east, many of the details of this history have been lost. But this book tells of interesting clues of its spread. It's interesting to consider the fate of Christianity in the East as a possible example of what would have happened in the West if Christianity had not received state sponsorship from the Roman Empire.
  
  The church divisions created by subtle differences of word meanings used to describe various views of Christology are enough to make one's head spin. The Council of Chalcedon in 451CE created a distinction between dyophysite and miaphysite views of which I am unable to comprehend the difference, even after reading their definitions more than once. Almost certainly, many of these disagreements were caused by difficulty in translating concepts from Greek into other languages. Differences like this among the Christians of the eastern world made that area ripe for being conquered by Islam. Some miaphysite Christians considered the Moslem invaders to be liberators from the dyophsite Christian rulers. If you want to waste some time, take a look at this chart that graphically portrays the various forms of Christology:
  (Link to Chart)
  
  Another example of difficulty in translation of ideas related to Christology was in the writings of Augustine (354-430). He, writing in Latin, said something to the effect that Jesus and the Holy Spirit proceeded from God. This wording was generally accepted in the Latin speaking world, but rejected in the Greek speaking world.
  
  Then we come to the so called Dark Ages, more correctly referred to as the Early Medieval Ages. I find it ironic that the so called "invading hordes of Barbarians" who are generally credited with causing the fall of the Western Roman Empire considered themselves to be Christians. But to the Latin speaking world they were known as Arian Christians, the worst kind of heretic. (The word Arian comes from Arius (ca. AD 250–336) whose teaching is generally considered to be slightly less trinitarian. Much of the art, architecture and literature of the Arian Christians have been erased by later generations. But what little does survive indicates that the Arian Christians emphasized the life of Jesus over the story of his crucifixion. (I find this of special interest since I believe that traditional Christianity has focused too much on the death of Christ.)
  
  The author makes the case that if Clovis I (c. 466–511, the first King of the Franks) had not converted to Catholicism that Western Europe may have evolved into a diverse Arian Christianity instead of a Roman Catholic Church loyal to the Pope in Rome. There are many turns of history that this book points out that were not inevitable. History could have gone in many different directions at many different times.
  
  The discussion of early missionary work in northern Europe describes the adoption of Christianity as more of a group experience than decisions made by individuals. Those who experienced the event generally described it with words such as, “accepted” or “submitted” rather than “conversion.” The missionaries targeted the gentry or nobility, and if successful could add a whole kingdom to the fold all at once. The author goes on to say:
  

  “Christianity everywhere had a big advantage in being associated with the ancient power that obsessed all Europe, Imperial Rome. The Latin speaking church became a curator of Roman-ness. That is a paradox since Jesus had been crucified by a Roman provincial Governor and Peter by an Emperor. But the cultural alliance stuck.”

  Coverage of the medieval era includes discussion of the development of systems of sacraments, penance, parish, celibacy, monastic orders, canon law, crusades, fighting of heretics, development of universities, and increased knowledge of the writings of Aristotle. On the subject of the worship of Mary, I found the following quotation of interest by Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153 CE), who supported the veneration of Mary, but not the Immaculate Conception:
  

  "The idea of immaculate conception was a novelty that Mary would not enjoy."

  (I wonder if Bernard was smiling when he said that.)
  
  The medieval era in the Eastern Orthodox Church is covered next by the book. I was surprised to learn that the Eastern Church went through an iconoclastic era. Ironically, in the end icons became a very important part of their liturgy and theology. The Byzantine Empire and Orthodox Church had the misfortune of needing to fight recurring military and theological battles against the east (Moslems), the west (Roman Catholics), and their own internal dissenters. The story of the Byzantine Empire seems to have a pattern of recurring centralized recovery followed by disintegration. It finally ended in the 1400s though the Orthodox Church continued. The book then tells the history of the Russian Orthodox Church which appeared to adopt traditions and practices from the Greek Orthodox and then embellish them. Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian Church histories are also covered.
  
  The book next provided insights into the Reformation era. One fact new to me was that in the years prior to the Reformation the sale of indulgences was more common in northern Europe than in the south. This may partly explain the persistence of the Protestant Reformation in the north. The author also noted that the recent introduction of the Greek New Testament into the West created a reaction never experienced in the East:

  "When scholars heard for the first time the unmediated urgency of the angular street Greek poured out by Jesus' post resurrection convert Paul of Tarsus as he wrestled with the problem of how Jesus represented God, the shock of the familiar experienced in an unfamiliar form was bound to suggest to the most sensitive minds in Latin Christianity that the Western Church was not so authoritative interpreter of scripture as it claimed. If there is any one explanation why the Latin west experienced a Reformation and the Greek speaking lands to the east did not, it lies in this experience of listening to a new voice in the New Testament text."

  The author skimmed through coverage of the Anabaptists which is to be expected for a book covering 3,000 years of history. After a description of the English reformation the book moves on to the Counter (or Catholic) Reformation. The intrigues during the early years of the Counter Reformations raise interesting speculations as to how differently things could have been, if only... I recommend the book titled Q by Wu Ming (a.k.a. Luther Blisset)
  (Link to Book) for an interesting fictional account of the Reformation years ending with the intrigue, politics, betrayal, and terror of the Counter Reformation politics in Italy leading up to the Council of Trent.
  
  One incomprehensible, horrifying and unintended consequence of the Reformation was an outbreak of witchcraft hysteria. Over the 160 years from 1500 to 1660, Europe saw between 50,000 and 80,000 suspected witches executed. (This book says "Maybe forty to fifty thousand ... between 1400 and 1800") About 80% of those killed were women. It occurred in both Protestant and Catholic regions. It's tempting to conclude that this number of executions exceeds the total number of religious martyrs of the same era, but that may not be true. After all, nearly 25,000 (this book says 5,000) Protestants were murdered in Paris alone and perhaps double that number (this book says "many more terrorized") throughout France in the days following the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. The Martyr's Mirror documents over 1,000 Anabaptist martyrs. It was not a good time in which to live.
  
  The spread of Christianity through the advent of European colonization is covered next by the book. Here's an interesting quote regarding slavery:

  "The expedient of importing African slaves was in part meant to protect the native American population from exploitation. Not many clergy comprehended the moral disaster. One Franciscan based in the University of Mexico City ... (1571) had the clear sightedness to condemn the common argument that Africans were being saved from Pagan darkness by the removal to America, remarking sarcastically, "I don't believe that it can be demonstrated that according the law of Christ the liberty of the soul can be purchased by the servitude of the body." His words found few echoes. "

  The book moves on to cover North American colonization, Puritans, hymnody and English Glorious Revolution. I was surprised to learn how much the young Charles Wesley was inspired by the Moravians. According to this book the Moravians indeed did enjoy playing the trombone; I previously had considered that to be a myth for a children's story.
  
  When the book finally arrived at the Age of Enlightenment, I thought rational thinking might make an appearance. Indeed there was some, but there was also the French Revolution and Pope Pius IX. The French Revolution was extremism in one direction and Pope Pius IX was in the other direction. Pope Pius IX in 1864 issued a Syllabus of Errors which disapproved of anything that might be considered modern; such as human reason, separation of church and state, Protestantism, freedom of religion, progress, modernism and liberalism.
  Here's an excerpt from a book titled The Pursuit of Italy that elaborates further of the details of the relations between the pope and the Italian State at this time in history. It was during his tenure that the decree of papal infallibility was adopted and the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was accepted. Intellectuals in the Catholic Church had been resisting the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary ever since the 1100’s, but it proved to be popular with the laity. Soon after it was adopted Mary made an appearance at Lourdes indicating that she approved. (I need to clarify here, for people who are as uninformed as I used to be, that the "immaculate conception" refers to Mary's birth, not Jesus'.) Pope Pius IX was beatified in the year 2000.
  
  The book skimmed through 19th Century Anglican and Orthodox histories, and then proceed through modern philosophy (master of suspicion), archeology and critical biblical scholarship. Then it covered the one topic where the Christian Church actually made a positive contribution (belatedly) to human welfare that went against economic considerations--the antislavery movement. Ironically, it took some creative reinterpretation of scriptures in order to do so.
  

  "... the 'unwearied, unostentatious and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous acts recorded in the history of nations'. .... abolition was an act of moral revulsion which defied the strict commercial interests of European and anglophone nations. Less frequently has it been recognized as one of the more remarkable turnarounds in Christian history: a defiance of biblical certainties, spearheaded by British Evangelicals who made it a point of principle to uphold biblical certainties."

  Then the book told the story of late 19th and 20th Century worldwide missionary movement. It goes on the discuss the variety of denominations to develop in the United States. Then it covered church activities before, during and after the World Wars of the 20th Century. It is here that the author decided to talk about the Mennonities, of which I have a special interest. He hardly said anything about them in the material written for the Reformation where I would normally expect to find it. Here's what he said:

  The Bolsheviks' hatred of religious practice extended far beyond the official Church. Of all the stories of Christian suffering in Russia after 1917, that of the Mennonites can stand for others because of the peculiar moral dilemma it presented for this sect, which since the Reformation had itself rejected the ideal of Christendom now in collapse. First gathered in the Netherlands in the 1530s by Menno Simons, a Frisian former priest sickened by the blood-soaked end to the siege of Munster, Mennonites expressed their difference from the world around them by renouncing all forms of coercion or public violence, soldiering of course included. Their prosperity attracted Bolshevik and anarchist raids, both out of ideological hatred of 'bourgeois' farmers, and from simple greed or necessity--but there was another intoxicating element for bullies: the Mennonites would not fight back when attacked. Men were murdered, women raped, everything was stolen. For many of them, it was too much. They fought back and sent perpetrators of the outrages packing--but now they had to face the wrath of brethren and sisters who said that they were betraying Mennonite principles. When Russian Mennonites finally had the chance, most made new lives in communities in North America; but they did not forget the controversy. Bad feeling and arguments about the Russian civil war still beset quiet places in the prairies of Canada.

  The author's decision to tell the story about a subset of Mennonites who ended up in Canada can perhaps be explained by the fact that he is British.
  
  The book finishes up by covering the subjects of The World Council of Churches, Pentecostalism, Second Vatican Council, liberation theology, cultural revolutions, and post Soviet era changes.
  
  IN SUMMARY, MY RESPONSE TO THE BOOK:
  Following Christian history through the ages over its tortuous and scattered path makes one wonder, if indeed there is a triune Christian God who loves us and intervenes in human affairs, that He (or She) must really have a weird sense of humor.
  ________________
  
  The author MacCulloch has also recorded six lectures on the same subject as this book. The lectures are available on DVD published under the title,
  A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.
  ________________
  
  The following short review of this book is from the PageADay Book Lover's Calendar for 4/4/12:
  
  LIVING HISTORY
  A massive and sweeping history of the Christian church by a professor of church history at Oxford University. Clocking in at over 1,000 pages and illustrated with color plates, it has time and space to explore philosophical questions regarding Christianity and finer points of Biblical scholarship, and does not ignore the politics that helped drive Christianity’s growth. It is an approach that The New York Times calls “sprawling, sensible and illuminating.”
  CHRISTIANITY: THE FIRST THREE THOUSAND YEARS, by Diarmaid McCullough (Viking, 2010)
• 
  Matt J

  I was looking for a straight forward, unbiased and thorough history of Christianity so when I found this book at my local bookshop and read the title I assumed that exactly what it was. Unfortunately, after reading the first 300 pages I decided to put it down. This book is certainly thorough, however, it is neither straight forward or unbiased. Firstly, the author's style of writing is very "busy". Points and ideas that could easily be made in 1 or 2 sentences usually takes the writer 4 or 5 to get across. He also uses language, idioms and wordplay that makes reading this book a real chore. It is no wonder this book is over 1000 pages long, I think it could be easily cut down to around 750 if it was written in a more reader-friendly style. This writing style has nothing to do with an intellectual gap between author and reader because I have read numerous other history books by British intellectuals that flowed much better and were real page turners. Secondly, this book is written in a very cynical, anti-Christian manner. I say anti-Christian and not anti-religious because while the author takes numerous quips and digs at Christianity, usually as a sarcastic remark at the end of a long, drawn out point, he never had anything negative to say about Judaism or Islam whenever those religions are part of the story. Another point that irked me about this book is the use of BCE and CE instead of AD and BC. I know the author is just being PC (same reason why he doesn't take digs at the other two major religions discussed in this book) but I think it is really silly to avoid AD and BC especially given the book's subject matter. In conclusion, I was disappointed with this book. It was neither as well flowing or as unbiased as I hoped it would be. I am going to look for a more balanced and complete history of Christianity.
• 
  Emily

  Exactly three months later, I'm done! Review obviously to come.
• 
  Caroline

  I'm what you might call a slightly bewildered agnostic, but I've always had a particular interest in Christianity. So much of its own history - fragmented, argumentative and hypocritical - has always seemed to be at odds with much of Christ's core message, and I've never quit understood how so many Christians can fail to see that contradiction in their own faith's history. But this book, which is surely destined to become a classic in the field, goes a long way to explaining why Christianity has had so many schisms, so many sects and splinter groups, reformations and counter-reformations.
  
  It is an immense book, and justifiably so - such a complicated history, ranging across the entire globe and spanning more than two thousand years, could scarcely be anything less, but it rarely flags or fails. It is a difficult history to tell, particularly when the major Churches begin to establish themselves - the early African churches, the Ethiopian Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church - and it becomes impossible to tell the full history in any meaningfully chronological way.
  
  But it's well-worth the challenge, particularly in the areas not usually focused upon in the West - such as the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches. I personally found it particularly interesting to see the history of Christianity as a whole and how all the different Churches that seem so far apart relate and respond to one another; and particularly how the various trends in religious attitudes and behaviour have evolved and changed over the centuries.
  
  It's hard to tell MacCulloch's own position from this book, and that's another mark in its favour. If I had to tell, I'd say the overall tone is one of fond and perhaps somewhat bemused affection, tempered with a healthy dose of enlightened scepticism. It makes for a lively and engaging read, although not one to be entered into lightly.
• 
  Wilson Porte Jr.

  Sem dúvida, o livro mais bem pesquisado que li na vida. O historiador inglês Diarmaid é minucioso, detalhista ao contar sobre a história do cristianismo, indo da igreja no ocidente para a igreja no oriente, sem esquecer a igreja africana. São mais de 1200 páginas de pesquisa exaustiva sobre fatos pouco retratados em outros livros de história eclesiástica. Para quem é estudante da história da igreja, uma obra recomendadíssima.
• 
  Gary Beauregard Bottomley

  Christianity is complex. After having had read this book two years earlier, I had to reread this book in order to understand why I didn't understand it the first time I read it. The first time I had read this book I was trying to make sense of the Trinity and how it developed and caused differentiation between sects of the Christian faith. I realize now that was a mistake. Whether it be one person, one nature, and one will; or two people, one nature, and one will; or ....... doesn't make sense and never will and trying to understand that is a wasted effort and anyone who doesn't believe in my narrow interpretation is deserving of death (j/k, but historically that is what happened).
  
  Once I got past trying to make sense of the religion qua religion, I got to concentrate on the history qua history and found the story worth understanding. The author excelled at telling the story from the reformation onward, and there is no easy way to tell the early church story in an easy to digest format without leaving out major parts in a one volume work such as this one.
  
  The book does not really dwell on the theological thought and always tries to focus on the history. Therefore, sometimes the relevance of some of the characters are not fully understandable from this book alone. The significance of Pelagius in relation to Augustine and the importance of 'free will' and our reliance on Grace may be lost on the reader of the history alone and how this will lead to St. Thomas Aquinas' rational argument for a 'necessary' universe until reinstated by Martin Luther with his absolute certainty of a contingent universe (similar to William of Ockhem, who would say that God is all powerful so nothing is necessary to an all powerful being). The author will mention Pelagius, for example, but all the relationships and the importance of what he means gets lost with the history story telling. That's okay, because after all this is a history book most of all.
• 
  Derek

  This was a brilliant overview of the Christian religion in all of its many historical manifestations. It’s a bit long on classification but contains reasonable amounts of analysis too. It deals with diverse topics, including Jewish origins, Jewish revolts against Rome, Jewish reform movements, Jesus’ life, Paul and Peter, the Church fathers, the spread of Christianity, the Nestorian Christians, monks, Ethiopian Christians, Augustine, debates over the nature of Christ, Greek philosophy, Byzantine Christianity, the Russian church, Old Believers, the papacy, the Inquisition, monasticism, Cluny, St. Benedict, the Cistercians, Scholasticism, Aquinas, North African Christianity, Iranian Christians, Chinese Christians, the crusades, the Hussites, the Vikings, missionaries, colonialists, North American religion, Henry VIII, the Reformation, Islam, slavery, Puritanism, Luther, Zwingli, Wycliffe, Calvin, the Spanish Armada, Mormonism, the Gray Awakening, the Coptic Church, Wesley, Methodism, the Baptist’s, race, Communism, evangelicalism, speaking in tongues, iconoclasm, the fall of Constantinople, the Huguenots, religious toleration in Poland and Lithuania, christian church attendance figures, Irish independence, the Scottish Kirk, Monophysites, Unitarians, cathedrals, the divine right of kings, Cromwell, Thomas Moore, the Indian church, Voltaire, the Enlightenment, saints, the Troubles, the fall of communism, etc. and so on.
• 
  Richard Thomas

  A thorough history of the christian religion from an Oxford don and the son of a Church of England parson whose background and upbringing give the whole book a flavour of what has made the Anglicans or the C of E such a distinctive part of Christanity. His deep learning and understanding of his subject are set with an elegant and flowing prose style so the book is both a pleasure to read and a means of understanding most of the hows, whys and wherefores of Christianity. It is a large book but if you persevere you will be rewarded. Doubtless anyone wishing to find fault can do so in a work of this breadth; this is not difficult but for me it should be taken as a whole and its worth becomes self evident.
• 
  Illiterate

  MacCulloch nicely organizes his narrative to explore topics. He generally favors political explanations.
• 
  John Wiltshire

  I have a feeling that 'currently reading' may stay the status of this book for quite a while. It's not only huge, it's pretty overwhelmingly erudite. One fifth of the way in, I've concluded I'm a 'cultural' Christian. My Christ is obviously English and he, like me, loves churchyards and cathedrals, waits every year with eager anticipation for a decent carol service so he can join robustly in the old, familiar favourites, and if it ever snows at Christmas, likes to read Elliot's Journey of the Magi and ponder the whole mystery of the thing.
  I don't like being informed by Diarmaid MacCulloch that Jesus probably wasn't born in Bethlehem at all. His parents didn't take part in a Roman census. No little donkey. No stable. No star. No Magi. And as for the shepherds...
  I will persevere. I don't have to believe every thing that's in this book, after all. MacCulloch uses the ludicrous modern terms BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE instead of BC and AD, so that sort of hints at some of this author's agenda... No little donkey on a dusty road? As if.
  Well, I got to chapter 4 and I've concluded I'm probably not the intended reader of this book. Great for scholars. Casual, interested readers? Not so much. Given up.
• 
  Dinah Küng

  Well, I'm currently reading this, and probably will be for some time. This is my go-to book at bedtime. It's rich with explanations of periods and time that my education skipped over—oh, let's be frank, my education didn't even go faintly near, periods like the entire history of the Eastern Christian Church and the millenium of Byzantine history.
  
  Where I come from, the midwest of the 1950's, it just didn't happen, right?
  
  Trying to make up for that now, I'm discovering whole worlds of thought and dispute among Christians that really lightens the heart during these times of absolute rock-bottom handcuffing of American politics to some kind of third-grade version of Christian thinking.
  
  Such a rich tradition, full of hope and possibility abused by certain people towards exclusion and division. Well, it's time I caught up with the resilience, variety and depth of the Christian tradition.
• 
  E.

  MacCulloch's history of the Reformation, which I read a few years ago, was powerful, informative, engaging, and even inspiring in places. I had high hopes for his one-volume Christian history with its intriguing title.
  
  He spends hundreds of pages on the roots of the Christian tradition (that first one thousand years) beginning in Greece and not the Ancient Near East. While it seemed a pretty standard presentation of these ancient histories, it was primarily a history of ideas, which intrigued me for the possibilities of what was to come -- was he going to focus on ideas, particularly the development of these concepts from Greek and Hebrew culture?
  
  No, that's not what happened, leaving me to puzzle over why so much time and space were spent on these origins.
  
  Increasingly church histories have devoted more attention to the non-European parts of our story. Ever since my first church history class in college, I've been interested in the little tidbits about these churches and with each new volume I'm pleased to see that the tidbits have turned into more full-scale treatments. Not only does this volume give a much fuller treatment of the Orthodox Churches, the Churches of the East are treated with more detail (though I still desire more), plus he followed their history first after the division of Christianity after Chalcedon. Later he gives much attention to the developments, particularly of indigenous movements in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
  
  That said, there still seemed to be too much focus in the early sections on the development of Roman Christianity (as compared to the other versions) and in later sections he is very Anglican-focused, which is understandable since he is.
  
  MacCulloch is a little less interested in dates and names and more in general movements and trends. So, I was glad I already knew some of that from previous books I'd read. I'm not sure for someone who came to this as their first church history if they would be lost or confused or would benefit from this lack of information.
  
  Also, there were the things I missed seeing. Some of this is just picky or my own preferences or enjoyments. But there were at least two times it seemed really to hurt the narrative.
  
  In particular, there is no discussion of the divisions in the Dutch Reformed Church around the theology of Arminius. This is strange given that Arminius is mentioned as an influence on Wesley and then the term Arminian is used multiple times in the narrative after that. But never was that story told.
  
  The other absence was the development of the African-American church and religious experience. No mention of Nat Turner. No discussion of spirituals. No black liberation theology. The treatment of Martin Luther King, Jr. was piss poor.
  
  Though there was discussion of race and slavery and its stain on the Christian story, I don't think it was given the attention it deserved. I'm influenced in that thinking by Willie Jennings and Kameron Carter and their books exposing the racism that pervades modern theology.
  
  Finally, I was not sure of the overall theme that MacCulloch wanted me to take away from the book. LaTourette's church history was focused on the theme of missions. Paul Johnson highlighted figures who were more open and broad-minded struggling against forces in the opposite direction (Erasmus, Locke, and Voltaire were heroes in his volume). I'm not sure what the theme was here.
  
  Opposite all that criticism is the praise for MacCulloch's writing style which is clear and enjoyable and not "academic" in a bad way. He also employs a good sense of humour now and then. And throughout the book draws attention to how old debates or turns of events continue to impact world politics and/or the Christian faith in the 21st century. This makes it an enjoyable enough read, as I have devoured little but it the last few weeks (and at 1016 pages it took a few weeks).
• 
  Maggie

  to read 1100+ pages of christianity's history is to read 1100+ pages of world history since christianity has been a prime mover of human history. every continent and every religion has found a place of clarity in this book. it does not disappoint. whereas it is true that to cover 3000 years of human and religious history, the writer must default to an inch and a half below the surface and some readers may be disappointed in that factor, i decidedly was not. the sheer breadth of the work, by default, wove together so many disparate parts that i can not help but appreciate the effort. we know most of the information therein ... but in pieces. seemingly without effort, macculloch weaves the ideas together, making connections, showing cause and effect, and more often than not doing so seamlessly. but getting through this book without becoming dizzy means the reader must pace herself. i took the 40 days of lent (started a week before; ended a week early) to tackle the job. it was worth the effort. and some of his (almost casually thrown off) conclusions were just plain insightful. i'm rather pleased with myself for getting through this religious history and am very sure that i will be referencing it regularly. i also have the bbc dvds of the series made from this book. looking forward to watching it and hope not too much has been left out. after reading the entire book, i cannot help but think that every detail matters. that's how well macculloch presented the material.
• 
  Nicholas Whyte

  
  http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2021907.html[return][return]This magisterial and thorough book goes through Chrstianity's roots in Judaism and Greek philosophy, the life of Jesus and the immediate aftermath, and then the historical development of the movement that his followers became. I learned a lot; MacCullough's broad historical focus took us to places I had not really thought of before, like the early history of Christianity in Asia (including China), and explained to me stuff I thought I already knew about, like the Polish-Lithuania commonwealth (where MacCullough's account is much more lucid than Norman Davies'). He is lucid and non-judgmental, and usually manages to avoid taking sides (though this slip occasionally during the later discussions of Anglicanism). The triumph of the book is that he does avoid the Whiggishness of some approaches which take it for granted that two thousand years of history were somehow destined to bring us to the Anglican Communion (or Pope Benedict XVI, or whatever the author may support), and by putting the problems of the various churches today in the historical perspective of the viciousness of past debates, the entire situation becomes more comprehensible. It's very long but well worth it.
• 
  Czarny Pies

  After reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's brilliant "Reformation" or his equally remarkable "Thomas Cranmer" this book was quite a come down. It offers an acceptable history of Christianity for someone new to the subject but precious little to anyone who has already done some reading in the area.
  
  MacCulloch is a specialist on the birth of the Church of England. He is able to explain how at the time of the conflict between Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism and Reformed Protestantism the Church of England took the best of all three and created the greatest of all Christian Churches. I am a practicing Roman Catholic who does not agree with this point of view but I do admire how brilliantly MacCulloch is able to make his case.
  
  Outside of his main area of interest MacCulloch is a very average synthesist. His perfunctory treatment of Orthodox Christianity was in my view a major shortcoming of this book. His treatment of American protestant churches such as the Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist and Mormon churches also lacks substance.
  
  This is an adequate introductory history of Christianity but it falls far short of what MacCulloch can do when he is in his comfort zone.
• 
  Frank R

  A massive book--over 1000 pages. It was not easy to finish just because of the size of the book, though the style was very readable and engaging. I didn't get bored throughout; quite the opposite--I was eager to read and learn more. This history helped connect lots of other historical events and developments for me, as if the religious aspect provided a key element to understanding the past two millennia of Western history, an aspect that has been neglected in other histories.
  
  Other than providing me with the religious background that illuminated the rest of history, the great lesson that I gleaned was the immense diversity of the Christian family, over time and space. There are many, many ways that the Christian message has been taught, lived, and understood.
  
  I would also recommend this book to any skeptic who thinks Christianity is personified by the modern evangelical or fundamentalist movement. This is a recent innovation of Christianity, and far removed from most of Christian history.