Bible Books
050
The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God
Robert Louis Wilken
(New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 2003) 389 pp., $29.95 (hardback)
Robert Wilken, professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia and one of the leading contemporary historians of early Christianity, has here given us his mature reflections on the intellectual history of Christianity in the first eight hundred years of its existence. The title of the book aptly suggests his approach. This is neither a linear history of the development of Christian doctrine nor a systematic exposition of the various theologies developed by the early Church. No, Wilken wants to capture the “spirit” of early Christian thought, to probe the fundamental concerns of its major thinkers and to convey some of the feeling of their writing and reflection. Hence, the book is organized around themes more experiential than conceptual.
Wilken argues that the locus of early Christian thought was the life of prayer and worship. Christian life was rooted in the encounter with God in Christ crucified and resurrected, but liturgically present to the worshipping community. Christian thought attempted to make sense of that encounter in its many and diverse ways.
Foremost among the modes of Christian thought was the exposition of scripture. The poignant quotation that begins Wilken’s chapter on the subject comes from Augustine: “For now treat the Scripture of God as the face of God. Melt in its presence.” In explicating the melting process, Wilken offers a sympathetic account of allegorical interpretation that characterized much early Christian scriptural exposition. “With the help of allegory Christians learned to read the Bible as a single book about Christ,” writes Wilken. “Christ is the subject of biblical interpretation. The words of Scripture are the signs given to the church to understand the mystery of God present in human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.” Although the technique may seem arbitrary to modern sensitivities, Wilken shows how it served as a spiritual discipline, bringing the reader, through the text, into connection with basic existential questions.
Although the book is not primarily about the history of Christian doctrine, it does review the key issues at stake in the Trinitarian controversies of the fourth century, treated by the Councils of Nicaea (325 C.E.) and Constantinople (381 C.E.), and the Christological controversies that erupted in the next century, at the Councils of Ephesus (431 C.E.) and Chalcedon (451 C.E.). In a chapter entitled “Seek His Face Always,” Wilken highlights again the importance of religious experience, which lies at the heart of the sometimes arcane theological debates. He creatively frames his presentation by beginning, not with the famous squabbles associated with the great fourth-century councils, but with the Dialogue with Heracleides, a text discovered in 1941 that recounts an encounter in 245 C.E. between the third-century theologian Origen and a bishop from Arabia. Origen asked Heracleides, “Do you believe that Christ Jesus was God before he came into the body?” and “Was he God distinct from the God in whose form he existed?” Heracleides twice answered, “Yes,” so Origen pressed further: “Is it the case then … that we are not afraid to say that in one sense there are two Gods and in another sense there is one God?” Wilken then explores the Trinitarian sensitivities of several major thinkers, concluding, as he often does, with Augustine. Wilken frames the other end of his exploration of doctrinal development not with the declaration of the Council of Chalcedon that Christ is one person with 051two natures, but with the continuing controversy that followed Chalcedon, a controversy that focused on the question of whether there were two “wills” in Christ, one human and one divine. Here, too, Wilken transcends the boundaries of the conventional discussions of early Christian thought to include a sketch of the influential seventh-century theologian Maximus the Confessor, whose meditations on Christ’s agony, written in 643-646, provide the focal point for a discussion of the divine and human in Christ.
Part of Wilken’s strategy is to illustrate particular aspects of Christian thought by focusing on key figures, although he ranges widely beyond the focal figures in a given chapter. As he explores Christian thought about the place of humankind in the cosmos, he turns to the Cappadocian fathers Basil of Caesarea and his brother Gregory of Nyssa; for Christian apologetics and reflections on the role of religion in society, Augustine’s City of God looms large. Such choices are obvious. A refreshingly unexpected choice is Prudentius, “the first Christian poet,” who was active in Spain and Italy in the fourth century. Prudentius provides a convenient springboard for a consideration of Christian poetry from the New Testament through the Middle Ages and down to Milton, Hopkins, Eliot and Geoffrey Hill.
Wilken continues to travel beyond conventional boundaries in his treatment of the iconoclastic controversy of the eighth century. For Wilken, the debate over the veneration of images leads to a larger discussion of the ways in which symbols have enriched Christian life and piety. Hagiography too makes an appearance, not simply to illustrate another literary genre, but to ground an exploration of Christian character formation. In their ethics, Wilken argues, Christians appropriated the traditional virtues of the Greco-Roman world, but recontextualized them and grounded them in a new vision of the human ideal. Throughout these chapters on Christian artistic expressions, Wilken weaves in allusions to contemporary art and literature, suggesting the relevance of his historical interests to modern sensibilities.
After treatment of the various visible and tangible means that early Christians used to express their thoughts, Wilken concludes with a celebration of the “sensuous intelligence” of the faith. Focusing on attitudes to the erotic, he argues that Christianity has not been a faith fleeing the world, but one that embraces and celebrates it in love.
Wilken’s richly textured treatment provides a splendid introduction to early Christian thought. His work is not, nor does it claim to be, comprehensive. He spends little time and attention on “heterodox” figures, who have received considerable attention in recent decades since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi collection of “Gnostic” manuscripts. Nor does he give much attention to popular Christian fiction, such as the apocryphal acts of the apostles of the second and third centuries, which have also generated considerable interest in recent years. Attention to such texts might have added nuance to the treatment of hagiographical literature and the discussion of Christian ethics. Also missing is any treatment of figures from the Syrian Christian world. The discussion of Christian poetry could have benefited from some encounter with the hymns of the poet Ephrem the Syrian, and the argument about the sensuous imagination of Christianity would have been enriched but made more complex, with input from the Syrian East, where the vibrant imagery of the Odes of Solomon and the elaborate allegory of the Hymn of the Pearl were at home. But to focus on the gaps is to ignore the achievement of what Wilken has offered: an extremely insightful account of a rich intellectual and artistic tradition.
The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God
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