CHRISTIANITY: THE FIRST THREE THOUSAND YEARS
“To be deep in history,” Cardinal Newman famously observed, “is to cease to be Protestant.” In other words, learn about the early church and what the earliest Christians believed, and Protestant claims will give way before the flood of Catholic truth. Newman is only the most illustrious of many Protestants swept by this historical tide towards Rome.
But this is only one side of the story. In a memorable image from his acclaimed Challenge Sermon, the Anglican John Jewel compared such Catholic critiques of Protestantism to an army besieging a city. The defenders, seeing another army on the horizon, assume it must be coming to reinforce their attackers and finally overwhelm them, but the reverse is true. This second army is on their side, and together they rout the foe. This, Jewel declares, is how a real knowledge of church history functions in theological debates. “The doctors and old catholic fathers” really support Protestantism, so Protestants should not fear to study history. (1)
Almost everyone makes a connection between proper theology and accurate history. From traditional Eastern Orthodox to magisterial Protestants to Anabaptists, nearly every Christian group sees itself as a continuation or rediscovery of the way Jesus intended things to be before their corruption by your favorite theological punching bag: Constantine, the pope, Martin Luther, or whoever. So find the earliest, the best sources for Christian faith and practice, and then align yourself with them. Find the church that genuinely continues the apostles’ teaching and fellowship and join up.
This was my plan as a theologically curious, dissatisfied Episcopalian at a Roman Catholic university. As I began to think critically about my own denomination, it seemed that the fact that I was raised in this church was not reason enough to stay. I studied theology and history alongside it to answer my own questions, so that I could tell which church was right and then convert.
But the more I read, the less sure I became. Historical questions did not resolve neatly, as Newman, Jewel, and their fellow disputants had suggested. What I found was ambiguous, contradictory, and above all too complex to be decided by a 21 year old. Augustine, for instance, could sound like the grimmest Calvinist on grace and free will and then a staunch Catholic on the doctrine of the church. Was that a point for both sides? And what of the Orthodox, who thundered convincingly that Augustine was not the only early voice worth listening to?
Salvation, papal primacy, Scripture and tradition: the list of vexing questions was long. Partisans of all stripes spent hours wrestling the history into their corner, but I was left wondering how to sift through all this evidence to find the truth.
It was in this mood that I read Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. No single book could make one “deep in history,” but MacCulloch’s might, at least, make the reader broad. Beginning with ancient Judaism and its surrounding world, the book attempts to survey the whole history of our religion, everywhere it has reached and every form it has taken.
It is this dizzying breadth, this attention to the variety of Christian belief and practice through the centuries, that reoriented my perspective. The story was wider than narrow confessional squabbles made it seem. To give just one example, I was used to a Christian narrative which lost interest in Egypt, Ethiopia, Armenia, and Central Asia when these churches rejected the early church council of Chalcedon in AD 451 which settled the question of Christ’s divine and human natures. Saying “settled” betrays my limited perspective, for to millions of Christians in these lands and beyond, Chalcedon settled nothing. Instead of dismissing them as heretics or footnotes to the real story of Western Christendom, MacCulloch chronicles their geographic spread, theological and liturgical diversity, and tenacious endurance. “Western Christians have forgotten that before the coming of Islam…there was a good chance that the center of gravity of Christian faith might have moved east to Iraq rather than west to Rome.” (2) Their history does not disprove Chalcedon’s conclusions, but I found myself unable to write off these Christians, whatever our theological differences.
The larger and more varied MacCulloch’s tapestry became, the harder it was to pick just one strand and declare it the only authentic manifestation of the faith. “There is no surer basis for fanaticism than bad history, which is invariably history oversimplified.” (3) Irish monks struggling for perfection in their stone huts above the North Atlantic; emissaries from the Kievan Rus’ dazzled by Hagia Sophia; Luther, pacing in his tower for a gracious God; enslaved African-Americans singing of the suffering of God’s Son; the Reverend Florence Li Tim-Oi’s ordination and ministry amid the chaos of the Second World War in Hong Kong; Pentecostal preachers in Texas, Brazil, Nigeria, and South Korea. Each of these is a Christian story; none is the Christian story.
Above all, it was the martyrs who cured my quest for the one true church. “The holy Christian people,” Luther wrote, “are externally recognized by the holy possession of the sacred cross. They must endure every misfortune and persecution, all kinds of trials and evil from the devil, the world, and the flesh…in order to become like their head, Christ.” (4) This sacred cross, as MacCulloch mournfully showed, was the common possession of every denomination. The devil, flesh, and world paid no attention to the confessional boundaries so important to the apologists. Copts and Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Old Believers have suffered and died at the hands of emperors, mobs, totalitarian regimes, and, with distressing frequency, their fellow Christians.
It is not that theological differences are unimportant, as if anything goes and all expressions of the faith are the same. We often disagree, and those disagreements matter. But the common cross carried through history relativizes our differences. The common Lordship of Jesus Christ, to which all the martyrs testify, is stronger than our debates. To read, for example, about the savage persecution of Anabaptists by magisterial Protestants and Catholics alike did not convince me to reject infant baptism, but it did cure any triumphalism about ‘my side’ (or any other) being self-evidently superior.
I am now a contented Episcopalian of a rather Reformed flavor. I believe this tradition teaches much that is true about God, about interpreting Scripture and our tradition to learn of God’s gracious will for us from before the foundation of the world. And I have promised at my ordination to “conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of The Episcopal Church.” (5) I did so gladly, because the doctrine, discipline, and worship of this church have shaped and strengthened my faith so that I can now minister in Christ’s name to others. My feet are planted firmly and confidently here.
For the lesson of MacCulloch’s history is not relativism but humility, not indifference to truth but acknowledgment of my limited (and yes, sinful) perspective. We should look to the history and theology and do our best to find what is true, but always with the knowledge that others with no less faith in Christ have believed, lived, and worshiped very differently. Jesus Christ is Lord of it all, across time and space, and so he is Lord of my little corner of the Christian story, too. I can be confident in my tradition precisely because it need not bear the weight of perfection, of accounting for every detail of history and correct belief. It is enough that Jesus is Lord of this sprawling story.
Freed from the anxiety of resolving every problem, I can study with happy imperfection. I can admit that the church fathers do not all agree and that the Reformation debates were not clear-cut. I can rejoice in and learn from saints from around the world instead of nitpicking those from other churches. That which divides is real, but he who unites is greater. My own church commemorates martyrs of the 16th century, Catholics and Protestants of all stripes, with a prayer. “Grant,” we pray, “that those who have been divided on earth may be reconciled in heaven, and share together in the vision of your glory; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” (6) To learn humility from history is to anticipate this vision of fellowship, across the lines of confession and century, here and now.
John Jewel, “A Sermon Preached by the Bishop of Salisbury at Paul’s Cross,” in The Works of John Jewel, vol. 1 (Cambridge: University Press, 1845), 22.
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (New York: Viking Press, 2010), 284.
MacCulloch, Christianity, 12.
Martin Luther, “On the Councils and the Church,” in Luther’s Works, vol. 41 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), 164.
Book of Common Prayer, 1979, 538.
https://lectionarypage.net/LesserFF/May/ReformationMartyrs.html
