THE multi-volume series, to which this book belongs, is a noble attempt to write Christian history in a new and different way. The aim is to present an organic picture of Christianity during two thousand years by showing the interactions and connections within it and with its cultural environment.
So this work aspires to be a global and relational history, with an emphasis on unfolding developments and the accompanying narratives that Christian communities have told about themselves in their cultural context — in other words, their sense of ecclesial identity. It is too much a sweeping survey to be a textbook, but individual chapters (with a few health warnings) could serve as a stimulating orientation for theology students and for both laity and clergy.
The book consists of 15 chapters plus a valuable series introduction and volume introduction. There are three sections: a chronological historical orientation; emerging traditions of Christianity: Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and in relation to other religions; and the encounter of Christianity with modernity and post-modernity. The expert contributors carry out their commission to a high standard. Nevertheless, I have several minor issues to raise about the content and one major reservation, and to these I will come.
It feels invidious to single out particular contributions. But it is worth mentioning that, in Chapter 1, Christine Shepardson sets the tone of the book by looking at early Christianity objectively, dispassionately, and sometimes a little askance. It is a reminder that this is a book about Christianity as a movement and a historical phenomenon rather than as a divinely ordained institution.
The chapters on Orthodoxy (Andrew Louth), Catholicism (Shaun Blanchard), and Protestantism are well done: Charlotte Methuen’s treatment of the national or territorial Churches that emerged from the Protestant Reformation is particularly acute. James Kennedy’s treatment of the socio-economic factors that affected Christianity in modernity helps us towards a balanced view of the continuing secularisation process. Michael Snape widens the perspective in one direction with an account of war and European Christianity, while Laura Ramsay widens it in another with an astute analysis of women’s place in European Christianity, especially in modern times.
Alec Ryrie, one of the two volume editors, presents a stimulating account of the early Reformation. His comment about Martin Luther’s “famous doctrine of ‘Scripture alone’” needs qualification, however. Luther held that, in the matter of salvation (justification received by faith without meritorious works), scripture must be our sole guide. For Luther, as for Richard Hooker later, the purpose of scripture was to show the way of salvation, not to give instructions about worship, ceremonial, or church governance. Outside of justification, Luther said, other helps were available: reason, conscience, councils, natural law. When Luther insisted at the Diet of Worms (1521), “Here I stand, I can do no other,” he referred not only to “the word of God”, but also to reason and conscience.
It is also misleading to state that “The Lutheran churches were skeptical about institutional or moral reform.” It is true that Luther himself was not much interested in the institutional and structural aspects of the Church. But the writings of the redoubtable scholar John Witte, Jr, for one, have brought out the moral seriousness and vast scope of the institutional reform and renewal undertaken by the Lutheran Churches in the same 16th century, in the spheres of education, legal theory, canon law, political organisation, marriage law, and social welfare, all of which contributed to the strengthening of civil society in the confessional Lutheran kingdoms of Northern Europe.
The contribution on the Enlightenment (mid-17th to mid-18th centuries) is not fully abreast of recent revisionist interpretations of the Enlightenment. It still talks about Christianity and the Enlightenment as though they were two different actors, when, in fact, the Enlightenment largely took place within Christianity and, except in France, was mainly led by academic clergy and ministers. It speaks about “a revulsion for established churches” when, in fact, all major Churches in Europe were “established”, as were the universities, and both were generators of Enlightenment ideas. The Enlightenment did not stand for “rationalism”, but mainly for empirical study leading to reform and improvement.
The significant phenomenon of Deism, which was an attenuated form of Christianity, without dogma, hierarchy, and the miraculous, but not without the supernatural and religious fervour (Voltaire and Rousseau are the best known examples of fervent Deism), is not mentioned. Conciliarist ideas did not seek the “democratization” of church governance — there was no thought of giving power to the laity (except rulers) — but the wider participation of the episcopate.
“Fractious” in the title means quarrelsome, argumentative, unruly, and irritable. Is this an adequate summary of European Christianity over 20 centuries? It aptly describes the suspicion, hostility, polemics, and conflicts that have chronically disfigured the Church of Christ. But it leaves out personal sanctity, ministry to the poor, the life of prayer and worship, sacrificial mission work, and transcendent achievements in art, literature, and music. It also and importantly excludes the way in which “fractiousness” has been largely put into reverse during the past century. There is no chapter, or even a major section, devoted to the Ecumenical Movement. Christian unity gets one paragraph in the context of empire and missions.
The omission of ecumenism is puzzling in a project devoted to drawing out interactions and connections. The Ecumenical Movement has distinguished the past century of Christian history from all previous centuries. It has drawn mutually hostile church traditions closer together through theological dialogue and local cooperation. One result of the Ecumenical Movement, including its liturgical and biblical-study components, is that most European Christians read the same Bible, using the same scholarly resources (if any), pray very similar prayers, worship singing the same hymns, and celebrate the sacraments using very similar forms, to the extent of normally recognising each other’s baptisms — notwithstanding that they are doing all this in their own languages.
In the book’s index, ecumenism, liturgy, sacraments, baptism, eucharist, and Bible are absent. What is “Christianity” without all these?
The Revd Dr Paul Avis is Honorary Professor in the School of Divinity of the University of Edinburgh, and Editor-in-Chief of Ecclesiology.
Entangling Web: The fractious story of Christianity in Europe
Alec Ryrie and Mark A. Lamport, editors
Cascade Books £31
(978-1-6667-3002-9)
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